Chopbot and prey?
Sure. I quickly found that it’s impractical to try to use Prey on big ice like Tollbooth or Eli. Prey is for stuff like Enigma that’s going to mess up my ability to land Apocalypse, or Resistor which is just super annoying to have to deal with. I almost never use it on stuff over strength 2. The big stuff I’ll try to break just as I’m about to Apocalypse so I won’t have to deal with it again. Prey paves the way. Chop Bot does all the stuff I outlined above.
I dunno, I think Apex needs Endless Hunger to have been more broadly applicable or have a recursion card in-faction.
Its hard to build a rig and all the other things Apex needs with the influence and the leftover memory Apex gives you (unlike Sunny who has her own breakers and Adam who can use neutral economy resources).
I think something like this would have solved a lot of Apex’s problems
Endless Hunger
Program: Icebreaker • Install: 0 • Memory: 4 • Strength: 11 • Influence: 2
Trash an installed card: Break " End the run." subroutine.
Trash two installed cards: Install Endless Hunger from the heap, paying all costs. (You may use this ability while Endless Hunger is in the heap.)
I still think a Geist B&E deck with Apoc is possible. Not ideal, but possible.
2nd Apoc could come in form of CC/Chop, or, if you’re truly fearless, LARLA.
(I know, this isn’t the Geist thread, but, if we’re talking about farming out Apex’s cards…)
#Endtimes
Armand “Geist” Walker: Tech Lord (The Underway)
Event (10)
- 3x Account Siphon (Core Set)
- 1x Apocalypse (Data and Destiny) •••
- 2x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
- 1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control) •••
- 3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)
Hardware (12)
- 1x Chop Bot 3000 (Order and Chaos) •
- 3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) ••••• •
- 3x Desperado (Core Set)
- 1x Dyson Mem Chip (Trace Amount)
- 1x HQ Interface (Humanity’s Shadow)
- 2x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)
- 1x R&D Interface (Future Proof) ••
Resource (8)
- 2x Bank Job (Core Set)
- 3x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
- 3x Technical Writer (Data and Destiny)
Icebreaker (13)
- 1x Breach (Honor and Profit)
- 1x Cerberus “Rex” H2 (All That Remains)
- 3x Crowbar (Chrome City)
- 2x Faerie (Future Proof)
- 3x Shiv (The Underway)
- 3x Spike (The Valley)
Program (2)
- 2x Crescentus (A Study in Static)
15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
3 Likes
Staunchly disagree. This is such a pitifully weak and niche faction/ID. Tacking on a hard counter to meat damage would not have disrupted the meta at all.
As for thematics, Apex might use hardware, but it certainly cannot flatline due to its hardware being destroyed. It is a digital entity. Even if a piece of hardware it is inhabiting/utilizing is destroyed, it will escape into the digital ether.
What digital ether? It needs storage space to store its code. It needs processors to run it.
I think it is thematically represented perfectly. Face down cards are various servers it has infested. Heartbeat sets up a central “home” to maintain and redistribute itself.
3 Likes
We have very different takes on Apex, which is understandable. The issue with Apex needing physical objects is that it cannot operate in the physical dimension. I suppose Apex could manipulate a bioroid or robot into assembling hardware; however, then you have to consider how Apex came into existence, since it did not have hardware to begin with.
I choose to believe Apex is beyond processors and storage space. It is the ghost in the shell.
1 Like
That is a cool idea too. Netrunner seems to leave enough to our imagination that everyone can enjoy it the way they want to. 
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I think it’s too soon to say this, but I’m leaning towards agreement.
This however, is a different issue. I agree with you that they could have made Apex better, but I don’t think this is a good way of doing it. Counterplay is good for the meta, but the change would be a hard counter that would invalidate a significant portion of different corp decks. It’s possible to make Apex better without this drastic, meta-warping change.
1 Like
Also, Apex is already brutally hard to kill once Heartbeat is installed.
Maybe. Basically I think they needed to bolster this ID a lot to make it even worth considering. Meat protection seems one logical thing they could have done. Nothing they tacked on to Apex would ever impact the meta at all.
Frankly I think they missed some design space with being able to truly “infect” corporate servers and give the corp some difficult choices. Maybe successful runs would allow Apex to install cards facedown in remote servers? If they were installed as assets with something like “When this card is uninstalled, trash one piece of rezzed ICE protecting it” you could have this really interesting interplay where Apex is constantly poisoning remotes and forcing the corp to trash their own ICE. Not super useful against fast advance, but maybe it would have been enough.
4 Likes
I’m still following the theory that Apex is a Kraken that swallowed a Wotan or Janus. Now, its appetite can never be satiated.
9 Likes
Anyone tempted by DDos as a mid game Apocalypse enabler? 3 infl is tough but works on all servers for the whole turn
I took apocalypse to Kate, and used Atman, bookmark and a one of refractory and dagger with cloak support in case of anti AI ice. I used no sure gambles and relied on Aesops and magnum opus and daily casts to carry me through, with hyperdriver as a three of flex slot / apocalypse enabler. Unexpected, it was pretty strong even after the Corp scored 4 points, I’m not sure if repeated games would have gone horribly. Bookmark was great with all the draw I included (diesel, earthrise with career fair. All in all, I feel it might just be better to play Apex cards in other factions for now, but Apex cards are certainly powerful. It makes me wonder how good wasteland it’s in geist, for instance.
Apex’s problem isn’t so much its cards are bad, its moreso that we don’t have enough depth in the card pool to play around its massive draw back, which is disabling non Virtual resources.
Apoch, prey and Hunting Grounds are good to playable. Endless Hunger is great against most etr ice in the game and Wasteland is situational.
But truth be told, it seems there just aren’t enough discard effects in most Apex decks I play to make Wasteland a money maker.
Apex was one I was pretty hopeful for, but it has always been a strictly bad id. It is the perfect storm of interesting cards and pretty crappy influence solutions and bad neutrals.
Maybe in two cycles it will be relevant or in a world without architect.
3 Likes
Prey is definitely the best card in its pool, by a fair margin IMO.
1 Like
I noticed that, too. That’s actually one reason I picked Ghost Runner, as econ that gets a little extra credit boost out of Wasteland (since Wasteland triggers when you trash Ghost Runner after spending the last credit off it). But it’s still not great. 
I thought about cutting Wasteland entirely, but I don’t know what I’d put in its place, since my influence is entirely spoken for.
It is pretty fantastic. I wish it was more practical to run datasucker with prey, but it is pretty impractical for mu.
here are notes from my first games with brodie’s build
game 1: loss to RP Glacier
- accessed 1 early tfp, lost psi game
- insufficient econ to trash sundews
- first nisei guarantees no apocalypse
game 2: loss to NEH Butchershop
- very early Apoc bought me time but
- no Plas makes this an unwinnable match-up
-3 Ghost Runner
+3 Plascrete
-1 Deja Vu
+1 IHW
game 3: loss to NEH Butchershop
- each had an astro before Apoc
- she scored second astro from hand after Apoc
- died to SEA+Scorch after Plas went face-down
game 4: loss to BS Glacier
- all nightmare ICE: enigma, spiderweb, caduceus, curtain wall
- no way to beat Ash traces
- lost Endless Hunger to Shutdown for 0
- joke of a match-up really
game 5: loss to NEH Standard (7-4)
- can’t keep up with Asset trashing
- can’t deal with Viper
- can’t beat Ash
5 Likes