I’ve been trying a slightly different version ( Medium, Faust and Cutlery instead of Keyhole, Eater and Vamp) and I have to say that it has been surprisinglt good:
2 Faust
3 Sure Gamble
1 Comet
2 Scrubber
2 Adjusted Chronotype
2 Medium
3 Blackmail
2 Datasucker
1 Queen’s Gambit
2 Corroder
1 Spooned
1 Rebirth
2 D4v1d
2 Same Old Thing
3 Wyldside
3 Dirty Laundry
1 Mimic
3 Lucky Find
3 I’ve Had Worse
1 Forked
2 Knifed
1 Déjà Vu
1 Levy AR Lab Access
3 Prepaid VoicePAD
3 Daily Casts
Still unsure about Comet. Ideally I would like 2, but I need the 3rd lucky find. Might swap it for turntable and double parasite, even if I didnt miss them that much
I think your suggestions are certainly what my head says I should do to the deck, I’ve just been using Comet for 5 clicks turns for ages and it’s so much fun (I love the inject/IHW into an event, or Deja Vu/Blackmail for a single click).
You’ve correctly spotted the Day Job is in as a ‘best fit’ for Lucky Find, having Comet takes the sting out a bit. Plus, yes, Parasite is almost certainly the right fit, especially to replace the lost cutlery. Turntable is a better console to work with FtM and Keyhole as you can maximise the value of the agendas you score (and potentially put the brakes on an astro/atlas/nisei train).
i’m also still running the Levy. Currently I’ve only popped it in about 10 - 15% of my games but I’m still in the early days of testing and feel I am likely not drawing aggressively enough at times.
Still having good fun with the deck and slightly amazed at how good Fear the Masses has proven.
Fear the Masses has surprised me too actually, landing a ‘4’ and a ‘3’ then checking archives has given me the game on many occasions later on.
Keyhole makes it much easier to pick up the points you need to start, and as they’re then scrambling to protect RnD you can dig for your FtM then hit HQ.
As a deck with a combo-ish stealing plan and event synergy, is this Mass Effect Val wanting some "Freedom Through Equality"s included to speed up the win?
Comet allows for plays that are impossible otherwise… Valencia is one of the prime IDs to use Comet because of Blackmail, and Valencia’s tendency to rely on Events over other card types in general. (Ken Tenma is the other ID that likes Comet.)
The actual problem I’ve had in Comet Val decks is running without having drawn the Comet yet. It feels like running without Wyldside out in Dumblefork. It works, but it doesn’t hum. I do like that Comet Val’s ‘Engine’ is a single card (Comet) instead of Dumble’s two-card (WyldCakes). That said, I do acknowledge that Val’s proper Engine is WyldCakes + Comet for 3 cards required.
To continue with poor analogies: Comet Val without Comet or WyldCakes = Dumblefork without WyldCakes. Comet Val with Comet feels equivalent to Dumblefork with WyldCakes. (Val with WyldCakes < DumbleFork with WyldCakes.) And Comet Val with all three cards feels like a set up Devil’s Food MaxX, without the ‘downside’ of cards going to Heap.
Oh wow, that’s an interesting Current to use with Comet Val…
I’ll agree that the credit cost is the biggest Con for Comet. I don’t agree on the Influence being that bad, though.
Compare to Lucky Find. This card is also 2 influence. You spend two clicks and (ideally) gain 9 credits, for a 2:9 ratio of clicks to credits.
When you play a Comet, you’re set back 4 credits initially (which is where the biggest problem with the card lies) and thereafter, all of your events become one click more efficient. This means your Lucky Find is now (essentially) a 1:9 card. (Example: You Inject pitching a program, and then Comet the Lucky Find. You spent two clicks, and gained 9 credits and 3 cards. 2:12, or 1:9 + 1:3.) That’s just straight numbers, and doesn’t take into account that you can do more interesting things as previously discussed; Day Job and still do something useful, or Deja Vu into a Blackmail for a single click.
For my part, as soon as PPVP went on MWL, I considered that the Comet Val deck didn’t have enough influence to function and stopped playing it. Comet Val without Comet is just Reg-Ass Val… Which is still good.
You’re giving up flexibility in deck construction for flexibility in play, in my opinion for Comet Val. Comet is not straight upside, but neither is it straight liability.
(The actual problem with Comet is that it’s in the wrong bloody faction. When the hell has Shaper cared about events, besides PPVP Kate. They’re all about Hardware/Programs. Anarch’s about Events/Programs and Criminal is Events/Resources… Bah. I shall continue picking those nits for a while yet, I’m sure.)
Hence the (ideally), because you’d prefer to play it with PPVP up.
If you count Lucky Find without PPVP as 6 credits, then the numbers become better, going from 2:6 to 2:9 with Comet. (50% increase instead of a 33% increase. Still the same literal increase of 3, though.)
Look, I’m pretty sure you’re right, I did stop playing Comet Val for a reason after all, but Comet as a card does have interesting uses; like most things in Competitive Netrunner, however, it’s killed by setup time. Adding another card and 4 credits to PPVP setup time is usually the straw that breaks the camel’s back. (Dumblefork/RegAss Val remove that card and don’t bother with PPVP anyway, so set up faster. PPVP Kate pre-MWL set up faster because again, they didn’t run a Console that they needed for the engine to start working. And Kate discounts.)
Fear the Masses is actually the new card that makes Comet an more interesting choice, as the more powerful things you can do with Comet involve getting ‘free’ Run events. (See: Ken Tenma) Though, when I played it pre-MWL, I used the Cutlery suite to get those runs, so I’m not entirely convinced that Comet Val is good again.
May I ask, which form of Valencia is the most well rounded? I’m going to a meta without any information at all and would like to consider a balanced version.
PS I love R&D attackers such as Keyhole and Medium, also love DLR.
In my opinion, a modified version of the deck that D1en took at worlds has a ‘fair’ matchup against most decks. It’a good stuff anarch deck with smc and clone chip ( and a Levy if you can squeeze it).
Here’s the Val deck I’ve been on. Dumblefork shell is still the best, until some crazy meta shakeup happens.
The flexible slots are 1x turntable, 1x scrubber, 1x clone chip. You could throw in some combination of career fair (although I think the deck has plenty of econ), employee strike, film critic, clot, or even blackmail. I’m personally against blackmail in the dumblefork shell because it goes against your game plan of being able to Faust in anywhere, and then punishing rezzes by destroying ice. That said, blackmail does have a lot of teeth early and just the threat of it does a lot.
The biggest influence splashes are rebirth and e3. Rebirth into ed kim is an amazing card vs palana. It makes running hq much more profitable, and medium digs can go a lot deeper. I’ve rebirthed into Eddie at least half of the time I’ve drawn rebirth. Most of the other times, rebirth is a very cheap and powerful scrubber, but quetzal (especially with e3) can do lots of work vs a blue sun that thinks they can lean on Navi mumbad city grid.
E3 is a slightly controversial card, but is definitely worth a lot. In Valencia, the bad publicity means that you save a card every run if you hit a multisub ice. This allows you to run a lot more often and more aggressively. Obviously, it gives hb, and any other deck packing eli/ichi, fits. One of the most important things that I feel is overlooked is that it allows you to conserve a few David counters vs otherwise problematic ice like assassin, curtain wall, and ichi 2. (not to mention turning little engine into a never-rez ice!)
With Desperado and PPVP off MWL, I can make this Event-Spam oriented Val again… (Original used Comet instead of Desperado, but with Asset spam… Though losing Comet makes playing Day Job a whole lot harder. I may still run them instead of I’ve Had Worse, since no one’s Scorch’ing now, just Boom all day long.)
6 out of 7 Anarch decks in Worlds top 16 were Valencia. From what I’ve seen on the stream, they were aggressive and happy to run a lot, trying to use Mining Accident for more bad pub tokens. Is any of those lists published somewhere?
