I’m relatively new to Valencia and have been lurking in this thread for the better part of this week. I had a few questions if people wouldn’t mind answering. I realize some of these are dependent on board state. I’m looking for generalized advice.
What copies are people trashing with Paige?
I’ve read thoughts on IJ throughout this thread. I don’t run it.
Should I?
I kind of want to run only 2 Paige and add another D4vid or Carver. Has anyone tried cutting a paige yet?
Why Gordian over Zu? Gordian is almost always a worse tempo hit.
Same reason we use CF for Hotel. Am I wrong on this thought process?
Economy feels smooth. I do like Steve’s idea of going to DL with +1 Desperado, but haven’t tested it yet. I always loved Modded, so it’s hard for me to make a change like that. Seems like both can work.
I keep fussing and tinkering with my list–I’m currently off the Career Fair plan because I found it slightly inconsistent with the number of expensive resources I was running. @hhooo’s list sounds more workable with CF.
With Paige I trash extra copies of Desperado, Kati, Human First, all my breakers (usually, unless I suspect program trashing that might be hard to play around), 1 Datasucker, 1 Investigative Journalism, 1 Medium. Sometimes toward the late game I’ll trash a copy of Earthrise.
Personal preference probably. Giving corp extra bad pub can work wonders against certain decks. Good vs RP. Generally I don’t vs NBN. My version runs at its best with 2 BP and Desperado online so I frequently take the IJ speed bump.
If you are doing Paige your deck should be built around her, hence you want three. If you aren’t sold on Paige you might be interested in trying out what @hhooo is doing with Inject and avocados, see above.
Zu is probably fine as well. I like the Gordian, esp with BP online, getting through 2 STR code gates and making money off of it with Desperado feelsniceman. Personal preference. Your Gordian is probably never going to get Power Shutdown’d. Although that card isn’t huge right now, it’s still a plus.
Tried out the Human First idea the other night and liked having that out there. Coulda been a lot better had I gotten the Paige earlier.
I tried 2 CF’s with targets 3 Daily, 3 Earthrise, 2 Ice Carver, and am not sure of the results, but I think I’d rather just have the money (Dirty Laundry). Ice Carver is nice. It adds another thing that helps you on every run but it adds another expensive thing into the deck, just bumping up the setup time even more. Maybe switching out to Zu would be useful? Would be a wash on the Code Gates (except Lotus Field, but no one plays that), but make the Eli, Raven, Hunter better. With Ice Carver and a Datasucker on Progenitor Grim is no longer a worry (as long as you remember you have Ice Carver!).
How are people finding the NEH matchup? I was relying on the herd immunity before, but with people getting brave about calling the Clot bluff I am worried my deck could lose pretty hard to NBN fast advance. Anybody got any tech that helps in the fast advance matchup? Medium obviously good, and BP/Desperado for the remotes. Anything else?
I’ve never been on the desperado train with Val, as the click intensive nature of her set-up really inhibits you from making lots of runs until very late anyway, and I’ve been playing her as a deck similar to Maxx. Here’s what I use currently.
Valencia Estevez: The Angel of Cayambe
Event (18)
3x Blackmail
3x Career Fair •••
2x Déjà Vu
3x I’ve Had Worse
3x Inject
1x Legwork ••
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (5)
3x Clone Chip ••••• •
2x Grimoire
Resource (13)
3x Daily Casts
3x Earthrise Hotel
1x Ice Carver
2x Kati Jones
3x Liberated Account
1x Same Old Thing
Sweet list. I’d disagree a bit about the Desperado concern–it encourages runs early when you have Desperado out. You can trash assets for a $2 discount, and you make money running archives for sucker tokens so you can parasite stuff early, which means you can maybe make run on centrals without breakers out, making more Desperadobux. It’s dependent on good draw of course.
Looks like you could go -1 Liberated and +1 David, maybe? Esp. with the Clone Chips. Susanoo is popular these days.
I’ve been going back and forth on Dave in here - I do want it, but it does have a mild antisynergy with Ice Carver (Carver makes Tollbooth 4str, for example) and If I did play David, it still doesn’t help much with Lotus field, which will always be the most annoying ice for Orange decks to deal with. It’s probably right to have it in the deck, but I also went through a pair of Emergency Shutdowns in here before, which were great against Susan, since I could just turn on Blackmail to pass it to hit blacklist or whatever. I’ve still got over a month before my first regional, so I’ll figure something out by then.
Nice. You thinking of packing Val for regionals? Basically I’m getting as many games in as I can with her before I decide on Val or MaxX. MaxX has a better NEH matchup but there is also much more MaxX hate out there.
It’s still a ways off for me, but if I had a regional next week, I’d be very close to playing Val. If blacklist wanes in popularity by mid June, then I’ll be back to Maxx.
@GhostLooper - For a while I had a Gordian, 2 Career Fair, and 2 Shutdowns alongside the Clone Chips. I’ve also played with Atman, 3 fair, and no shutdowns. Maybe a D4v1d/Crescentus package would make sense, but I doubt it’d work with my 3 inject setup.
I honestly think Zule is the way to go. I really enjoy being able to just play it and not worry about an early scoring window that Gordian opens against rush style.
How quick is this variation of “Maxx Val”? I’m yet to test anything other than desperado. I did find myself trying to leverage her bad pub to the max by running over and over but it doesn’t work that way when you want to play all these resources.
I’m not sure where to sit on the build for her atm. I feel like desperado is the correct play, but clone chips really complement Inject / Parasite spam.
So I took this list along to the Edinburgh regionals and did okay with a 4-2 record.
Slops:
-My own play mistakes
-The two gordians hiding in the bottom of the deck. If I run this again I’ll try 3x Zu, 2x Zu/1 Special Order, or 2xNRE, 1x Zu and some Yogs. I don’t think there was any occasion when Zu would have been worse than gordian in the matches I played.
Props:
-Ice Carver for MVP, especially when Career Faired out and was the reason I didn’t bother with any additional MU solution - late game I could just overwrite datasucker if I needed space for mediums/parasite.
-Burning blackmails on sundews against RP, then dropping the regular breakers when they tried to score out was a pretty good feeling. Them wasting a scoring server on Blacklist was good too. Obviously it wasn’t the best RP pilots on the middle tables so I dunno how it’d hold up if they smell that you’re not combo Val.
-Career Fair felt pretty good with wyldside, a single click to put down two cards helped a lot when the hand filled up.
-IJ was alright, certainly against HB. Generally waited till Wyldside was going before firing it so as to not waste a whole turn.
Valencia Estevez: The Angel of Cayambe (Order and Chaos)
Event (16)
2x Deja Vu
3x Sure Gamble
2x Vamp
3x Blackmail
3x I’ve Had Worse
3x Career Fair •••
Good stuff. It’s a shame that you couldn’t find your breakers. I only run 2 of each, but I’m finding that inject & Earthrise is doing the job with getting them out. I can recur them easily with clone chip/deja if they get trashed. I feel like I’m playing a slower maxx, but have the option to blackmail. I also run a SMC, which after your post, I thought you’d find interesting. Here is my current:
Event (18)
3x Blackmail
2x Career Fair ••
2x Déjà Vu
3x I’ve Had Worse
3x Inject
1x Knifed
1x Legwork ••
3x Sure Gamble
Hardware (4)
2x Clone Chip ••••
2x Grimoire
Resource (12)
3x Daily Casts
3x Earthrise Hotel
1x Ice Carver
2x Kati Jones
3x Liberated Account
Street Peddler will certainly be one of the best Anarch cards of the cycle without a doubt. Perfect fit in Noise and elsewhere, too. Very, very strong effect.
Me and my friends were trying to come up with good instant resources/hardware tricks that you couldn’t do before…
I guess that is a little off topic, but you can stuff people’s agenda scores with instant speed “the source”, turning it into a “clot” that even works against things like Nisei MK II (that takes 2 influence and is bad… but it has to be awesome if you pull it off)
you can also end of turn activist support, trigger its ability, then aesops it… this isn’t terrible, I promise.
Instant speed shards are fairly powerful when they don’t expect them, so that is something.
This card is really really sweet though…
As the card pool expands this card just gets better.
Even if it is just getting a clone chip for free, it can be unexpected clone chip for free, that gets back something that was underneath this they didn’t know about.
Okay back to Valencia now… still playing a bit of Grim Feast and enjoying it.
