The MaxX Thread

New Cards and Spoilers
308

To be really clear and honest, I 99% agree with you on any other runner than MaxX.

But putting “the most powerfull cards you can fit” in a 45 deck will also make you miss 2 of “the most powerfull cards you can fit” each turn.

So if you draw only once, you have to play 2 cards each turn (aka 3 clic total) or one of these will be discarded. So drawing will be only in turn you need to run once.

Also, modern deck plays 2x breakers / 6 total breakers.

Without taking into account AIs, you could acheive 9 breakers to increase the survival rate of each breaker. You’re also be putting a recursion engine, a credit engine. No inf for tricks outside anarch or neutral pool.
I think deckspace is very limited for that.

309

Okay I’ll bite.

As an example let’s look at the odds of not seeing a certain breaker in the top half of your deck (i.e. getting screwed)

So let’s say you’re running 3x of a breaker in a 45 card deck. The odds of not seeing that breaker in the top half of your deck (we’ll round up to 23 cards) is:

42/45 (odds of the first card not being a breaker) x 41/44 (odds of the 2nd card not being a breaker) x … x 20/23 (odds of the 23rd card not being a breaker)

which can be simplified to (42!/20!)/(45!/23!), which in this case is ~ 12.5%

Side note, this is why tutors or strong draw power are pretty much necessary

Now with the MaxX 90 with 6 copies of your breakers, the odds none of those breakers in the top half of your deck are (84!/39!)/(90!/45!) ~ 1.3%

Hey that’s much better! MaxX is 10% less likely to not see a particular breaker in the top half of her deck.
But this math belies several important points:

  1. The top half of MaxX 90 is 45 cards, but for MaxX 45 it’s only 23. Even with her increased draw power, that takes MaxX slightly more than 13 turns to see all of it. If I recall the average game length was estimated to be somewhere around 14-15 turns. The MaxX 45 however has seen half of her deck by turn 7, and probably her whole deck before the game is over (i.e a 0% chance of not seeing that key breaker). If we run the earlier numbers for the MaxX 90 looking at the top 23 cards we get (84!/61!)/(90!/67!) ~ 16% which is slightly worse than the MaxX 45. So not only is MaxX 90 more likely than MaxX 45 to be breaker-less in the same amount of time, but in the cases where the absolute bottom cards of her deck are the key breakers, MaxX 45 still has a chance to pull the game out, whereas MaxX 90 is still another 13 turns away from seeing them.

  2. Not all cards are equal. If running a 90 card deck unlocked some special rule that the maximum card size went up to 6x, then maybe you could run 90 (still wouldn’t). However FFG has done a good job of making no card that is strictly better than any other card so far. Yes, Yog.0 and Force of Nature are both decoders, but they require different support. Seeing your fixed strength breakers but not your ice strength reducers is going to suck. Seeing both but no extra MU is also going to hurt. If pieces of a runner’s rig are interchangeable with markedly different pieces, you aren’t getting full value of either. The point I’m trying to make here is that more cards in a deck actually makes each individual card worse, as it needs to support more other cards.

8 Likes
310

If you count after Larla, decksize is 39 + 5 in grip. If you count at the begining of your turn, deck size is 37 + 6 in grip.

Anyway you also have 33% to draw a specific card each turn, meaning if you’re close to 90%, you can drop this rate to 30% in grip / 60% in heap…

So you have to multiply that 60% per 30% to also have a specific recursion card in hand or played (CS / Deja Vu / retrieval run in our case, 3 as breakers). That is 20%.

First 30 % + these 20% that saves you = 50% times you’re okay, 50% times you’re screwed.

You have to toss 3 coins. Odd of 3x tails = 12.5%.

Good luck under 3x breakers with recursion only and no tutors :slight_smile:

But there’s AI to increase 3x breaker to a virtual rate of 4x, 5x or 6x. I think an AI is mandatory in Maxx for this.

311

Syntax is going to be here all week, folks. Keep those arguments coming!

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312

Actually reread what he said… :smile:

:slight_smile:

Not all week, I’m painting my house rigth now :slight_smile:

313

I don’t know why I’m bothering to reply a this point, but…

You’re fundamentally misunderstanding this. No one is suggesting that discarding is the “exact same” as drawing. People are saying that discarding a random card from the top of the deck is not very different from having that card sit at a random spot in your stack. In either case, you won’t be able to get that card into play reliably without a tutor or some other kind of effect.

In all fairness, the two situations aren’t exactly analogous. For starters, the closer you get to the bottom of your stack, the poorer that analogy is – even if a card was going to be your very last draw, that’s not the end of the world when there are only four cards left in the stack. When the stack is empty, the analogy breaks down entirely, as there is no base ability “Click: Draw from heap.” So in that sense, discarding a given card is indeed worse than having it sit on the bottom of the deck if the game goes long.

However, the two situations aren’t analogous in another way: effects which tutor from the heap are generally a) more powerful, b) more efficient, and c) more influence-friendly for anarch. Consider Clone Chip vs. Special Order. Chip is a click faster, can fetch any kind of program, and allows mid run installs. Consider Retrieval Run vs. Test Run. Granted, Retrieval Run does have a requirement that might be difficult in late game, but it also keeps the program in play instead of requiring an additional draw and install on a subsequent turn. SoT vs. Planned Assault – SoT costs you an extra click, but saves 2 credits and can recur any event, instead of just run events. Consider Deja Vu vs… ???. There is no runner effect anywhere near that potent for tutoring from the stack – the closest is Logos, except the runner has very little control over the timing.

Anyway, the tl;dr version: No one is saying that discarding is as good as drawing.

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314

I’m having a lot of trouble parsing what you mean here, because it’s pretty close to gibberish. Maybe “33% to draw a specific card each game?” Even that’s not right – a statistically significant portion of games are going to end before you cycle your whole stack. This is even more true with MaxX 90.

But even if that were true, you’re still mathing wrong. If you’re running 3x each breaker (which I wouldn’t necessarily advocate), the odds of all 3 copies of any particular breaker ending up in the heap by the end of the game are about 30% (2/3 * 2/3 *2/3). They’re actually better than that, of course, since you start with 5 in hand and you can always spend a click to draw, but we’ll take the worst case scenario. If you’re running 3x two kinds of recursion (say, Clone Chip and Deja Vu), the odds that you’ll lose all six of them in the same game where you lose all three of your Corroders are vanishingly small (<3%).

Of course, it’s more complicated than this, because there are other targets competing for your recursion. For example, in some small fraction (again, just under 3%) of games you may pitch all 9 of your breakers: then you’ll need to draw a minimum of 3 pieces of recursion. However, the good news here is that the more breakers you pitch, the more likely you are to have drawn that recursion in the first place.

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315

The problem was not really this but cs is “tutoring from the heap”, retreival run, deja vu and sot aswell. You can’t sot to test run like in shaper decks.

I personnally think “tutoring from heap” would be actually with a better choice of targets than special order / tutoring from stack effects only after half of your deck is milled : turn 5-6-7 or something.

Turns after larla (say 13) is not this great and after it that’s may be game over in turn say 19… I’m not sure about reliability (about consistence, yes, for sure 45 is always better than “90” - I’d try 75).

So : turn 1/2/3/4/~5 you discard good consistent cards and is not happy about this, turn ~6/~7/8/9/10/11/12 you’re happy about this, then 13/14/15/16/17/18/~/19 unhappy then 20 happy back again, up to 26 and decking out.

316

We’re wearing him down! Keep arguing!

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317

Sorry for this. Calimsha could tell you sometimes I’m not even understandable in my natural langage :slight_smile:

It mean if you were to touch your corroder in one of the 3 top cards of your statck, aka 2 discard / 1 draw, then you have odds of 66% to discard it and 33% to draw it.

That means, since cards can’t jump oog, that each single copy of a card have 33% survival rate.
For two copy wanting at least one you’re somewhere near 56% (1-0.660.66).
For three copies wanting at least one you’re near 71% (1-0.660.66*0.66).

All of this is not 100%.

Being in a 2x breaker format, you’d need 0.44 * 3 = 1.32 recursion way to save your breakers + 0.66 (I’d say a strategic mandatory 1 but let’s compute the mean) to save Larla.

If you use 3 copy for recursive cards at 71% survival rate, you’d need (1.32 + 0.66 = +/- 2 heap tutor.
2 / 71% = 2.81 3x slots to acheive recursion before turn 12 (or you let the corp having unbreakable servers until your larla).

Aka with 8.45 recursion cards you’re sometimes have to much, sometimes have not enough solutions. 50/50 odds.

Saying it otherwise, that mean you’ve got a 50% to have all 3 breakers installed before larla turn.
Well, consistent, yes, sure. But I do have reliability doubts about this side effect.

Letting the corp doing what she wants inside her servers until larla turn is quite “not really efficient”. No, it’s quite half-shit in fact…

good news, you could spare clone chips influence only if your decoder is actually an AI (NOT eater) and use retreival run instead… :wink:
Or else the corp would put an ice in front of archives and wouldn’t rez it until you show a retreival run. But you could also attack through Keyhole or Imp to prevent this.

Choice of decoder to be replaced by an AI is because of wraparound and swordsman. That would also boost your game start…

318

Double super like :slight_smile:

319

Okay, so a 90 card deck is nuts, but what about a 47 card deck? I picked that number because with a 45 card deck MaxX has 40 cards in the stack after drawing her opening hand. Meaning that if she never draws, there will be 1 card left on turn 14, wasting her ability. In a 47 card deck, she’ll have 42 left after taking her hand, making her ability more even. Does that make sense?

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320

I’m increasing one ! Yay victory !

:slight_smile:

I’d put 2x AI but your larla turn would be 14.

321

Depends on whether you plan to include draw effects (Inject, Steelskin, Earthrise Hotel…).

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322

So, to divert just a little bit from the discussion.
What breaker suite do you guys think will best fit MaxX?
My guess is that Eater might not be good since you might thrash a lot of Cutlery with your ability.
So, plain old fixed breakers + suckers?

323

Might think about Morning Star briefly, with the potential to Retrieval Run it out, but… painful otherwise, especially the MUs if you don’t get your console.

324

Yes I agree but there’s also a drawing problem in MaxX because drawing makes you discarding at end of turn way too much : you drew one card, you need to play one or it’ll be lost - and you would have lost 3 good consistent cards this turn :smile:

That mean your draw events can’t bring back more than 2 cards or you will discard : in a classic runner id, would you play that much a “draw 4 cards” event ? Is diesel less niche than quality time ?

You have this effect in corp play who also auto-draw at start of the turn:
Drawing beside agenda floodling can also ice flood your hand which is something you only want in grail deck imo :slight_smile:

So you can pilot your way around that problem by floating at 3-4 cards at end of turn, no problems.
But don’t take a damage, net or meat because of recursive events stuck in grip to save a larla or anything, and never take a brain to be able to float at more than 3 cards is quite lots of restrictive conditions…

325

I have to admit… I currently skip any discussion on deck size. But I like Maxx so I keep coming back hoping there will be an interesting discussion about something other than deck size.

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326

It doesn’t really work like that in practice. It’s not “which one is better at x point in the game;” it’s “which one gets me the card I need to solve this specific dilemma.” As any Shaper who’s staring at a rezzed Archer knows, your 2nd/3rd SMC is useless after you’ve already used Sharpshooter once. Likewise, Clone Chip is useless until you have something to recur. If you need a Corroder and see 3 copies in the heap, you’re going to need some recursion; if there are 0 copies, you’ll need a tutor (or need to start drawing); somewhere in between and either option will work. In MaxX’s case, if you are running 3x Corroder, the odds that there will be at least one Corroder drawn or put in the heap by turn 4 or so start to look pretty good, and the odds that all 3 will be discarded before turn 10 are pretty bad. So for most of the game, you’re going to want a mix if your only goal is to find a specific card. Recursion offers other benefits, though, even if drawn early (installing a Clone Chip/SoT turn 1 fights click compression later, etc.), whereas deck tutors have no added benefit when drawn late.

In any case, I’m guessing the best bet for MaxX will either be to have both recursion and deck tutors or to have recursion and extra card draw (or plan on clicking for draws a decent amount). You can’t afford to wait for turn 4 or 5, so you’re going to need some ways to fetch early game tools.

327

It’s not just a language problem: this particular expression is meaningless until there is an effect that says “Look at the top 3 cards of the heap, then shuffle them and replace them on the top of the deck.” There are two ways of looking at your draw odds on a particular turn:

  1. You have a 100% of discarding cards A/B and drawing card C with MaxX. This is realistic, in the sense that the order of your deck is fixed, even if you don’t know it.
  2. You have x/y% chance of drawing a particular card, where x=the number of remaining copies in the stack and y=the number of remaining cards in the stack. If your deck is not down to exactly 3/6/9 cards, you’re never going to have a 33% to draw a Corroder on a specific turn (and if your deck is that low, just spend some clicks drawing: you’re very likely to get the Corroder).

Over the course of a game, if we assume no other draw effects (what a terrible assumption, but okay), the odds approach 33% for drawing a specific card when your deck is empty. Okay, but so what? Until that point in the game, that knowledge is useless. And frankly, if you can’t get some means to deal with Wraparound out well before turn 13, you’ve lost most of your games anyway. That’s what you’re missing here: you’re backwards engineering your deck by imagining all the pieces for an end-game rig. That’s not necessarily a terrible idea in and of itself, but you also need to figure out what your early and mid-game look like – otherwise, the corp has won before you’re setup.

Ugh, no. Good runners overdraw with some regularity. Diesel is better because it’s free – if Quality Time cost 1 or 2 credits, I guarantee that even most Shapers would run it over Diesel.

Again, I think you’re approaching this with some fundamental misunderstandings about how Netrunner actually works. Discarding due to overdraw is only a significant problem if you’re facing something like PE where the fact that cards are a finite resource actually matters. Otherwise, if you Duggar’s and end up pitching 5 cards, as far as your next turn is concerned you’re still better off than drawing 4 times (because a: you got 5 draws for four clicks, and b: those 5 draws were selected out of 10 possible). I would even argue that because of the potency of recursion effects vs. tutors (see above), a Duggar’s from 0 is better than 5 clicks of Mr. Li.

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