The MaxX Thread

I don’t think O&C is out on OCTGN yet.

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Huh. And there’s no way to patch it using a third-party library module? Or somesuch?

You’d need to do all that tedious scripting that @db0 does - that’s a shit-ton of work even for data packs with 20 cards and no super-amazing new interactions. As you probably know, Order and Chaos has neither of those traits :smiley:

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You can sometimes use stand-ins on OCTGN for things and then play them manually, but you’d need to find someone who is cool playing O&C and find some proxy-type events. Before inject came out I was using mass install as a proxy, for example, and just not targeting anything to install. You could play any 4 cost 1 MU program from eater and just play it manually, but finding all the silverware pieces might be a pain.

Speaking of silverware, I have the sneaking suspicion that some of them are better than others and that playing 3 of all of them could be overkill, (as Parasite can take out some and you could even ignore some others like pup, popup, and even Eli). I think that barriers are the most important to kill, as all of them EtR and there are some huge, pain-in-the-ass-to-break ones like Curtain Wall running around. Sentries tend to die to Parasite pretty easily for the most part.

Anyway, I’m more interesting in buiding Maxx without Eater first. I suspect that the whole Eater thing is a little clunky/slow, as killing unrezzed ICE will often mean running into it without a way to kill it and hoping it doesnt tax you as you bounce off it, then spending another click to deal with it, then potentially another one if you used Eater/Silverware to kill it and you want to get in that turn. Valencia has a combination of Bad Pub to fuel all those durdley repeated runs and also blackmail to deal with remotes or even getting into archives to access your Keyhole bounty, (without relying on Crypsis, which is also clunky as fuck).

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The biggest challenge will be finding ones you’re not playing, otherwise it’s totally fine:

Forked/Spooned: Inside Job, Demolition Run, Maker’s Eye
Knifed: Blackmail, Cyber Threat, Exploratory Romp

I’m surprised you don’t mention Spooned; isn’t it kinda essential as a way to deal with Lotus Field?

Eater is for Siphon recursion with Keyhole and Wonton distruction IMO along with DLR for archives pressure

WANTON, NOT WONTON. J’HOWARD. :).

I like wontons as much as @spags but c’mon :).

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You have to be wary you don’t fall into the Alpha and Omega trap of having your AI up and also needing/wanting a standard efficient breaker suite as well, though.

Eater seems good and I’m excited for it, but not every deck – even those with Wanton/Keyhole – will want it. Having Eater + a normal suite is a bit redundant.

Agreed. It’s not actually a super efficient breaker, it’s just the fact that you only need one of it that makes up for the disadvantage. I think Crypsis and Blackmail in Valencia seems reasonable along with siphon/vamp/wanton/keyhole with Shard and Blackmail for Archives, Blackmail for remote pressure, ICE destruction to keep R&D cheap or destroy rezzed ICE on archives/remote, and you have all your servers covered. I’m skeptical that it’s even that good there and double skeptical Eater has a place anywhere else.

Maxx seems better suited for either an aggressive build that attempts to end the game before her deck runs out or a just all-around good stuff build that uses Clone Chip for a level of consistency not yet seen in anarch. I think the keys will be constructing a good economy package, choosing the right breakers, and archives pressure.

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Econ is actually pretty good in anarch, Day job is a reasonably solid card, and Liberated account is ok and stimhack is busted if you can run some sort of instant speed tutoring (SMC/Clone chip). Queen’s gambit is like a poor mans bank job but is still pretty great. But just the lucky find + Sure gamble + Daily casts + kati jones goes a long way by itself Realistically you need only about 9-11 more econ cards after that to have a decent-good econ. QG+stimhack+Liberated+day job is already enough on its own to support anarch econ.

The right breakers are interesting, Mimic/Corroder/Datasucker are obvious and amazing but require tutors clone chip (Maxx) and SMC (everyone else) are the currrent frontrunners. But the pesky problem of Lotus field hurts. Knight isn’t a solution since it dies to blue sun, therefore the key is Zu.13 Keymaster, (combo’s with Datasucker better than Gordian)

Archives pressure is sadly TERRIBLE in anarch :frowning: Here are the reasonable solutions

  1. 1 of Sneakdoor beta as a tutor target for SMC
  2. DLR/Joshua B, Requires not playing earthrise hotel/liberated account, and is pretty limited in application.
  3. Playing Noise, Honestly the only weakness here is the noise influence issue. You can’t have a good breaker suite AND play pawnshop/cache with noise.

So the best solution seems to be play noise, but that means having to either not go with pawnshop/cache engine OR not play efficent breakers

Anarch has Datasucker and Retrieval Run in faction. Both are excellent Archives pressure. The only thing better is Security Testing (if they don’t run remotes) and Sneakdoor.

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This whole paragraph blows my mind with its incorrectness.

As @Dragar correctly states, Datasucker is Archive pressure par excellence, due to to the power of Parasite and fixed breakers, both of which kinda have sucker tokens as a soft pre-requisite (and then there’s the efficiency play of suckers saving you money)

  1. Splashing for 1 Sneakdoor and 2 SMC (to see it reasonably) looks like a really good way to completely gimp yourself on the influence front without achieving much. Not only don’t you get a good effect out of it, you’re actually worsening one of Anarch’s main issues, being MU
  2. Liberated Account works just fine tagged, just take some money off of it the turn you install it. Most people won’t bother to trash a 4-cred LA, some won’t bother with an 8-cred one (especially if there’s DLR and/or Josh involved)
  3. How exactly does Noise not have a good breaker suite influence-free?
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Datasucker is OK without desperado as archives pressure. but it isn’t excelent. There has been a shift to subroutine based ICE over strenght based ICE, yes parasite makes datasucker really strong at handling both types of ICE but even then, I find myself swarmed with sucker tokens even when I spend them liberally.

Splashing for 3 SMC and 1 Sneakdoor and 1 Zul however with the rest of the anarch breaker suite accomplshes a whole lot. you get to use your version of the broken 0 cost run events cycle effectively and you solve the anarch consistency issue for the 9 influence cost. Sneakdoor is i’ll admit the worst option in many respects for archives pressure but it still does a pretty solid job
Also anarch doesn’t have that big of an MU issue, Grimoire is MU par Excelence, and 6 MU is a lot of MU. Notably Sneakdoor beta works at the earlygame stage, and lets you control HQ with Nerve agent. Yes you only have 3 MU after that and it isn’t a sustainable situation but you can manage to get back in shape after that. You also have acess to mimic/corroder/Zule which on its own is a super OP breaker suite. Once HQ is cleared you have to start to drill R&D, and there is some weakness in sneakdoor esentially giving you an addional line of attack into the same front. Sneakdoor is a tool to be thrown away later.

You’re right, I meant Kati jones/Daily casts not liberated account

In order to have the efficent breaker suite of Yog/mimic/corroder/Zu13 keymaster you need tutor’s for the ICEbreakers, anarch haas 0 in faction tutors, This leaves 2 options

  1. Play the bad breaker suite of Crypsis/D4v1D+parasite spam and cry whenever you use crypsis
  2. Spend 6 or 9 Influence on tutors (Special order/Self-modifying code respectively)
    Cache+pawnshop is 9 Influence Special order+Zu is 8 influence, as it stands, there is no way to make noise have both the efficent breakers AND have cache+pawnshop.
    3You could in theory play only 2 special order for 1 zule but that is a bit iffy. One thing to try is playing 0 tutor’s and going zule/corroder/mimic as 3 ofs to see how much of a difference it makes to play tutors.
    I would say before Blue sun there was a good influence free breaker suite of Knight/Yog/mimic/corroder and then you could in fact play Like a gabe deck (something which I found very good in fact) but now no such breaker suite exists thanks to blue sun.

Noise STILL seems like the call but getting an efficient noise breaker suite is a big headache.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m playing the same game as some of you other people.

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I don’t want to derail the thread, so I’ll just respond to one paragraph.
(you can safely assume that I vehemently disagree with the rest though, too)

Let me get this straight:

  • 4 for Sneakdoor
  • 3 for Nerve Agent
  • 2 for a SMC trigger
  • 3 for Grimoire

(12 credits and 4 actions, in case you weren’t keeping count)

for a gimmicky “pressure tool” to be “thrown away later”? How exactly are you drawing all this, and paying for it, before midgame rolls around and/or the enemy has astrotrained to 15 victory points?

Oh, and I’d splash for Personal Touch way before Zu in Anarch - it’s useful both on Yog and on Mimic.

p.s. if going down to 3 MU after your 2-MU console has hit the board and before you have any breakers or Parasite support on the table isn’t “making the anarch MU problem worse”, I sure as fuck don’t know what is.

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Stimhack.com of course. Pays for 6 creds (sneakdoor and SMC trigger)
I actually don’t like sneakdoor, sneakdoor again is the WORST option, but it was an option previously considered. It cute earlygame against NEar earth Hub as a way to break an astrotrain from occuring. I included it there mostly for completeness sake. I played it before and have been using it to some sucess against NEH, pressuring archives.
Personal touch is cute and something I really shoudl have considered But looking at it, it costs 2 Influence, and can’t be tutored. So it must be played as at least a 2 of and quite probably a 3 of. However it does fight the whole “noise without good breakers issue” a good amount. The only issue with it I have is that then you can’t play special order

Your econ package is basically
3 Stimhack
3 Sure gamble
3 Dirty laundry
3 Liberated accoutn
3 Daily casts
2 Lucky find
2 Queen’s Gambit

a breaker package of
2 Corroder
2 Mimic
1 Zu
1 Yog
3 SMC
3 parasite
3 datasucker

Maxx also can go with Clone chip over SMC saving 3 influence, and go with a solid draw engine of MaXx+Steelskin+inject the last influence could be 1 more zule and a easy mark

Is Day Job better than Liberated?

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It’s debatable, but probably - if you’ve got 6 credits, you tend not to not want to waste time making more money rather than pressuring the corp. If you’ve got 3 credits, Liberated Accounts just taunts you.

The thing is though, Liberated is essentially 2c per click if you get it all off - albeit for a total of 10 credits in 5 clicks. Day Job has 8 credits for 4 clicks (same efficiency, but a bit less) - though the fact it takes a full turn (and no more) makes it really good, I think. Dropping a last click Liberated screams “score an agenda now” a lot of the time, but there’s no such telegraphing with Day Job, even if you do plan on using it next turn.

In short, I feel like though there’s a little bit more you can get from Liberated and spending an extra click, it’s still not worth it over the advantages you get from Day Job - usable at 2, doesn’t telegraph much, etc. Both are worth testing though, and I know there are a few Quetzal decks with The Supplier and Earthrise going around where Liberated is better, but I think generally Day Job will be better.

It may be a preference/meta call, but those are my two cents (credits?) at least.

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