Valencia, the combo Anarch?

New Cards and Spoilers
562

by the time your rig is ready for memstrips your econ should be established anyways.

563

Do note that you cannot use Datasucker on Archangel if you encounter because of it’s on access ability in R&D or HQ according FAQ 2.2 (p. 12):

Archangel is not considered to be rezzed during its encounter, and cards that interact with rezzed cards, e.g., Datasucker, cannot affect it.

564

Correct, I’m speaking of a rezzed remote / rnd server etc. Good information regardless.

565

So now that worlds is right around the corner, I’d like to get a deep analysis of what Val should and shouldn’t be playing. I was speaking with @Calimsha regarding good stuff Val and her viability and he mentioned that any deck that can’t reliably beat Fastrobiotics is immediately tier 1.5 at best.

This didn’t set well with me because I love Val :smile: So I got to thinking and the only way for whizz or val to reliably keep up with the pressure and speed seems to be SMC. Both decks rely heavily on draw and fail when variance hits hard.

I think we’ve all been there where you find wyldside early, breakers show up in the deck, and all the stars align and you can reliably keep up with the pace of NEH and win. The fact of the matter is that this doesn’t happen reliably enough to beat the monster that is Fastrobiotics, especially in a 50 card deck with no ways to tutor. You can generally expect 40% of the field to be NEH alone. It’s a big deal. This IS our hardest match up.

I started tinkering around with a list that I believe to be a decent starting point for at least everyone to flame me :wink: Here it is:

http://netrunnerdb.com/en/deck/view/389215

Now six main things stand out from a lot of the lists that have been posted here:

  1. no desperado, back to grimoire
  2. no peddler, 3 IHW instead
  3. Imp instead of scrubber
  4. SMC
  5. no plascrete
  6. Inject?!!

We now have:

  • 6 MU again and gain extra counters on imp and medium to help race NEH.
  • 3 IHW and 2 Imp with CC to fight Haarp butcher. 3 IHW also works well with Faust
  • SMC to fight the speed of NEH. NEH loses to medium if you get it up quickly.
  • no peddler. I realize peddler is MUCH better than IHW for the purpose of reduced cost, 1 cheaper to play, 1 pseudo install for a total of 2 credits saved but remember we can faust these cards.
  • The lack of plascrete. This could change later. I didn’t include it in hopes that 2 imp and 3 ihw is enough. 85% of decks don’t try to kill you with meat damage. Not including it means we have 1 more IHW to draw 3 cards against 85% of the field.
  • “Inject, are you stupid 4leaf?” We don’t have peddler anymore. This will find our heavy amount of events / resources, hasten the draw, help us faust more things, and is better than it looks in this list.

I basically posted all this rambling and the list to get the pot stirring. I want to hear peoples concerns, opinions on forementioned points and discuss what is the “best” style to play Val to make her the best she can be against every type of deck you’ll face. This is my shell and a starting place for conversation. I believe this will help shore up NEH, while still keeping her strong to her mid-late game. Everything I’ve posted is pure theory and not tested

Thank you for the long read. Discuss!

566

I’m not a fan of Inject in this list; too many programs we can hit and not enough recursion. (Notable: No Deja Vu.)

Otherwise I’m on board with the changes. I will note that I’m mostly a jank-Val player (Blackmail Spam, DDoS/Blackmail+False Echo) so I won’t pretend I’m an authority on competitive Valencia. But this list looks solid.

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567

While I like stim+shaper things, I think maybe 2 NRE, more draw, and 2 film critic answers a lot of the stuff you’re dancing around, allowing for NAPD steals on medium digs, preventing you from those 6 point losses. Also, no one is playing Lotus, so maybe NRE isn’t even needed. I don’t play Val though, so don’t take my word for it.

568

NRE isn’t needed anymore because of Faust. Also you can always imp NAPD and go back for it later :wink:

This deck has a looooot of draw in it via 3 IHW, 2 Inject, and 3 Wyldside. I have 8 cards dedicated to drawing in most MUs

I don’t have influence to spend on anything other than SMC and CC if I want to go fast and play off of injected programs with how the list is currently set up. This could change later ofc.

569

You’re always pitching 2 cards to get through lotus? puke

I think Inject is solid though.

570

I can atman 4 as well. Honestly someone rezzing an ichi is a bigger pain than lotus nowadays. Hardly anyone splashes lotus now and even jinteki decks are down to 1. It’s not a big concern

571

Hello fellow Valencia players

I need your opinion on this decklist I am testing.

Valencia Estevez - The Angel Of Cayambe.

Event (14)

3 x Dirty Laundry
2 x Forked
3 x I’ve Had Worse
1 x Levy AR Lab Access **
2 x Spooned
3 X Sure Gamble

Hardware (6)

3 x Clone Chip ** ** **
2 x Desperado *** ***
1 x Memstrips

Resource (16)

2 x Adjusted Chronotype
2 x Daily Casts
2 x Kati Jones
1 X Same Old Thing
2 x Scrubber
2 x Street Peddler
3 x Wyldside

Icebreaker (6)

2 x Corroder
2 x Faust
2 x Mimic

Program (12)

2 x Clot
2 x D4v1d
2 x Datasucker
2 x Keyhole
3 x Parasite

So, the more I play with Valencia the more I realize two things:

  1. blackmail is not a key card. Is nice when you steal an agenda thanks to blackmail but good players can bait it out and against foodcoats is nearly-useless, unless you got 2 in hand and win two psi games in a row and trash the ash.

  2. the most difficult matchup for her is not fastro, imho, as medium\keyhole and clot recursion deals with it pretty easily, but foodcoats.

For these reasons I decided to swap the blackmail for some cutlery, spooned and forked namely. Still undecided about a single knifed since I don’t know what to swap and I am at 51 cards already. Maybe a Same old Thing or a Parasite. Cutlery is incredibly strong in the current meta at the moment. Deals with a ton of problematic ice ( turing, tollbooth, archangel, ichiS, Assassin, Data Raven and Gutenberg mainly) and can blow up a well defended remote quite easily.
Secondly, I swapped the mediums for keyhole, as medium is not particularly versatile right now, due to foodcoats and haarps. I am almost sold on Keyhole but MU sometimes needs to be played around.
Levy is the last 3 influence of the deck since Atman is not a good permanent solution to deal with foodcoats ice or any high str ice, since the install cost is too steep and I end up loosing too much tempo. I found that killing high str ice rather than running multiple times through it is a far more efficient solution.

Any advice on how to improve the deck?

572

Do you find yourself ever playing the Levy? That doesn’t seem like a great use of influence in a 50-card deck, even if you don’t want Atman. I’ve had decent success with a 3x Clone Chip 3x Desperado influence spread out of Val. It’s pretty vital to see Desperado early and a third copy helps so much.

Keyhole over Medium is an interesting meta call right now. I also like 2x Faust, 0 Yog breaker suite, Yog does so little when there’s parasucker for small code gates, D4V1D for big.

573

Yes, I play Levy a lot. It sinergizes so well with Faust, Cutlery, Dirty Laundry…cycles back clone chips, viruses and IHWs. Overall 3 Desperado gives the deck more consistency,while Levy gives it more versatility and long game resilience. Not having desperado early sucks, but the economy is ok even if I don’t find it until halfway through my deck

574

This is the corner case. Usually, Blackmail makes it trvial to get into remotes, it’s Ash+Caprice in the same server combined that makes it difficult, but that’s true whether you have Blackmail or not. There is value in not putting Blackmail in the deck and playing as if you did, because everyone will assume that Valencia has Blackmail in it. But it’s kinda thin, in my opinion. (This logic is similar to actively choosing to NOT play Counterspells in a Blue deck in Magic. It does work, but it requires your opponent to make assumptions about your deck and play around them to their detriment. If your opponent calls your bluff, you’re left in a weaker position. Here, at least, since you’re built around ICE being rezzed on the Remote anyway, there’s a possible advantage here.)

Foodcoats is simultaneously Val’s worst matchup, because of Blackmail ‘immunity’, and Foodcoats’ worst matchup. Valencia is the only Runner that can challenge a Caprice remote and not lose money by bidding 1. She can also negate Ash’s ICE-cost-doubling ability with Blackmail, requiring only Blackmail + 3 credits + Cost to Break instead of Cost to Break *2 + 3 credits. For these reasons, Valencia has some serious advantages against Foodcoats.

Whizzard and Leela also compare favorably, Whizzard because he can destroy their economy efficiently, Leela because derezzing/bouncing their ICE is pretty much their worst nightmare.

3 Likes
575

I really don’t rate Leela strongly against Foodcoats. The run economy is shut down easily and early, so Leela is left relying on Kati Jones (of which there are rarely three) with a lot of dead draws. It’s hard to deny the corp economy. The agenda density is very low. She’s the best of the Criminals against Foodcoats, but it’s not good. And it’s very hard to fit more than one or two Emergency Shutdown in the deck.

I love @Cerberus deck as much as anyone, but I think he’d agree with me here.

Hell yes. Blackmail is a very strong card.

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576

I do agree, Foodcoats is a terrible match up, even worse than RP as they give you open remotes.

I do believe that you could make a good Criminal deck against Foodcoats, however I think it would then die to any form of NEH.

I rate my chances of winning against food with my Leela at around 30-35% tops, and I’m very experienced with her and the match up.

5 Likes
577

I do not think it is the corner case: it’s far more common as a scenario that blackmails gets baited out. I mean, besides inexperienced players, who tries to sneak out unprotected agendas against Valencia knowing of the blackmail threat? Some times Neh puts a wraparound/enigma to protect an agenda but that is nothing that cannot be dealt with wraparound corroder or faust.
What I am trying to say is that blackmail is not very good against an Ash + Caprice remote, save in the situation in which you win the psi game and are rich enough to beat the Ash trace. A situation that is unlikely to happpen as soon as the Foodcoats player finds Breaker Bay Grid and Adonis or Eve. Paradoxically, Blackmail more sinergy with Foodcoats’ strategy since it prevents the corp from rezzing Ice and spending their money, which is something that, as a runner, you want the corp to, in order to try to keep the corp poor ( besides trashing their sexbots, of course). At least, that is the strategy that I think works best against Foodcoats. Cutlery events support this strategy better than blackmail. Probably a combination of the two will be the ideal solution - nuke their remote, wipe out their assets, then blackmail when they try to rebuild it or sneak out an agenda - but as it is now, I really have no idea what to cut for 2 copies of blackmail

578

Blackmail doesn’t need to score agendas to do work. Trashing an Adonis at the right time can still be worth the card slot. Might be worth going down to 2 blackmails, but I would never cut them against foodcoats.

3 Likes
579

A money card? Even if you count baiting blackmail, I assume at some point you’re attacking a server. When you do, if it’s a blackmail run you’re saving a lot of money. Don’t think of blackmail as a tool to beat unsuspecting rushers but instead as a tool to let you bypass unrezzed ice.

1 Like
580

Well, I guess it depends what I value the most: saving money or forcing the corp to rez to trash their ice later on. Against foodcoats the latter option seems the better, given also that, once Faust hits the board, I can run with really few credits in the bank

581

You have to force the runner to have it.
If there’s no Same Old Thing on board with a Blackmail in the Heap, rush out an agenda. Make them have it. If they don’t have it, you get the Agenda. If they do, they’re down a Blackmail and your next attempt is more likely to succeed. Even better, you’ve established a play pattern. If they Blackmail and steal, immediately put down an Asset into the same server, daring them to Have It again.

And even better, if they didn’t Blackmail and steal, then just keep putting agendas into the server. And if they actually normal run on it? Good, that server’s safe from Blackmail for all time, a big relief for the Corp.

Not running Blackmail in your deck is saying that you expect Corporations to be Timid and Fearful when you put Valencia on the table. Which is what we want them to be, but if they try to poke out and be Brave by rushing an agenda, you need to Punish them and make sure they stay Timid. If you don’t, they’ll stay Brave and start to push back harder against your game plan.
…
…
… I dunno, am I making sense here? These are my thoughts on the matter, but I’m not sure I’m right.

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