'cause I’m an idiot; Medium makes a lot more sense.
Since this was refloated, I think I’m going to take the chance to rant: Apex does not and cannot work and the reason is not Endless Hunger nor how difficult it is to play Apocalypse but something much more simple: It has no draw, a gimped economy and absolutely no multi-acess.
ECONOMY
Like any Runner deck, you need 11-12 economy cards. Your secondary breaker costs money, your Apocalypses, Wastelands and Hunting Grounds are not free and you absolutely need to trash assets like any other Runner. But you cannot run the vast majority of credit-generating cards. You cannot play Armitage Codebusting, Daily Casts or Kati Jones so, ultimately you are forced to play either Lucky Find (2 influence) or Day Job (1 inf, Slow, antisynergetic with Apex’s ability).
This wouldn’t be a problem if Wasteland could be realibly triggered on the Corporation’s turn, but you only have Hunting Grounds so it ends up being a poor man’s Data Folding. That’s sad.
DRAW
Ok, so it’s fine, right? Apex doesn’t need thaaaat much money and you have 25 influence. So you buy 3 Lucky Finds and put them in your deck alongside Prey, Dirty Laundry, Apocalypse, your singleton Levy and a bunch of other events. Then you realize that half of your deck is composed of events that take space in your hand and you have absolutely no draw.
Really, how is Apex supposed to find Apocalypse? And you not only need Apocalypse, you need Apocalypse and Endless Hunter and DDos and Prey and a bunch of cards. And if you spend even more of your influence on draw, you quickly realize that you are forced to discard because your whole gameplan relies on situational events.
If Apex had a +3 Handsize modifier, you could run Quality Time and everything would be fine. But he doesn’t have that modifier.
NO MULTIACCESS
Seriously, no matter how many Apocalypses you have, without Maker’s or Legwork you are not going to win. Ever. Your best chance is to mill the Corp and wait for it to kill itself. I’ve tried, if you only make single-acesses and Apocalypse runs, you lose.
So you need at least 4 influence on Maker’s Eye. Which is yet another situational card taking space in your hand.
AND NOW WHAT?
Ok, so you buy everything. You spend 6 influence on Lucky Find. You spend 4 on Maker’s and a lot on draw. Now…how the hell are you supposed to win?
Seriously, Apex has a total of 7 cards. Of those, the only two that can help you actually play Apocalypse are Endless Hunger and Heartbeat. And it’s not enough even if you also play the expensive Overmind. You need DDos, Run Amok, you know, actual threats. But they all cost 2-3 influence which you do not have because you had to spend it on Lucky Finds, Maker’s and draw.
TL;DR: Apex doesn’t work and cannot work because it has massive holes in its card pool.
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So, most of this ventures into unreleased cards territory, but…
DRAW
Sports Hopper - yes, it’s one-off draw (but so is Diesel et al) but it is Inf-free. Bonus points: it triggers Wasteland, even on the Corp’s turn if desired.
Brain Cage - +3 hand-size if you have Heartbeat out first to prevent the damage.
MULTIACCESS
The Turning Wheel - Half the Inf of a Makers/Legwork for the benefits of both. Rack up 2 counters on your Apocalypse turns (assuming you don’t hit Agendas) to boot.
Don’t get me wrong, APEX is not good in the current card pool (or at least, I can’t find a build I’m happy to try), but should every Runner identity be blisteringly good out of the gate? The Apocalypse MaxX decks out there (not to mention Hayley with Wasteland) seem to indicate at least its cardpool has merit.
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That was precisely my most successful Apex list:
DRAW:
3x Quality Time
MULTI:
3x Makers Eye
1x Legwork
ECONOMY:
3x Lucky Find
2x Day Job
“Tricks”:
1x E3
2x Faust
As you can see it had very real weak spots but it functioned fine. But the MWL nuke on PPVP killed the decks edge.
Apex is certainly in trouble, and even with the extremely Faust teched ice suites around they still do great work against EH.
Enigma and Turing give me the fits. They take enormous resources and practically two turns with Prey.
Corporate Scandal + Blackmail is a decent option for Apex, but it’s not particularly exciting nor a fun way to play for it.
Keeping the Corp poor by spending on ICE is important.
The issue is that they played it too safe on the minis.
They played it safe with every deluxe box ID except the Anarchs. What deluxe ID is competitive with the Core/Data Pack IDs from their faction? CI, SYNC, maaaaaybe Ken?
Seems that there should eventually be something for the Weyland IDs, but so far nothing.
Although Gagarin has been pretty good since Mumba/Museum. At least better than it certainly had been.
Regardless of their power level across factions, I think it’s safe to say that all 3 Weyland big box IDs are better than BABW. Same with the NBN ones, they’re all better than MN.
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C&C: CI and Kit
H&P: Ken/Iain, Tenin/Medtech - though these are just really different ways to play, and somewhat edge cases, I’ve seen quite a few successful decks out of all of these IDs
O&C: All the Weyland IDs are more playable than BABW, and Gagarin in particular is getting a lot of play lately. MaxX and Valencia, but not Ed.
D&D: SYNC is most possible, Sol is good especially right now when Targeted Marketing has good known targets, and I’ve seen some annoying Spark builds. None of the mini-factions except maybe Adam if he gets a good draw.
I’m swapping all my Infiltrations with "Freedom Through Equality"s. Complete anti-synergy with Scandal + Blackmail, but it’s not like my Infiltrations were doing anything.
Which makes me wonder if a Fan Site + Frame Job + Blackmail build would work better?
What about Trope instead of LARLA? it’s as much as influence, but let’s you spam blackmail more. I’m gonna try this list when i have the time. It’s based around Always be Feedback, but the idea is to play agressively with hunting grounds. If you free install a card and chop it with Chop Chop, you gain a new (maybe better) card and credits from wastelands. If you can trigger it on the corps turn with wasteland and rolodex, you gain credits and install 3 useless cards facedown. That really accelerates you.
I think that Apex has 2 gameplans depending on the matchup. Glacier → Blackmail remotes and setup to run centrals (in the future with the turning wheel…)
Low ice, much asset deck → Apoc with blackmail on centrals.
In both cases you have cards you really don’t need to put them facedown. I think that is the game you should be playing with Apex, the or or. Not both setup and apoc.
My 2 cents.
List:
Chiming in to say that I am now praying at the alter of reason for Apex to get some cards to allow it to enter competitive play. I am so sick of asset spam, and it seems like Apex’s card pool has a few gems that are great solutions to IG and asset spam right now.
Apocalypse is no joke.
Heartbeat makes you safe from net damage and Endless Hunger gets you through a lot of stuff that is in that deck (except for Ashigaru and freaking Architect).
Hunting Grounds gets you past Komainu.
Prey is great against anything low strength.
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Once the new pack comes out, I’m going to be testing out Making an Entrance, Sports Hopper, and Rolodex to get the draw Apex needs to actually do anything.
Are we sure about this interaction? Does Prey’s requirement of “when you pass” occur before Datasucker’s “end of the encounter” (or are they at least simultaneous)? It’d be nice to help bring Apex up from its low standard by allowing you to trash ICE for 0 cards.
According to the rules, under the Breaking Subroutines section:
[quote]
After the Runner breaks all of the ice’s subroutines and/or any
effects from unbroken subroutines resolve without ending the
run, he has passed that piece of ice.[/quote]
I checked ANCUR and didn’t find anything to help clarify.
I don’t think Datasucker works, but Bishop does. Passed ice is no longer encountered.
xandu rook and bishop do iirc, but not reina, scrubbed, sucker or wyrm
Doesn’t scrubbed read “for the remainder of the run”?
Surely that includes after you encounter and break?
Could make prey playable.
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Correct, move it to the other category 
Anyone try Brahmin + Harbringer + Scherezade yet?
Now that Apex has pseudo card draw in the form of hopper, this idea at least is not totally terrible.
Brahmin actually solves a few of Apex’s larger problems, mainly the low strength massive subs ice. It also lets your Harbringers work double duty, functioning as pseudo econ.
It also gets through most destroyers for a decent amount, without E3 support.
It adds a problem in terms of Memory and click efficiency, but if you are using Endless Hunger solely for endgame shenanigans or as a solution for specific ice suites, it might be doable.
Plus, Endless hunger is not a terrible target to bounce back into hand.
Its probably total jank. But it at least seems more reasonable than just about anything else Apex can muster right now.
i’m positive you can’t bounce a facedown Harbinger with Brahman, or is the intent to just use it as fuel for Brahman (and gain a credit on the install with Scheherazade)?
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