Right now, I think we can all agree that NBN is very strong. Traditional Making News decks have been a powerhouse for some time, and cards like Sweeps Week and Paper Wall have recently allowed them more freedom with their influence to boot.
However, OCTGN results indicate that TWIY* has been very successful recently as well. Which of these identities do you favor? Personally, I’ve been a Making News player for quite some time, but it seems like Making News is relatively easier to meta against than TWIY*-- decks with link or Opus are very strong against Making News.
My intuition is that a strong TWIY* deck will be less matchup-dependent than a strong Making News deck, and may even be stronger overall thanks to increased Astroscript density. I’ve been playing around with a few things out of TWIY* and have had good but not amazing results, and was wondering what other people were finding.
for typical rush decks id choose TWIY. reason is that one card in hand makes a lot of difference during hq runs. i dont need any trace ice to tag a guy or something. i just want my agendas hide. if my strategy would be to tag and do harm first - then slowly score, id change identities.
my question on the other hand is what size should i play: 40 or 44 in TWIY?
i can made 10 agendas 30 cards deck, but then i need to include one 3-pointer which doesnt suit the deck theme any good
switching to 12 agendas makes possible to fit 3 gilas which is awesome, but then my r&d is more vulnerable and 44 cards seem too much.
its 25% vs 27% for agenda on random r&d run. wonder how maths work there for 44 card deck when i need to draw that any 3-of card that is very needed (first astro etc). any calculations?
Sweeps Week and Paper wall also help out TWIY*–I would argue to a greater extent. Paper wall and Sweeps Week are strongest on turn 1; with TWIY, there is a higher chance of having one or more in the opening hand, especially if you play 40 cards like I do.
If your deck is meant to rush out agendas, 40 cards is optimal; you want to be able to draw agendas consistently and in your opening hand. The main point of agenda dilution is to minimize the probability of an access (usually R&D) being an agenda. This risk is not as important with a rush deck because you plan to win in the early game.
I play a 44 card TWIY* deck that is my favorite atm. I guess I rather avoid the trace mechanic, although I lament neglecting my shiny plastic Making News identity; nevertheless, TWIY* is just such a fast advance powerhouse.
A tight deck with one Biotic Labor is the way I go. (Making News, however, I regret has to import costly trace ice like Caduceus.)
Recurring credits for traces do make several cards much better-- for instance, Caduceus and Viper go from decent pieces of ICE to excellent ones, Draco becomes an extremely annoying small ICE, and TMI becomes playable in its own right instead of just a Siphon counter. Similarly, Ash 2X3ZB9CY is incredibly annoying in Making News, and the influence to support it is now available.
I think that both are great right now, and you can use either one.
There are some things that you do differently in each deck, of course.
The main difference to me is: Do you want your ice to tax, or stop. Making News taxes better, slowing them down to buy more time. TWIY forgoes that in favor of more hard stopping ice, and rushes harder.
My personal observation is that Making News decks are a little harder to pin down in terms of what their “thing” is. The TWIY decks I’ve seen have all been “all-in” on a particular plan (be that hot death, rush, FA, etc), whereas there are several good-to-great Making News concepts that all start off looking similar.
Perhaps it is the 5 cards and the extra 3 influence or something.
just an idea: maybe its worth doing pure rush twiy like with use of making news (45 cards not so different from 44) in meta where people know and expect what u just said. for deception.
That 45th card has to be an agenda though (at least a two pointer), so you’d have to go to at least 46 cards to be able to access the influence you’ve “unlocked”.
@lopert agreed: if you want to hard rush at 45 cards, you may as well drop an agenda and play TWIY. There are so many other builds for Making News that I’d go with one of the “standard 49ers”, if you will.
As an aside, my TWIY* deck lost two games at our store championship today, and that made me very sad. Took second as a result, though :).
One of the major upsides of TWIY is the ability to run all 3 or under agendas. Character assassination is amazing when scored but requires you to have a window to score it, compared to the 3 astro 3 beale 3 news 3 TGTBT/Gila Hands in TWIY