using independent thinking is akin to spending 1 credit for 1 draw.
In some cases it’s even akin to discarding a card to draw a card.
Why is it 1 credit for 1 draw? Wouldn’t you trash 3-6 facedowns and draw 3-6 for just 1 credit? Yes, its cycling, but its the exact same as Chop Bot. Literally the same thing. You are even playing the facedowns clicklessly. Assuming you are rig building or digging for an event, it’s not like this is bad in any case but flatline threat for Heartbeat. How many facedowns does Apex truly need to function? I have a feeling its in the 5-6 range.
And isn’t discarding a card to draw card decidedly OP strong for Runners, especially when the discards are practically forced blank cards that are only used for damage and breaking ETRs, and considering you will be board clearing a couple times a game there won’t be a lot of hard ETRs to break.
2 Likes
what if caprice is on r&d
Tried Apex with Hyperdriver last night. It actually shows promise. Really helps out on the Apocalypse turn. Being able to click through a Bioroid is nice and still Apocalypse. Or play some econ or draw cards.
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because each face-down card is a “credit” that endless hunger spends on breaking ETR subroutines. getting into the 5-6 facedown range (as you put it), in my 4-game experience, is not done without luck (drawing one of your 3 hunting grounds) or many turns of not running.
If the best way to play Apex is to set up a more traditional rig then you may be right.
The card for card occurs when you need “Hit-points” to survive. I can’t see myself tossing away hitpoints for cards because it would take my ability to run away.
2 Likes
Alright, I feel like I’m finally coming up on something I like, so I’m going to post my current list.
Apex: Invasive Predator
Event (20)
3x Apocalypse
3x Day Job •••
3x Dirty Laundry
2x Infiltration
3x Prey
3x Quality Time •••
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (8)
3x Brain Cage
2x Clone Chip ••••
3x Heartbeat
Resource (3)
3x Hunting Grounds
Icebreaker (6)
3x Endless Hunger
3x Faust ••••• •
Program (8)
3x Crescentus •••
3x Harbinger
2x Hyperdriver ••••• •
25 influence spent (max 25)
45 cards (min 45)
The Hyperdriver is actually really good for Apex! I went back to Quality Time after pulling in 3x Day Job. I just have to accept that the deck is slower than I want it to be. I can’t squander my econ cards by putting them face down.
Faust is the primary breaker, Endless Hunger secondary. And I usually don’t even install Endless Hunger until I’m ready to Apocalypse. If I can throw it in the trash with a Clone Chip on the table, that is best.
The deck builds up while controlling the remote. Use Prey on the remote if necessary to prevent scoring windows. Poke the centrals a little to check for free accesses.
The pre-Apocalypse turn ideally has Faust, Hyperdriver, and Crecentus (for Architect) on the board. Hand has 8 cards with Brain Cage. After popping Hyperdriver, a first click Quality Time will pretty much guarantee a successful Apocalypse. If you don’t expect Architect, you can use a click to install Endless Hunger immediately.
So, the deck is feeling pretty good to me. But, I’m not convinced that Apex is competitive… It can’t R&D lock versus FA. It can’t deal with Caprice on a central (other than with amazing psi game skills). I’ll probably tweak the deck here and there because it is fun to play. But worlds training is about to begin, so I won’t be putting any further serious effort into Apex. I hope someone else can come up with something amazing! 
10 Likes
Yep I can see that. Thanks for clearing it up. I can see how runs can add up.
Had anyone played with other virtual resources like grifter and seeing if they work?
Siphon is a “bad guy” card. Apex is a "bad guy, so let’s just play bad guy cards, with siphon DLR and Eater.
Woman in red can be replaced by another siphon & I’m not sure about Rolodexes.
Apex: Invasive Predator
Event (17)
2x Account Siphon ••••• •••
2x Apocalypse
3x Dirty Laundry
3x Infiltration
1x Kraken
3x Prey
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (5)
2x Chop Bot 3000 ••
2x Heartbeat
1x Q-Coherence Chip
Resource (15)
2x Data Leak Reversal ••
3x Ghost Runner
3x Hunting Grounds
2x Rolodex ••
1x Utopia Shard •
3x Wasteland
1x Woman in the Red Dress ••••
Icebreaker (5)
2x Eater ••••• •
3x Endless Hunger
Program (3)
3x Harbinger
25 influence spent (max 25) •••••••••••••••••••••••••
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny
Deck built on http://netrunnerdb.com.
could this forthcoming current help Apex by turning on Blackmail?
I haven’t been brave enough to try It myself yet. after reading everything in this thread, I can’t think of anything Apex can do that another Runner can’t do better, which bums me out. Maybe I haven’t thought hard enough. I don’t consider Apocalypse a good card, and I feel that the design team kind of built Apex around it, unfortunately.
1 Like
The Kansas City crew put on a spectator-friendly series of matches over beers at a local tavern to showcase the Data and Destiny IDs, since a few of our crew got it early from GenCon. I wound up being assigned Apex, so I’ve been working on a way to make it…usable. I found myself in complete agreement with the thesis outlined early on in the thread: in short, Apex desperately needs draw, econ, and alternate breakers, and somehow has to manage to do this with 25 influence; additionally, any buildup you do in terms of econ and breakers will be undone when you Apocalypse. I’d concluded that it was probably the weakest Runner out of D&D, since at least Adam can run Kati Jones and Daily Casts so he doesn’t have to burn all his influence just on economy! My initial tests didn’t fill me with optimism, either.
Imagine my surprise, then, when during the actual event I won both my matches with Apex. Obviously the effects of luck are pronounced in such a small sample size, but I think I managed to hit upon a build that worked well enough for my playstyle. It still won more games than not in casual play after the event (though I’ve gotten sick of the flying spaghetti monster and dropped the deck for now), so I thought I’d post about it here.
Like @Zeromus I use Faust + Endless Hunger as my breaker suite. It seemed to me to be the only configuration that made sense in Apex; Faust’s role is to complement Hunger to ensure I can complete key runs. But because both breakers are reliant on having a stock of cards built up – installed cards for Hunger, cards in hand for Faust – it’s not the kind of deck that can just run everywhere. You need to build up and be judicious about when and where you poke, taking accesses when it’s cost-effective but preferring not to lose your momentum. Oftentimes I’ve found that the correct call is to pay through traces rather than break Tracer ice, so that you can approach ice with 3 pools of resources – credits, cards in grip, installed cards – rather than breaking everything traditionally, which doesn’t seem to be a very workable approach in Apex.
I like Chop Bot a lot. It lets me cycle through cards in grip I don’t want by triggering Apex’s ability to install facedown then trashing the newly-installed facedown card to Chop Bot to draw, and as a bonus if Wasteland is installed I get a credit for it. This lets me get to the cards I’m after faster: Prey, Apocalypse, whatever I am looking for but haven’t drawn yet. It also lets me start a turn with 6 cards in hand so I can leverage Faust a bit more. But you still have to build up a store of installed cards for Hunger, so you can’t over-use it early on. (Post-Apocalypse – 
– I find I generally have enough facedown cards to Chop freely, so I try to keep a second Chop Bot in hand so I can play it the turn after Apocalypse.)
I’ve found that, in a weirdly counter-intuitive way, oftentimes my econ cards are the best cards to install facedown or pitch to Faust. Since I don’t have any good resource economy, it’s often worthwhile to ditch Ghost Runner or Dirty Laundry if powering Faust or Hunger would be worth the 2-3 credit gain those cards would otherwise provide me with – especially because trashing/installing those cards doesn’t require a click. Again, when your 3 resource pools are credits, installed cards, and cards in grip, sometimes you need one of the latter two more than you need credits.
I try to poke centrals whenever I feel I can do so without risking a loss of momentum so that I can get an idea of what it’ll take to land Apocalypse. I’ll also try to use Prey to soften up centrals and get rid of pesky ice like Enigma that would interfere with my ability to land Apocalypse. The tide of a game generally turns in my favor when I can land Apocalypse and lose the Corp 8-12 cards’ worth of value, while only losing 3-4 myself.
Here’s the full list:
Apex (45 cards)
Event (21)
2 Apocalypse
3 Day Job •••
1 Deja Vu ••
3 Dirty Laundry
1 Levy AR Lab Access •••
2 Quality Time ••
3 Prey
3 Sure Gamble
3 The Maker’s Eye ••••• •
Hardware (6)
3 Heartbeat
3 Chop Bot 3000 •••
Resource (9)
3 Ghost Runner
3 Hunting Grounds
3 Wasteland
Icebreaker (6)
3 Endless Hunger
3 Faust ••••• •
Program (3)
3 Harbinger
Now for what it doesn’t do well. The deck hates Architect and basically doesn’t have a good answer to it; on my first Apocalypse run I’ll let it fire, because whatever they install I’m going to trash anyway, but you can’t let it fire post-Apocalypse, and paying 3 cards from Faust is just…atrocious. If they put one over R&D you have an ugly game ahead of you. Asset-heavy decks can be a pain if you’re actually forced to trash them rather than just Apocalypse them all away. It doesn’t R&D lock versus Fast Advance; The Maker’s Eye isn’t sufficient R&D pressure to constantly keep FA in check. Lastly, I really hate that I feel like I have to use Levy AR, since all my multi-access and econ are event-based and I can cycle through my deck pretty quickly with Chop Bot. In most games it doesn’t feel worth the influence, but there are a non-negligible number of games where I’m sunk without it. Sadly, I don’t see a way around these problems with the cards Apex has available to it in-faction, and if you’re going to drop Endless Hunger and Heartbeat and whatnot why are you even playing Apex? 
It is a pretty fun change of pace, though, and the way it approaches ice is very interesting. Ice Corps tend to think you’ll be afraid of won’t bother you at all – “yawn, I prevent Tollbooth’s on-encounter effect then trash a Harbinger, nice 8 credits you spent there!” – but you will be frustrated in surprising ways by other ice that isn’t as bothersome in other match-ups. Plus, there’s nothing like the feeling of landing an Apocalypse that cost you little but cost them almost everything. 
8 Likes
[quote]I haven’t been brave enough to try It myself yet. after reading
everything in this thread, I can’t think of anything Apex can do that
another Runner can’t do better, which bums me out. Maybe I haven’t
thought hard enough. I don’t consider Apocalypse a good card, and I feel
that the design team kind of built Apex around it, unfortunately.[/quote]
Sounds like the reason you can’t think of anything Apex can do that another runner can’t do better is precisely because you don’t think Apocalypse is good. Based on my experience, I think it is good, albeit good in the way that Account Siphon is good – you have to use it in key windows, not just toss it off willy-nilly – and I don’t think it’s going to be that great imported into other factions. Almost all other Runners want to build up a rig and develop a board which you lose when you play Apocalypse, whereas Apex basically can’t do that anyway so why not just burn everything down? Apocalypse’s downside isn’t as big when your in-faction cards and your ID prevent you from building a large rig. It’s not as devastatingly powerful as board wipes can be in certain collectible card games, but I wouldn’t call it ‘not good.’
Do you find you don’t need LARLA?
I have a particular dislike for the card, so that may affect my opinion. However, I did test it multiple times in Apex, one and two copies. I never liked it. It is expensive, you gotta be careful not to lose it, it makes Hunting Grounds more risky, and most importantly I almost never reach the bottom of my deck. If you are playing Chopbot though (or another deck burn style), I could see it possibly being necessary.
Yeah, the lack or SOT hurts. Deja Vu would help, I guess.
Just asking, because in a primary Faust build, I would think that eating up cards, and quickly, at times, would make it a necessity.
1 Like
If you play aggressively, sure. But that requires so much draw that I just haven’t been able to support. I kinda sit around and set up for the Apocalypse. Which is fairly boring, really. 
I don’t think the version of Apex I came up with is particularly good or fun, so I really hope others can come up with something better.
1 Like
Has anyone tried bringing Adam’s Safety First into Apex? The drawback seems like it could be mitigated with Heartbeat and constant facedown installs, but 3 influence is tough.
Every doomsday cult leader feels your pain, Chris.
14 Likes
I just don’t see how you leverage Apocalypse. Medium seems the best way but it’s 3 influence per copy, and this ID already needs a lot of support. Have you posted your list in this thread? I’d be keen to see it. I just feel like Corps almost always have extra ICE in hand, and you can’t run on naked servers the turn you Apocalypse, without relying on bad options (my opinion) like Hyperdriver. Moreover, since Apocalypse is basically the only thing Apex can do better than other Runners, the Corp is probably playing a bit in expectation of the wipe, so the likelihood of them having spare ICE is even higher.
How does one leverage Apocalypse into a viable deck?
Put it into another faction. :’( Preferably Shaper. Then you get in-faction access to Levy, Hyperdriver (bad or not), Clone Chip/SMC, Diesel/QT and Aesop to turn any facedown cards into credits for the next Apocalypse.
Choose Hayley, and with enough cheap-to-install cards you’ll be able to manage a clickless install per turn, near enough. Is she just a better Apex?!