Spark Agency: Cool Places/Corp Denial

Deck Archetypes
61

Why all the tagging cards when your only tag punishment is ice?

1 Like
62

Yeah that was worrying me too. Perhaps a Psychographics or Best Defense would be good here.

63

How has Financial Collapse been? I get how it might be especially at home in Spark, though I have been pretty keen to avoid it just because in my mind it either:

  1. Doesn’t do enough harm (the runner doesn’t have many resources) OR
  2. Can be easily mitigated (the runner has a bunch of resources and surely one of them is expendible)

I suppose the sweet spot is they have three or so resources and they care about all of them?

64

Shouldn’t it be “TANSTAAFL”?

1 Like
65

Uh…Yes…

1 Like
66

Financial Collapse is great in a meta with a ton of unique Connections. It has a great surprise factor and is also good even if you just trash a SoT or Daily Casts.

2 Likes
67

I have been having lots of fun with the following. I think there is a lot of room for improvement like trying to incorporate city surveillance for example.

Breaking Down Advertising Doors

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach (Data and Destiny)

Agenda (9)

Asset (18)

Upgrade (3)

Operation (10)

Barrier (2)

Code Gate (4)

Sentry (3)

11 influence spent (max 15, available 4)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Station One

1 Like
68

Lately I’ve been rethinking my Spark builds. The issue with Spark is that the ability ceases to be relevant very early, or even immediately if Temujin or Mopus hit the board. Often, there will be a midgame window where the ability can fire again after the runner has to dip in credits, e.g. by running through a Tollbooth to nab an NAPD Contract. In this case, Friends in High Places replinishes your adverisements and you may briefly regain control of the game. So to try to engineer more situations like this, while still retaining a large number of advertisements, I’m going with a minimal tag punishment suite.

I still feel I’ve got tunnel vision when it comes to Tollbooth. The card is an excellent tax, protects my SanSan, and often singlehandedly initiates a cascade of Spark triggers. But it’s so, so expensive in a deck that often dips very low on credits. What else could I do here?

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach (Data and Destiny)

Agenda (9)
1x AstroScript Pilot Program (Core Set)
3x Project Beale (Future Proof)
3x NAPD Contract (Double Time)
2x Global Food Initiative (Data and Destiny) ••

Asset (9)
3x PAD Campaign (Core Set)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves)
3x Launch Campaign (Data and Destiny)

Upgrade (7)
2x Mumbad Virtual Tour (Salsette Island)
2x SanSan City Grid (Core Set)
3x Product Placement (The Universe of Tomorrow)

Operation (11)
2x Consulting Visit (The Liberated Mind) ••••• •
1x Hard-Hitting News (23 Seconds)
2x Friends in High Places (Martial Law) ••
1x Closed Accounts (Core Set)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
2x Sweeps Week (True Colors)

Barrier (2)
1x IP Block (Martial Law)
1x Resistor (Data and Destiny)

Code Gate (8)
1x Free Lunch (Station One)
3x Tollbooth (Core Set)
1x Enigma (Core Set)
3x Pop-up Window (Cyber Exodus)

Sentry (3)
2x Data Raven (Core Set)
1x Turnpike (Data and Destiny)

10 influence spent (maximum 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Station One

69

Runner econ remains terrible. The best econ engine cards are restricted/banned. Corps just got Economic Warfare, which is better than MVT. NGO Front is a nasty decoy. Scarcity somehow lives on. So…time to reconsider Spark?

This list has one plan: smother the Runner’s economy and score out behind ICE. I’ve seen several lists that use HHN, but I think it may be better to use the slots to go all-in. In a couple of tests it seems like a miserly bastard. Any suggestions?

Tesla Coil

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach (Data and Destiny)

Agenda (8)

Asset (15)

Upgrade (3)

Operation (10)

Barrier (3)

Code Gate (7)

Sentry (3)

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Down the White Nile

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

70

I’m cringing with hot shame that the last post in the Spark thread was my own from a year ago. I was such a terrible player back then. It feels like absolutely ages ago. I did manage to accidentally field a Spark deck with four copies of Tollbooth in it without anyone noticing, so there’s that.

It’s timely because I think everyone’s playing with Azmari and the ID ability is kind of similar. It’s a max two credit swing. Sometimes you’ll get one Spark trigger on your turn by rezzing a thing and sometimes you can rez, say, a Product Placement on your opponent’s to make it 2. Eventually you run out of Ads and stop making money, your opponent’s credit total snowballs, gg.

The problem with Spark is you have to fill your deck with advertisements, but at least you can guarantee they’ll do the thing. With Azmari, you guess wrong you get nothing. But with Azmari you get the flexibility of filling your deck with just about anything and still having the chance to get Spark level benefits throughout the game if you play the dumb guessing game.

I’m wondering what advantage Spark could offer in March 2018 over Azmari in the Battle of the Tier 2 NBN IDs…? Can Spark ever engineer more consistency by recurring ads somehow?

2 Likes
71

Thinking that Fast Tracking a Rebranding team could make this hum (dropping Ad Blitz). At one point I was testing 3 Team Sponsorships for some recursion. But I dropped to 2 to add an Adonis. My intuition is that baiting a few taxing runs may be a better plan than the old FA approach. Marylin may also help with some of the petering out.

72

this is the most logical spark build i could come up with. I hope you can make it work:

1 Like
73

Oh, isn’t this a Reina Headlock deck? Maybe you got the wrong link.

74

bah…thanks

fixed it.

75

I’ve not played Lakshmi much. Would you mind describing the prototypical situations you’d want to use it in and how it fits with the win condition? Or is it purely defensive? Thx.

76

sure. I just figured lakshmi is the most synergistic card because it benefits from the same activity that Spark does.

I’ve only played the deck a few times and stopped because I didn’t feel it was going to get “there” until I could replace CPC with a decent card. Also, like countless other things, it suffers to film critic.

Score behind ICE. Score with Lakshmi behind ICE. Score naked with Lakshmi.

You can have a 4/2 in hand, tutor a duplicate with Fast Track, Install+advance and use Lakshmi to score.

If they’re poor use Fast Track to tutor up a 4/2 and Install advance.

I would not call it rush or glacier. It’s more like do your Spark thing until there’s a scoring opportunity then use it.

For me I do not rez 2 advertisements in one turn. If I were to rez a PAD on their turn and they made a run into my pop-up, I won’t rez the pop-up. That’s just what I do. It may or may not be right.

Cheers

77

Out of curiosity, why aren’t we using Degree Mill? For no other reason than making them pay to install things multiple times seems right up Spark’s alley…

2 Likes
78

because that’s how old the list is. I haven’t played it in a long time but I let it sit for when/if a better thing than CPC comes along

1 Like
79

this was my most recent Spark list (from the pack with NGO/SSL, so it’s also slightly out of date):

i think there could definitely be some merit to going Degree Mill and SSL with a Beale though
i also think the 3 Economic Warfare could be replaced with 2 Trojan Horse. i found that often runners didn’t have enough money to lose and EW would sit in my hand. MVT could at least be thrown in a server to help tax runs and force the runner to go somewhere else

i’m also a big fan of Threat Assessment, especially against all the new linkrunners with Security Nexus
and speaking of them, Ash and HHN is probably not as necessary, but i’d need to do some testing. i really like MVT and Reversed Accounts to deal with Sunny/Geist/Nero though

1 Like
80

Degree Mill and SSL seem great. What do y’all think about three of each with a Sales Team?

In most of my matches, I’m able to get a lot of credits by mid game, while the runner is struggling for economy. Yet I find it hard to really close it out quickly. Think Sandburg might be the way to go. If that’s the case, then there could be a case for Stinson to really top it off. I also didn’t find much advantage from GFI when there are 2 other 5/3s in there. I’ll think about Trojan Horse, but Warfare may fit better with Stinson. Still tinkering here.