I think I would agree that the variance is a definite negative of this deck. However, it appears the negatives of CT and this are opposite of one another.
CT can get her rig up quickly and ping centrals like no one’s business, but when it makes a big Indexing or Legwork run, it can flop spectacularly. If the game runs long, it is stuck making random accesses until luck of the draw gives you a legwork or indexing. In other words, bad draws at the end of the game can kill it.
This deck takes longer to get the rig out and is susceptible to bad draws at the end of the game, but once it is out, it is full force ahead consistently. Post-levy, your cards are mostly for making money, blowing stuff up, and for taking damage. You don’t care quite so much what you draw late game because your multiacces is always there.
As you can tell, I like it. It is thematic and works reasonably well. I look forward to what OaC does to it.
Another tip for anyone playing this deck: do NOT throw away your breakers and keep a retrieval run hoping archives, that has been unguarded this whole game, will stay unguarded. The corp will notice your breaker in there and close that baby up. Take the hit on econ and just install it from hand.
Also, your deja vus are your lifeblood. Do not toss them into the garbage under any circumstances, even if you have your full rig out. All it takes is a miscalculation into a bad destroyer to sour your day.
good advice, generally. Sometimes I will risk it; if they drop the ball,it’s a huge cred swing. if they ice up (and it actually holds- I’ll still try the retrieval usually, and a lot of corps will try to get away with pup or taurus or other “throwaway” ice to discourage the RR) then I can deja vu and install it the hard way, but they’re stuck having spent ICE on archives.
another thing that matters is your local culture around runner trashes. around here few people ask to be read what each trash is; so you can “hide” your throwaway in a duggars turn or something. Not the most honest move, but I don’t think it’s against the rules per se as that info is still there for them if they ask. I definitely don’t recommend this in a tournament setting or against easily outraged players
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush! After my last game, retrieval run is not seen as income as much as it is ‘Oracle Insurance’. That being said, it is actually pretty cool that even a ‘failed’ Oracle trashing a Torch creates a 6c profit for the runner.
In my few games, an early Oracle can be more of a liability, though it is more useful to have her early than not. One time I archives was blocked, I didn’t have any breakers out so literally anything would stop a retrieval run. I got Oracle in my opening hand so I thought I was golden, but having to rely on only the 3x DejaVus for retrieval when there are six or seven things that can be dumped in the garbage is brutal. An early ETR ice on archives kills retrieval run dead and really slows this deck down. Unfortunately, you cannot treat the retrieval runs the same way you would treat the Test Runs/Eureka/Scavenges in the CT version.
Even if you just stuck to just three breakers, Duggers and two viruses (though I still wholeheartedly recommend Spinal Modem), I would rather have a couple of the non-events installed before I started using Oracle May every turn. Spending 11c and two clicks to pull out and install a breaker with Deja Vu is just too rough to risk the early Oracle misses.
One day, I hope Anarch will have a version of Hostage for Locations, as Duggers is truly the thing you want early. A Duggers turn is almost guaranteed to find something to install, and generate perhaps 6-10c worth of future Power Nap income when you discard all of the Doubles.
it would be rough if oracle, hostage, and duggars were all on the bottom of the deck. hasn’t happened to me yet, though; when you throw in inject, and the fact that an event deck has no problem overdrawing, it’s usually pretty easy to churn through cards and find that oracle.
This whole deck is very much a “lean into the variance” kind of deck. It all comes down to drawing a lot, and getting the most out of whatever weird set of tools the deck gives you.
3-1 with this so far, testing as written and with Spinal Modem. Only loss has been getting Scorched by Blue Sun. Spinal Modem does put in work. That said, how about Djinn as an alternative? Doesn’t provide the econ, but does both host and tutor for Medium and Nerve Agent.
As a replacement for Spinal modem, I wouldn’t recommend Djinn. I feel like it would make this more fragile. There is more program destruction than hardware destruction and two mills would make it a solid power shutdown target costing you three programs. Plus you keep your Spinal modem during an inject but would lose Djinn.
As anarch’s only tutor, it would be nice though. If you try it out, let me know how it goes.
Been testing spinal modem myself, and my my, does it ever put in work! thanks to @RustyKettle for the suggestion!
I tried pulling the blackmails, and then the very next two games was sorry I did. It’s niche, but god is it powerful when it works! That said, I traded the third frame job for a third singularity: Ash insurance is nice with spinal modem out.
Infiltration was solid, but with the memory to run both multi-access, I’ve slotted in two copies of surge and I’m not going back. it makes huge demo runs so much easier to land.
current list is -1 Frame Job, -2 vamp, -1 quest completed, +1 singularity, +1 spinal modem, +2 surge.
Singularity does not stop Ash’s trace firing (though the Corp may decide they have better things to do than rez Ash to run a trace to give you a brain damage when they know they’ll lose Ash and anything he’s defending to archives anyway.)
I am thinking about doing something crazy and cutting the hostage and something else for two quality times. I have found that the duggers turn is the biggest turning point in the early game. You’ll likely get mostly everything you need from using it once or twice, but if you don’t get duggers early you are stuck single-drawing over and over throwing away frame jobs. Having two mini-duggers that only take one click could help speed up the rig setup, though I also worry about the 3c cost.
I don’t know if the cost of getting Oracle out later and one less double is worth it though. There really isn’t anything else to cut unless I want to downgrade the breakers.
I did not think about this! though, to be fair, neither has any of the players I’ve faced…
Regardless: I think singularity, while obviously extremely niche, is more versatile than a third frame job.
the original list I tried had something along these lines; it’s ok, but as oracle is you main source of “steady” income, the 3 cr cost can be a big hurdle. i found myself clicking to draw with QT(s) in hand, simply because it was more efficient that clicking for money to spend on QT. If you can land a few early econ cards, the QTs do improve the flow a lot, but… well, like everything with this crazy deck, you have to decide which gamble you want to take.
I offset the cost of QT somewhat by swapping the Blackmails for infiltration. I must have horrible luck, but I loathe early Oracles. Installing Oracle seems to magically draw my expensive breakers to the top of the stack. If I get an early oracle, I tend not to use her unless I have a retrieval run in hand and archives is open. Same thing with Injects. A first click QT followed by as many econ operations as you can play and dumping doubles for later Power Nap food doesn’t seem like a bad first turn.
I have had some success with a version that incorporates some of the advice from the thread, but also drops Power Nap and some of the extra doubles in favor of Special Order and Test Run to make everything a bit smoother. Infiltration helps against PE, and Scrubbed is super helpful against RP (to cancel ELP).
O & C is out, and along with it a new version of WizBiz! Wouldn’t you just know it, it’s an Eater deck. In some ways it seems like a very similar deck, but the heart is the same: run super powerful events and a lightweight but powerful rig, and burn the Corps’ House down around them. Take a look over at NRDB or here on stimhack and let me know what you think, or take the deck for a spin and let me know how it performed!
