My main struggle is still finding the right breaker to supplement Endless Hunger. There are just so many blind spots that it’s tough to pick correctly and nothing sucks worst than losing games to ICE you just cannot break. Some thoughts below.
Mimic — only one influence & is the most efficient available way of dealing with Apex’s archenemy, Architect. But then leaves tons of other problems on the board, most of all Ichi 1 and 2. The HB matchup is already the worst and Mimic does rather little to improve it.
Faust — my preferred option thus far but I’m starting to second guess it. Of our options, it has by far the fewest problem ICE. The main problems are Turing on a central (which you have to click through on a Prey run to get rid of…gross) and Swordsman. But Faust taxes your cards heavily (3 to break Architect hurts) in an ID that’s already eating through its deck. To be at its best, it requires support pieces like Brain Cage and lots of card draw which can be tough to find at the right times.
Overmind — no influence but introduces a card-order problem, you can’t put down Endless Hunger until you’ve installed Overmind. Same blind spots as Faust. Expensive. But on the plus side, the counters aren’t likely to be an issue as everything in Apex is just biding its time 'fore the Apocalypse. Obvious synergy with E3, perhaps in tandem with Always Be Running would solve enough problems to warrant a larger rig and big share of Apex’s influence.
Crypsis — similar to Overmind above but without the card-order problem, except it further slows down an already slow runner. Then again, the virus counters again don’t matter so much if Apocalypse is imminent. Losing Crypsis on one of the 3 central runs is really just losing one facedown.
Has anyone else found a secondary breaker they like a lot? Mimic just has too many blind spots without Datasucker and Faust feels unsustainable as I trash both my grip and rig during runs. I’m considering switching to Overmind or Crypsis, using the freed up influence on money (Lucky Find) and Clone Chip.
Without directives, I don’t think Independent Thinking is worth it. The toughest thing about IT is that it’s situational: you have to have a lot of surplus facedowns (at least 3) for it to pay off. If you want to set up in the first place, Quality Time is obviously superior for the same influence. Facedowns are a resource in Apex, not a hugely important one, but still. I find that when I balance my resources really well as Apex I actually only have one or two installed cards left post-Apocalypse because I’ve trashed my rig as I was running (feeding Heartbeat to Endless Hunger, etc.).
So here is a build that i have been toying around with recently. I played the ZeromusPE list that took the king of servers recently at a local GNK. I found that while the deck was really fun to play and did what it wanted to there were times where i wish the hyperdrivers in my hand were legworks or makers eye. I had modified his list to fit in LARLA which necessitated the removal of some pieces here and there. That night out of four rounds apex won two of them.Once against Spark agency. The other against Cybernetics division. After play testing the above list i feel that with those multi access cards i could have eeked out another victory or two at the GNK.
The list i have now is pretty straightforward. Chop bot and quality time with the brain cage and Heartbeat combo feed Faust pretty well. Between a full hand of Faust food and a halfway decent EH setup you can get into pretty much anywhere you need. with no larla or clone chip the trick to playing this deck is finding the balance between putting early pressure on the corp. While picking the correct times to use Makers eye or legwork. All while building a boardstate which Apex does more or less for free. WHILE ALSO not running out of your deck before you can cinch the win.
Apoc is a handy reset button if you need a breather from corp pressure to put the game back on your terms.
I think that we should start looking for a combination of cards to solve Apex’s limitations because I don’t think there’s a single card that can solve all of them. Apex has the influence to do it so I don’t think it should be a drawback.
And if there’s a single card that can help, it’s not Faust because spending 4 cards to get past Assassin and 3 to get past Architect and Caduceus is not a solution. The more I play with it, the less I like it.
I don’t think you need anything to beat NBN, Endless Hunder plus Apocalypse and Heartbeat are more than enough to make them suffer as long as your economy is not awful. Weyland doesn’t seem that hard, either, since only Archer can keep you out of their remote.
The problem is HB and I think that solving HB’s problems will make the Jinteki RP matchup easier so I would focus on that.
I’ve been testing Overmind alongisde DDoS and damn, it works! It makes all annoying ICE significantly less of a problem and is versatile solution to any server if you are rich enough. The order issue is significant, I’ve often found myself trashing Endless Hunter but with good play it’s not much of a problem.
Also, ignore what I said about Chopbot and Wasteland. It’s amazing in matchups where Apocalypse isn’t being spammed and necessary to beat Assassin, Ash and trash economic assets. Ultimately, you don’t need to build that many facedown cards, if you end up with 10 of them on the table you should be winning by a huge margin.
Interestingly enough, I’ve found myself using Quality Time less and less and I’m more than willing to remove it. The problem with it is that most of your cards are icebreakers or events so you have to play in an unnatural manner to keep your hand at a low size before you play it. You don’t need to run, to find icebreakers or anything so I’m just drawing naturally for now.
I also heavily recommend a copy of Deja Vu. It prevents the common “Ah, I need another copy of X” situations by giving you two Apocalypses in a row or stuff like that.
Here’s my influence right now:
3 Day Job (3inf)
2 Chop Bot (2inf)
2 Maker’s Eye (4inf) [Three is overkill]
1 Legwork (1inf) [Needed for late-game clean-ups)
1 Deja Vu (2inf)
1 Levy University AR (3inf)
2 DDoS (6inf)
2 Easy Mark (2inf)
1 Mimic (1inf)
I’m thinking of cutting the Mimic and one of the Easy Marks to play a Clone Chip or something fun like that or cutting one Easy Mark to play another Mimic. Both seem fine.
I was going to take Apex to tomorrow’s tournament but I think I’m going to take something else because it autoloses to HB. Seriously, I’ve been testing the whole evening and it’s impossible.
Basically, Assassin+Turing on any central server locks you out and when it doesn’t there will be a Caprice behind them. I almost never manage to play Apocalypse against HB and when I do they recover extremely fast thanks to Archived Memories. And Ichi+Turing or Architect+Turing is practically as good, there’s no way around it, it makes you lose.
There’s no solution. There’s nothing in the game that can get past any of those combinations of ICE. E3 doesn’t work, Inside Job doesn’t work, Faust doesn’t work, nothing I’ve tried works.
They only need to score three agendas. One can be bluffed, another can be fast advanced and the Global Food is an easy score if you sacrifice a NAPD. I score 4-6 points in every game but never win, eventually HB pulls through.
So yeah, I’m really dissapointed right now. If you have any suggestions I’m all ears.
Prey doesn’t solve it because it requires you to hit Assassin twice and spend a lots of resources (A full Overmind, a whole turn, 10 credits plus Prey and facedowns). And because half of the time their next play is to install it again on the server with Archived Memories.
Really, the moment they have Assassin+Turing, you are locked out from both that server and Apocalypse. Which means you lose. The ocassional Maker’s Eye is not enough to win and if they overadvance a Vitruvius there’s nothing you can do to gain control of the game.
The problem with Apex right now is that the influence is very limiting if you want a plan B when Apocalypse wont work. There are a bunch of bad cases, but I would say that both HB and RP are really annoying match-ups if you want to land a Apocalypse.
While breaking ICE for cheap is nice, you need to have cards that apply preasure on the central servers because single-accesses wont win you that many games. Turnning Wheel is still half a year away and in the meantime I think R&D Interfaces is the way to go. That they revert if you Apocalypse is not that big of a deal since if you can land Apocalypse you are probably in a pretty good spot anyway.
As for breakers Faust has been too card-hungry for my taste so will try Overmind, but I think there is a reasonable case for Mimic as Architect is more than a bit bad. Iedally I would like to fit D4v1d as well, but influence…
This is my current Apex build, its taking the siphon/DDoS thing from the NRDB deck of the week but with a few more (in my mind anyway) sensible card choices.
Crypsis is great end game where they have 2-3 ice on a remote and you want to get in. Siphon credits will let you do this even with the monstrously expensive crypsis. Before then DDoS and Endless Hunger do a good job of locking remotes.
Between DDoS and Endless Hunger, Account Siphon is pretty easy to land, or at least it has been so far in testing.
Deja Vu is important here, dont be tempted to drop it for more QT’s.
I have 12-14 influence to spare. Even if you use it all to beat HB, I’ll consider it because his key cards are already good enough to beat the against the other factions. Just find me something to beat HB!
I don’t think you can get a good match-up against HB with the current cardpool.
You wont get the econ to trash their assets, and if they run 3x Architect 3x Turing you are likely screwed. It’s even worse if they have Caprice and put it in a central server since Ash will protect the agendas good enough.
I think any solution will feature a rig with Mimic and Yog for centrals with Turing and Architect, but there is still work to be done for dealing with the rest of the annoying HB ICE (any Ichi, Assassin etc).
Edit:
My next test will likely be something like the following list with the possibility to get both Yog and Mimic to deal with str 5 ICE. That said HB can likely get back from the apoc faster than you, but a window for opportunity might be there.
Apex: Invasive Predator
Event (19)
3x Apocalypse
3x Day Job •••
3x Dirty Laundry
1x Levy AR Lab Access •••
3x Prey
3x Quality Time •••
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (11)
3x Brain Cage
2x Dyson Mem Chip <- Deals with some stuff like Caduceus, but Q-Coherence Chip might work here
3x Heartbeat
1x Net-Ready Eyes ••
2x R&D Interface ••••
HB is clearly a nightmare but I consider RP to be a very strong matchup. Pretty much their only strong answer is Caprice on a central, and you just have to hammer the server until you win the Psi, but the ICE is typically easy to deal with (Eli, Pup, Tollbooth) and if you land Apocalypse at the right time, it wipes a huge board state and cripples them beyond recovery. RP is slow and reliant on assets, perfect Apex fodder.
is Brain Cage doing much for you when you’re not on Faust? I’d be tempted to look at other neutral cards with meager benefits, like Ghost Runner or Plastcrete (for slightly more 24/7 protection, ease of going tag-me).
Oh heavens no. Not even a little. Brain cage is literally only in there as you can prevent the brain damage with heartbeat, which i find hilarious.
You could argue in most matchups brain cage has a little utility where plascrete either has some, or none. Probably use plascrete given the current meta.
OK so hear me out here…ichi and assassin are both tracers right? as is gutenberg…so, have i completely lost my mind or…is gingerbread a good backup breaker for apex??