"The Trooper" - Dead Coats

Regardless of how good she actually is, she isn’t played often enough to worry about.

8 Likes

I’ve played this deck a lot, on and off, and I think it’s just as viable now as it ever was. My biggest problem is time limits, but then I’m playing a 7 agenda + melange version, which is just slower in general than most of the other variations mentioned here.

Haven’t been a big fan of the way punitive usually plays out. Any strategy that relies on your opponent advancing their win on your time table is usually to flimsy for me; I’ve gotten wins off of it, but I don’t think there’s really enough pressure in HB to make it reliable or any guarantee that your opponent will be pour enough to make it work. Maybe a heinlin grid variant? Maybe…

Anyhow, wanted to register my appreciation of the title; hoping its a not so subtle nod to the Protomen cover. But, suppose it doesn’t have to be.

Rename deck to “The Trooper” - We Are The Dead Coats, plz :wink:

1 Like

The best food for thought for this deck is next suite + valley grid setups

anyone try that yet? i havent, but it just occured to me like a dream in a vision in a memory of a dream.

1 Like

I’ve tried valley grid and it just compounds the issues you already have with punitive counter strike. Now not only must you have enough money, have punitive in hand, and get them to run your death server (while still having money), you also need to first draw your grid and have that in your server without it being trashed before the crucial turn.

Plus Parasite omnomnom.

5 Likes

There’s a cover? Urgh. Fear not, aside from anything else, the pun doesn’t work without a picture of Eddie dressed as a Red Coat.

For what it’s worth, I think that IHW compounds the issues I was starting to have with the deck when I first posted this thread a million years ago. With IHW out there and with PVP Kate often getting the economic jump on you early, I find it harder and harder to justify this deck when I could just spend the influence on Caprice.

The one thing that I do want to try however is Brain-Tapping Warehouse. Eve was an issue because it created a window of a turn or so where you were probably behind the runner on money and sods law decreed you lost an agenda in that window. BTW doesn’t have that window and the deck threatens last click runs. It seems worth a shot.

1 Like

I think this deck has merit still, but needs a play vs IHW, Reclamation Order your Punitive? Splash into Snoop? Data Hound?

Snoop counter + 1 punitive after a 3 pointer kill is strong. Add Neural Emp? Nghhh

I dont think kill much, but I bet theres enough play to this deck work.

The issue is making it RESILIENT. Thats what we need to discuss.

Archived Memories has always been really good for obvious reasons. What would be the advantage of RO? Can you find the money to out trace them four times though when runner economies are so strong? To me Brain damage seems the best answer to IHW which suggests Cerebral. Another approach might be Heinlein Grid plus brain damaging bioroids like Viktor and Heimdell. And the new ID may have merit although I do worry about getting the money lead to punitive out of it.

2 Likes

RO for Neural Emp / Economy Operations / Punitive if you play them at base value to drain bucks rather than kill

Mainly Neural plays.

Just saying as example

3 jackson
2 popup
3 punitive
2 neural

I don’t think CD can generate the cash. EtF has always been vital to the build – @BenConn took a Foundry version to our “Randomized IDs (No Top Tiers Please)” tournament and found that it really paled in comparison. Maybe the handsize reduction would help, but if anything it seems like it’d make keeping the combo ready harder, too.

Overall, it’s a bit harder, but I dunno if there’s really anything wrong with the old deck necessarily. Lab Dog may help, actually, as might Thor/Barry/the Bioroid Archer if you’re doing the Sleepers build.

Does anyone else think lab dog makes this slightly more viable now? Plascrete always made me sad in my punitive HB decks, now if you could just get an HB version of IoP we’d be in good shape.

1 Like

the runner trashes with lab dog.

Important to note.

1 Like

well shit.

1 Like

Runner may choose, but that doesn’t make the loss worthless, I wouldn’t say. Making them lose a console or other bit of hard-to-recover infrastructure can still be good.

Yeah, against crim is probably the only time where it gets close to justifying the slot, when they have to choose between losing Desperado or Plascrete.

Shaper and Anarch can probably insta-parasite or break with AI, and will often have other hardware they don’t mind losing too much.

The number of times you’re running as crim and have a spare desperado in hand is more often than the number of times you’ll hit a lab dog, imo.

5 Likes