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

Maybe eater//crescentus could be a thing

Think Bill Murray would be interested because of key master?

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Are there enough useful hardware cards for Apex to consider using Replicators as a source of card draw?

Well, 0 cost hardware is always good for Apex, and there are four 0 cost hardware at 1 influence or less. And 1 cost hardware is possible if actually decent (you only install the first one face up).

So I guess that could actually be a thing in Apex.

If you install q-coherence face down, there’s almost no downside, if you run record reconstructor, you have to literally be Stephan Hawking to figure out how to make it work. Dorm computer is for meat bodies, but I’ve seen worse flavor fauxpas with Ed and the modem, so whatever. Still looks like someone has to try to make grifter work. Look at the flavor text for god’s sake!

As a nod back to @ijw473 's original list a while back, I sleeved up Apex and brought it to a regular night. Had a few competitive decks running around, since two of our meta are going to worlds.

Apex: Invasive Predator (Data and Destiny)

Event (22)
3x Apocalypse (Data and Destiny)
2x Day Job (Order and Chaos) [color=#FF4500]••[/color]
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Easy Mark (Core Set) [color=#4169E1]••[/color]
3x Fisk Investment Seminar (The Universe of Tomorrow) [color=#4169E1]••••• •[/color]
1x Infiltration (Core Set)
2x Legwork (Honor and Profit) [color=#4169E1]••••[/color]
3x Prey (Data and Destiny)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (5)
2x Chop Bot 3000 (Order and Chaos) [color=#FF4500]••[/color]
3x Heartbeat (Data and Destiny)

Resource (10)
2x DDoS (The Universe of Tomorrow) [color=#FF4500]••••• •[/color]
1x Ghost Runner (The Spaces Between)
3x Hunting Grounds (Data and Destiny)
1x Utopia Shard (All That Remains) [color=#708090]•[/color]
3x Wasteland (Data and Destiny)

Icebreaker (5)
3x Endless Hunger (Data and Destiny)
2x Mimic (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]••[/color]

Program (3)
3x Harbinger (Data and Destiny)
25 influence spent (max 25)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

There’s some refinement that can happen here, but I really went all in on the money. The Utopia used to be another Day Job and just may go that way. Being able to contest Ash, Crisiums, Caprice, SanSan, and any rogue tracer ICE is key. DDoS is super important and it played a pivotal role in every single game except NBN. I could write more, but it really feels fruitless explaining Apex without people playing the deck against a variety of Corps.

  • The Fisk can be a Diesel for anyone who hates the card. I just like idea of pushing the Corp to play more cards. It’s an established win-more lose-more card, but Apex has the uh, potential, to negate a losing situation. Keep the Utopia in this case.

  • I was a big naysayer of ChopBot and changed my mind a bit. It isn’t insane, but it does let you have a few turns of Wasteland profit/efficiency, and feel like a real runner for a few turns. Definitely better than Independent Thinking, but is it better than Quality Time?

  • Draw draw play play. Those were most of my turns. This deck has no room for more tricks. Between Prey, Apoc, Legwork, spare Breakers/Consoles, Apex keeps a full grip. Hence my reluctance to play Quality Time. Maybe a mistake, because the drawing is due to requiring Endless Hunger to function.

I played against 4 different HB decks, managed to win two! Also went up against a couple Haarp decks, and won those as well with some good accesses. And won against a Brewery Biotech, but that was both a poor matchup and a bit of jank town.

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It’s really good to see Apex developing. I’m surprised to see that you are not running E3, as Enigma on a central shuts down Apocalypse otherwise.

I’m not sure how often you have both breakers out at once, but could Cache be a better choice than Easy Mark? Good synergy with Chop-bot/Endless Hunger and Hunting Grounds.

I’d be inclined to include more multi-access, but I tend to favor fewer, more powerful runs, so I know that’s a bias of mine.

I suppose the other thing I might look for is Clone Chip. Without any way to break Grim or Archer program trash routines it might be nice to get a key breaker back mid run. It also means that you have more flexibility when you Apoc.

Still, the influence only goes so far, so tough choices have to be made. Nicely done.

Between Q-Coherence being a non-bo, Dyson being so expensive and every other source of MU costing extra influence, I’m loathe to include more programs than necessary. Though I’ve heard some people had good results with Hyperdriver (and Leprechaun?) for your Apocalypse turn. If nothing else, you can still install Endless Hunger on the turn you pop the driver.

I’ve really been going back and forth with FIS. The only times I find it an acceptable play with my APEX deck is when the Corporation is flat broke or I have an easy HQ run w/ legwork. Otherwise, it becomes a disaster shortly. Perhaps it’s because, while testing on Jinteki.net, I kept playing EtF, but I ended up just facedown installing it many times.

The current version I’ve been tinkering around with runs e3, Always Be Running, and Medium (I’ll post once it isn’t embarrassing and I’m not phone-typing). Positives : you just melt servers that don’t stack the APEX hate ice. The issues I’m balancing out are, as always, econ and draw, but with ABR having the added downside of making Day Job unplayable.

The other issue with any medium based deck is then you almost certainly need Mimic, for the obvious reasons. Then you get memory issues. I don’t think q-coherence is a huge non-bo, so long as you approach it only as a gap filler for Dyson in those few situations where you really need it.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw out there that ABR e3 APEX is nasty - deals with so many of the EH downsides. I’d love it if someone could figure out something other than medium to be its pressure card, but I can’t get the influence to work with other methods.

Would Maker’s Eye be out of the question? So far, I feel that I would add that over e3 first.

I’ve found e3, out early, to be critical for the build if not APEX in general. It takes a ton of trash card pressure off. Further, on this build, with e3, EH, and ABR you can basically get into nearly any 2 ice deep server every turn, assuming you have a couple of credits.

The problem with using Makers for pressure is that, even if you have three of them, you still can’t have SoT. You’ll maybe get 2 off a game - six cards won’t do it.

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I played a quick round against an Apex that was running AS, which didn’t help as I was Haarp Butcher and my cheap ETR essentially drained the deck. I ended it with a Traffic Accident because all the other cards got installed and used on EH or lost to just me throwing a SE here and there. I think interfaces are a better call here.

I have abr and grifter in my build.

Once they are going they are pretty decent. It makes the mando run on abr less of an issue and it also means that your once a turn trash with Endless Hunger gets you a compounded credit, rather than a lone cred or two.

It’s not bad, but not great. Not sure how to fix it.

I took your list for a spin (made some assumptions about your updates since your last posted ABR list was a bit unpolished and quite old). Quite an aggressive spin, I had a free Sunday and tested Apex quite a bit with a friend who was down to deckbuild for me.

In comparison to my most recent list, which imo is the overall frame for a more ‘traditional’ aggro Apex, your list was so wildly different it threw me for a loop. It had its ups and downs and it ended up being so different that I think it’s hard to compare them.

There was no denying the end-game of ABR + e3 + Endless Hunger is literally unstoppable. They have to get some weird double-program-trash + ETR remote in terms of ICE to stop it. But I did see some problems, and I’ll try to list some props and slops to spark a discussion about my main statement after a meager 6 plays: This ABR list would be better in Adam.

Props:

  • The final rig is unstoppable (with ICE) barring some wild crazy double Ichi or
    Grim remote.
  • ABR adds substantial facechecking power. Don’t need 5 MU for Mimic with lurking Architects.
  • ABR is more resilient long-term against Apex-knowledgeable opponents or bad matchups.
  • Wasteland is awesome in this build. It actually is an econ card. In aggressive apocalypse decks it’s common facedown fodder and rarely makes a real profit. Slower econ, albeit.
  • e3 is nice. There is no denying that fact.

Slops:

  • Upgrades break you. tldr; Not enough economy. Wasteland may be actually working, but only 3x
    Sure Gamble and 3x Laundry and maybe a couple Infiltrations, coupled with
    E3 payments mean you just can’t contest decks with 3x Ash or any
    amount of Caprice. E3 isn’t free, RDI isn’t free, you have 3 clicks
    due to ABR, and there’s not much influence for any more econ. In the
    grand scheme of things I felt like I was losing more often with ABR
    e3 than I was with yolo Hunger + Mimic + DDoS.
  • Quality Time was never pleasant. It was expensive, clogged my hand full of events I wanted to keep for later, RDIs I couldn’t afford, and overall caused much gnashing of teeth. But it was all the influence could afford. Safety First made this worse.
  • Apocalyse was not pretty for me. I spent all this time collecting a rig that costs 12 influence and 6+ credits and now I have to erase it? I probably discarded my spare Endless Hungers to hand flood digging for rig and econ.

Moot point opinions:

  • DDoS = ABR. They fill the same slot, but build towards different
    Apexes. ABR taxes you more than 3c ultimately, and without RDI it’s
    pretty futile. You aren’t trashing Assets in this deck, with this
    economy, so free runs to naked remotes won’t yield anything, which
    means slamming into central ICE for 1 possible access turn after turn. DDoS feels easier to use and promotes Apocaplyse. ABR is anti-syngery with Apoc.
  • Safety First is a neat little pseudo-Chopbot engine that simply costs more influence. And I do agree ultimately Chopbot is also useless. Any Diesel or FiS or IHW is better than this. Actively works against Quality Time.
  • If Chopbot doesn’t advance board state, Brain Cage actively works against it. You have to prevent the brain damage most of the time to not risk a key card and that only puts you behind. These could be Ghost Runners?
  • e3 does need a home in my particular deck mostly for just Enigma. Supermodernism is a really bad matchup for Apex if the player is any good. Snare! and Scorch drain your cards and force Heartbeat, ETRs force Hunger, Grims and Archer take Hunger, and sometimes Power Shutdown can get lucky. And Mimic is dead in this matchup. e3 would help a ton in this and only this particular matchup. No one else runs both Enigma AND Archer.
  • Devil’s Advocate: Do you really need e3 for Enigma if you have Prey and actively scout for Enigmas and don’t derp into Ichi’s? That only leaves Archer, a rare ICE outside one archetype that e3 helps against. No one plays Rototurret.
  • Apoc should be played 2-3 times, for as little as 5-6 Corp cards. I was unable to ever do 2x Apoc with the ABR deck.

Medium implies you are still running Dyson (which was an instant cut), and if not you are choosing between Mimic or Medium based on board state. I just don’t see this as a winning proposition that you require a console to dig for and more cards to float in hand. I do just fine with pot shots to R&D. Seeing 6-8 cards on R&D in addition to legworks is plenty to win, at least for the mean average of games.

I really feel like the DDoS + Endless + Mimic list is enough for this meta. Aggressive Apocs contest asset spam, Mimic is enough to get by with Cadeceus and Architect. DDoS is enough to punish bad starts. Smart play is enough to not lose your Hungers three times to Ichi and Archer. And most importantly, I think judicious and smart use of Prey is enough to get by vs. Enigma and Turing without e3 or ABR. Prod and poke centrals, make them rez the Enigmas, feign Apocalypse and force their hand. And this lets you put in more economy to do selective trashing and psi games and draw to find your pieces.

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If you got any playstyle tips for the ABR + e3 + Medium/RDI Apex let me know. I typically poked servers, found myself way too overinvested in the board to Apoc, and found myself losing a lot of clicks to potshots I wouldn’t be doing otherwise. Lots of drawing and clicking for credits moreso than usual.

ABR + E3 + Medium Apex is just all about making one run a turn and trying to hobble together a board state for an apocalypse hit. Its slow, grindy and builds for the late game where you have a shot of hitting off your Apoc. It does bite to have to lose so much stuff though, but so far it has been the only Apex that I have seen as at all viable.

I have had a ball with Apoc in Eater/MaxX. So much so, that I think that it might be a decent line for Apex. Especially since the usual MO against Eater/MaxX is to tax the crap out of them. If you are playing Endless Hunger, this actually enables some phenomenal siphon plays.

It probably isn’t viable yet, but the frequency I have been landing x1 Apocalypse in Eater MaxX is bananas right now. After all, Apex doesn’t have any in faction recursion and can’t play Same Old Thing, which is probably reason enough not to try it.

Still, if you could retrieval run out a keyhole, post apocalypse and just go to town with that and eater, you will likely win outright. But you won’t have the influence to make it work. I think its worth exploring, but probably is garbage in the current card pool.

Theorycrafting here, but if Quality time was too expensive and thus unpleasant to use, what about Independent Thinking instead? It’s trying to feed off the same resource as your Hunger and Heartbeat, but Harbinger can feed both IT and something else, it triggers Hunting Grounds, etc.

This is the latest iteration iv been playing with.

Day Job Apex

Apex: Invasive Predator (Data and Destiny)

Event (24)

Hardware (5)

Resource (6)

Icebreaker (7)

Program (3)

25 influence spent (max 25)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

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Not a lot I disagree with here. I’ve played a lot (too much, frankly - it became one of those I CAN MAKE THIS WORK things) of APEX, and I’ve moved on for a bit.

In my mind there really are two marginally viable APEX builds - the super aggressive EH / Mimic / damn the torpedoes full speed ahead, and the e3 / EH / ABR server melter. The former is fun and super-variance what is happening to me says the corporation, the latter is more effective in my mind. I do think you are underselling the downsides of only EH/mimic. The second that you slap APEX on the table the corporation mulligans for one of the many, many pieces of ice that screw EH. There are tons, and if you are playing without e3 ABR / another suite then you are almost guaranteed to get nailed by a marginally competent player. Hell, Wendigo beats that APEX.

The unavoidable problem with both is econ: virtual drip resources are god awful (I was so frustrated I even tried Mopus - herpa derp); there isn’t enough influence for all the operation-only draw you need and the operation-only econ. Basically, I don’t think that he will be terribly viable until he gets a nice Virtual Katie or Virtual Drug Dealer or Virtual Rave Partytime.

But it is fun to slap him on the table when someone wants to play something different. “YOU WANT DIFFERENT I’LL SHOW YOU DIFFERENT - WELCOME TO APEX’S FISK FUNHOUSE.” “Wut.” FIRST TURN APOC. FIS. THIRD TURN APOC. FIS. It really is hilarious when it works, which I believe is the definition of jank.

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Does Endless Hunger break Wotan’s Subs? Or is it really the “End the run.” sub?