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

New Cards and Spoilers
568

Been awhile since any meaningful content on this thread.

What do people think of the parrot and croc in Apex?

https://netrunnerdb.com/en/deck/view/1097864

569

I think they make a reasonable amount of sense. It’s too bad that Wasteland only fires on the first trash, so it’s not going to be as good as Tech Traders in Hayley or Geist, but the animals still pose a reasonable way to break through servers and get Apex accesses. It looks like you’re not running Wasteland either, though, so money might be pretty tight at times.

Since most ETR subs occur as the last sub on an ICE, and Endless Hunger can still take care of those, what Apex is actually going to have the most trouble with are middle subs, without Grappling Hook.

Also, I’m not sure how well they would work out in an Apocalypse build, because you’re going to need quite a few of them to be able to run the 3 servers you need to (and people usually ICE Archives against Apex). I suppose the plan might be to lock the remote with the threat of a few animals and maybe Hunger, and then build your board state in order to Appoc later once they try and use enough ICE to build their scoring remote. I’m still unsure, though. I’ve never tried the animals without Grappling Hook before, and I lean on that card pretty hard =P

571

Coming from someone who’s played nothing but Pirate builds for the last month or so (started with Hayley, moved to Geist, even trying out Pirate Nasir), I think something like this would make more sense. I haven’t tested this, but it seems ok.

https://netrunnerdb.com/en/deck/view/1105398

It appears to have some econ issues though. You could probably cut the fan site/Shadow net combo and 1 Gbahali (since end the run subs are usually the last subroutine) to get in 3 Peace in Our Time.
Only 1 Legwork and 1 Maker’s Eye isn’t great, but I think it’s a start. Pirate Geist with Legworks/Spycams and Hayley with Deep Data Mining Spam both provide a lot of multi access.

(P.S. I’m totally not mad at you for mentioning this type of build out of Apex which is totally making me want to give this a try :wink:)

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572

See this is why you pack Street Magic.

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573

Does Street Magic really help there? It let’s you resolve unbroken subs in the order of your choice, but it doesn’t allow you to re-arrange the order of subs prior to breaking.

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574

I have tried Street Magic before.

I have found the most troublesome ice to be stuff like FC3, Turing, and trace ice.

575

It lets you choose to not break subs on a piece of ICE that has an end the run subroutine. Since you can choose to let it fire first the others wouldn’t fire.

576

Right. You don’t get murdered by Archer but you also don’t get past it either, which makes the Apoc plan tough.

577

Oh yeah it doesn’t work that way, ha. Damn there will never be a time for Street Magic.

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578

Street Magic has its place in a Smoke Magician-based theme deck using Houdini, Blackstone, Fawkes, and Encore. That deck just isn’t any good.

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579

Hopefully thread necromancy is OK when we’re trying to revive a whole forum. I’ve been trying to give Apex a good send-off before his rotation, and struggling as always. Here’s where my head’s at:

Then there’s the question of Apex’s weird economy cards and their trash triggers. I’ll list them again here because they’re all different and the overlaps are worth considering:

  • Wasteland is 1c the first time you trash one of your installed cards.
  • Reaver draws you a card the first time you trash an installed card. As a draw tool, it’s actually decent on its own, provided you can get money from elsewhere.
  • Consume gives you a virus counter (redeemable for 2c) whenever you trash a (not necessarily installed) Corp card. This means it triggers on Prey (probably his best card), as well as other ICE destruction, helps when contesting assets and also charges off things like Imp and Carnivore (though their influence costs make them impractical to actually import).

The way most people build Apex is to run the Wasteland/Reaver suite, but for this to pay off at any reasonable speed you need to self-trash on nearly all of your turns, well as on most Corp turns. This has previously required including a bunch of junk, but the Bankhar list has a chance of solving that in a way that other lists never did. Chop Bot lists durdled and lost; Aesop’s lists durdled, made a bunch of money, and then lost; but Bankhar hits your Wasteland triggers while you’re actually running. This means you have enough influence for the full suite of Gachapon and so you should get decent money from the Corp turns.

The other option, which I think better suits the Synthgland plan, is to use Assimilator just as a value/recursion engine (with Reboot) and try to get your money from events. This is the best I have, so far:

Synthgland Lifeform

Apex: Invasive Predator (Data and Destiny)

Event (18)

Hardware (9)

Resource (7)

Icebreaker (7)

Program (4)

25 influence spent (max 25, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Parhelion

Decklist published on NetrunnerDB.

This is a toolbox deck, so Assimilate what you need just before you need it, and use the your other face-down installs to pay for Prey.

Other points:

  • The second Reboot is to give you enough HP to go the distance against PE and Thule, or to Prey bigger ICE. You might be able to get away with only Rebooting once against other Corps, unless you suspect BOOM!.
  • Hopefully Harmony AR Therapy lets you pick up Prey and En Passant to get two more ICE trashes, but recurring economy events or rig pieces is fine too.
  • Not sure if I want the third Synthgland, or more toys? A third Deuces and maybe a Boomerang could smooth things out.
  • Consume actually feels really good because it triggers on ICE destruction as well as trashing from accesses. Should I run a second copy?
  • Endless Hunger is possibly not worth the slot; there’s so much that it cannot deal with.
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580

It’s great to see more people that still care for our beloved cyber-noodle. The breaker suite feels kinda off to me. We have nothing to boost the strength of Cleaver and Buzzsaw. I don’t know where to get the influence for Paperclip or a good Decoder, though. I stayed away from Assimilator, but I think that it can really save you a lot of money (and thus clicks).

Since Apex is my favorite ID, I want to give him a proper sendoff as well. I, as you, found the most potential in cybernetics, so I wanted to exploit those. Here is the deck I made, and had some success with: Deckbuilder · NetrunnerDB
I am not too happy with the result and I still want to belive, that there is a stronger Apex deck, if we keep digging a bit more.

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581

This hasn’t been much of a problem, because I can Prey on ICE that are awkward to get through. The savings from breaking everything with Orca also leaves you some spare coin to spend on barriers and code gates.

I like your Time Eater list! (Are you a Slay the Spire fan?) But I think there are some tweaks you could make:

  • I’ve struggled to meaningfully play 3× Reboot in my games, and with only 3× Prey, Endless Hunger, and Heartbeat as your consumers of face-down cards, I’m not sure you need the third. Go to 2×?
  • Is Mystic Maemi worth spending two influence beyond just running PPVP? Only Sure Gamble is more than 2c, and you could start running draw cards or other tricks (Poison Vial?).
  • Much of your money supply seems vulnerable to purges, and I’ve personally found Fermenter too slow to contest games with.
  • If you’re running 3× Consume, maybe find a way to import more ICE destruction like I do? En Passant and Harmony AR Therapy to recur your events? This might also help you against deep servers.
  • Since Adjusted Hunger doesn’t really consume money, maybe add some Reavers so you get more draw?

Summary of my proposed changes:

  • -1 Reboot
  • -2 Fermenter
  • -1 Mystic Maemi
  • -1 Deuces Wild
  • -1 Jailbreak
  • -2 Overclock
  • +1 En Passant
  • +1 Harmony AR Therapy
  • +2 Prepaid VoicePAD
  • +1 Poison Vial
  • +3 Reaver

Your Mystic Maemi reminded me of Paladin Poemu and his “when your turn ends, if there are 3 or more hosted credits, you must trash 1 of your installed cards” trigger. That’s another way to get self-trash once you have cards down, but I think it’s for a different deck than either of ours: it probably wants to run the Wasteland/Reaver suite without Assimilator and using midrange breakers rather than cheating out the expensive stuff.

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