I was thinking about how I can’t help but start a deck off by sticking in 3 of these cards, and I’ve started to wonder, are there decks that are significantly better off without them? Are there enough interns and asset economy cards for Corp, and can the runner survive without the burst sure gamble provides? They are almost two different cards in the sense that, I think one side needs their gain 9 for 5 card more. Opinions?
2 Likes
NEARPAD sometimes dropped Hedge Fund.
I’ve played Opus decks that didn’t include Sure Gamble.
For the corp side it seems hard to me, there’s not really a situation where you don’t enjoy the bank (if only to threaten bigger ice), and other corp econ tends to be a bit less efficient than the runners.
On the runners side, like mendax said, MO decks make that Sure Gamble is a wasted deckslot that could have been a solution, as long as you can ensure MO gets played early.
It’s also possible to run with cheap cards/some recurring cred support in which case actually climbing to 5 creds might be out of the normal way of playing for your list and actually a tempo loss if you can’t leverage the 9 creds.
1 Like
I can see not having a sure gamble in a dedicated opus deck. Have you had much luck with that? I can see not having hedge fund in an NEH deck, sweeps week and asset economy probably do wonders. I’m wondering if there are more tier 1 decks from different ids than the generally more played ones that we don’t know about because sure gamble actively hurts either the deck, or the players behavior (ie: trying to stay near 5 credits to use the card, when another card would do more work.)
I have a few decks that would be worse off for including Hedge/Gamble. The most common example is probably the Shaper deck with Magnum Opus as its primary economy, usually out of CT, but occasionally Kate. Opus devalues the burst economy of Gamble by raising the value of clicking for credits.
Other decks that doesn’t use Hedge/Gamble include horizontal corps like Industrial Genomics, Gagarin, and some NEH. These decks usually rely on asset economy with the possible addition of Diversified Portfolio.
I’ve also seen ETF and Foundry decks skip Hedge for asset economy or Peak Efficiency respectively.
I think Hedge Fund is more important than Sure Gamble because of the effectiveness of an Ice-Ice-Hedge opening, allowing the corp to rez both ice and retain credits for turn 2. In addition, Whizzard could theoretically impact the meta such that operation economy is safer and thus more viable. Sure Gamble is only more important with Prepaid Voicepad.
Good points, I wonder if the Corp will ever have a burner.
A lot of Noise lists are skipping Sure Gamble right now. Peddler made it even more common.
5 Likes
Simply, if your deck doesn’t run high on econ, and your initial ice can be rezzed cheap, its worth at least looking at other options. If you need to rez quandary and pop up turn 1, hedge is less useful (always GOOD, just less useful).
I’ve played plenty of NEARPAD and HB games where riding high on cash makes you vulnerable to siphon, and you only need a couple bucks to score out, so bursting to 9 can be a liability. I think finally we have enough econ options to say its not an autoinclude. It is, IMO, borderline auto include.
For runners, I believe Sure Gamble is still far too good to not include, because of the relationship runners have with credits, and that is credits translate to wins as long as you have the tools. Getting credits means getting accesses, which means winning. I’m never sad to see a Gamble out of any runner (my Noise doesn’t run it though, so theres that).