"That's not a virtual resource" - The Apex Thread

See thread title. :cry:

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Oh, hah! Not sure how that got there. How embarrassing! Fixing. QT instead. I even complained about no FC in the Argus match-up.

Edit: looked through my notes - definitely added it after that recent Argus game. APEX is a bad day drinker.

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Going to sleeve it up and try it. Its gotta be better than what I was doing.

I like it!

Might I suggest I’ve Had Worse instead? Apex has a critical vulnerability to SEA Source → Scorch, and IHW will protect against that.

It is a good suggestion, one I’ve gone back and forth on.

From my experience, I’ve found that APEX isn’t that vulnerable to SEA / Scorch / Scorch because, once Heartbeat is up… you’re pretty damn safe. With heartbeat, you only need a couple of installed cards and you are just fine most of the time. And Diesel is free, as opposed to the one from IHW, and that one credit seems dumb but it can be a problem with piss-poor APEX.

But the main reason is that, since constant card draw is so important with APEX, I’ve found that when I played IHW I’d never keep it in hand for more than a turn anyway.

From my experience, once you Apocalypse, you are severely vulnerable to SEA Source Scorch. :wink: But if you’ve never had that happen, go for Diesel.

That’s fair (it is the only time I get hit with it).

So many awful choices to make with this ID.

Edit: Just remembered why I find IHW not terribly useful as a post Apocalypse helper. IHW not going to help unless you have two of them in hand prior to the Apocalypse. Even if you go into the Apocalypse round with a full 5 card hand, Run 3 times, then play Apocalypse, you only have four… pretty sure w/1 IHW you’re still dead to a SEA/S/S. It doesn’t strike me as all that helpful for that situation, although I’m tired and likely missing something.

If you’re really afraid of the Scorched, just run Utopia Shard. You can install it for free on one of your Apoc runs and its even virtual! Pop it after they run the SEA source and they’ll probably discard one of the scorches.

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Utopia Shards don’t survive the Apocalypse. :wink: You can install it on the HQ run and pop it before the Archives run, which may still save you, though!

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Although you better hope you hit that SEA, because you’ll be at 3 cards (just one Scorch will do it). Monday morning mind math says 10% hitting both Scorches on a five card hand and 45% hitting the SEA, so you’re at a favorably-dirty coin flip.

It is a tough problem. The hard counters are very situational.

So I felt compelled to do this, ignore it if it annoys you, but I found out what Apex’s day job is.

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Honestly i’m not too sure about <3b as flatline defense. It seems to me that as a corp i would love to see Apex blow away half of his ability to get into servers by popping scorch and forcing them to trash cards to save themselves. Don’t get me wrong if you can save yourself from flatline that’s obviously what you do but sacrificing cards that could be used on endless hunger seems to put you way behind in board state which can be pretty hard to recover from for apex.

I’ve considered astrolabe+plascrete as a alternative but that is quite alot of inf shrugs

I don’t know about that, I played him with a glacier deck, and it was trivial how easy it was for the apocalypse to come. At least I had double architects out, protecting both hq and r&d

I’ve been testing Apex for a while and I’ve had mixed success. Influence is spent on 3 Lucky Finds because economy can be a major problem for this deck. The real MVP for me has been Employee Strike (3 of) because that card can nullify a lot of meaningful IDs. Mostly against the new Haarpsichord which makes for a fun turn after they installed 3 times. Also been loving DDos, which is the bulk of my influence spent. Helps the turn after Apocalypse be more effective and can help the early game before breakers are found. I’ve been calling the deck Apex Gets a Job. Also have a one off Day Job :wink:

I’ve been experimenting with Apex and I think there are some decks you just can’t Apocalypse at all. Most kill decks can’t be Apocalypsed as even if you have the Heartbeat in hand you can’t play it before their turn. While Heartbeat is on the table you’re basically invulnerable, but without your strongest weapon being available to you.

This is exacerbated by a large variety of ice that’s already quite strong. Gutenburg and Data Ravens are basically unApocalypseable in kill decks as you are guaranteeing you’ll be tagged and have no Heartbeat at the end of the turn. Regardless of how much money you have they are almost certain to kill you.

Perhaps the answer is just to get out Heartbeat, go tag me, ignore all their ice, and never Apocalypse.

I say find influence for I’ve had worse, apocalypse is the greatest fuck you in the game to the Corp.

Someday Apex might be playable! Someday…

I’ve Had Worse might do it, although if you end the turn tagged triple scorch still kills you.

I’ve Had Worse seems preferable as the back up scorch protection. Although I really wish that we could find a way to cram hyperdriver in there. Hyperdriver + Heartbeat means you can install heartbeat post apoc and shrug off nearly any damage the corp can throw your way.

Has anyone actually had an IHW save them from a post apocalypse SEA/S/SS, and then won? It’s hard enough to find a situation where there isn’t an apoc preventing ICE on a central, never mind having two IHW in hand (where you’ll be constantly tempted to use it for acceleration as you’re getting thrashed).

Hyperdriver would be cool, were it not for Endless Hunger needing 4 memory.