The Gaping Maw

Eolas 210

The Gaping Maw or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wasteland

If you love maximizing Shaper BS then this is the deck for you.

Economy

The key to using Wasteland to its full effect is to realize that it doesn't just improve Aesop's Pawnshop. Shaper has a lot of good effect cards (Clone Chip, Self-modifying Code, DaVinci, Bookmark) which allows you to get the 1-3 from your Wasteland triggers on the Corp's turn. In addition, the self-trash trigger on Armitage Codebusting and Daily Casts will also give you extra money from Wasteland if you haven't been able to find your Aesop's Pawnshop yet.
Of course Aesop's Pawnshop is no slouch when you can sell anything for up to 6. You can get a surprising amount of burst money by using a ability at the end of the Corp's turn (i.e. Clone Chip a Harbinger) gaining 3 and then sell something for 6 at the start of your turn.
Harbinger has excellent synergy with both Wasteland and Aesop's Pawnshop as it can provide up to 12 over two turns for 1 or less. The 0 and 0 cost makes it an excellent target for Hayley's ability trigger as you don't have to worry about clogging up your . It can even sit out as Power Shutdown protection for your loaded Bookmark.
Also, with all the money you can make, I've not missed Sure Gamble at all.

Draw

I opted for a sizeable amount of draw effects to try to counter the somewhat combo-y nature of the deck. 3 Diesel, 1 Quality Time, 3 Drug Dealer, and the occasional draw from Astrolabe allows you to power through the deck quite quickly. Drug Dealer has been well worth the influence as you have quite a few ways to dodge the start of turn credit loss. In addition, casting a Drug Dealer into the ever-hungry maw of Apex when he gets inconvient is always satisfying. The 6 gain makes them into a much more efficient (albeit slower) version of Earthrise Hotel. Drawing at the start of the Corp's turn combined with a loaded Bookmark makes you pretty resilient to Scorched Earth or Ronin plays as well.

Breakers

I originally had 2 Cerberus "Lady" H1 which worked rather well, but with clever Corp counterplay you can find that the power counters can disappear quite quickly. The rarely seen Snowball provides an influence free way to have a permanent barrier breaker that deals with low strenth or stacked barriers. The amount of money this deck makes means the one less strenth compared to Corroder is much less of an issue and you still have the one Cerberus "Lady" H1 if needed.
Atman is just awesome and I see no reason to not include at least one in any Shaper deck.
Datasucker makes everything better and is necessary for supporting the single Mimic.
I need to playtest more to see if the extra strength benefits of Gordian Blade outperforms the smaller install cost of ZU.13 Key Master, but it hasn't been a huge hinderance so far.

Notable Cards

DaVinci

This card is just plain awesome. It gives Shapers a Desperado style effect in faction that allows you to install ANY type of card at instant speed, not just programs. Plus, the effect triggers Wasteland! Being able to install a R&D Interface for nothing and then gain 3 is a pretty amazing feeling.

Bookmark

This card is a little slower than being able to just slam down a Plascrete Carapace against Weyland or NBN Butchershop. The upside is that it allows you to deal with net damage as well as meat damage. You can also sell it Aesop's Pawnshop for a tidy profit when you don't expect any damage. The other key feature of Bookmark is to protect the single Levy AR Lab Access from being pinged out of your hand as this deck runs way too few events to warrant the inclusion of Same Old Thing.

Other thoughts

I worry about the fast advance matchup with no HQ multiaccess and no Clot. Being able to find the influence for either one of these could be very helpful.
Finding room for one or two Film Critic would improve certain matchups as well. Film Critic also would spread thin any connection hate cards (i.e. Snatch and Grab or Contract Killer).
Technical Writer could be an interesting swap for either Daily Casts or Armitage Codebusting, but I am wary of making the economy even more reliant on multiple cards.

12 comments
13 Oct 2015 Tungsten

Love the deck. Definitely going to try it out once D&D drops.

13 Oct 2015 Bigguyforyou518

I do think it's definitely worthwhile to invest in a Clot. Obviously it stops fast advance shenanigans, but more importantly, it buys you crucial time to set up your gigantic rig. Also worth noting that it will play into your Wasteland combo, since you're the one that trashes it when a purge goes off.

13 Oct 2015 Bigguyforyou518

Everything in your deck is super cheap, so with Hayley's ability, it seems like you'll probably never get a problematic Quality Time. Maybe put 2 more of those in and phase out the Drug Dealers to free up influence?

13 Oct 2015 Eolas

@Tungsten Glad you like it :D
@Bigguyforyou518 Thanks for the feedback. I'm reluctant to get rid of the Drug Dealers just because of how well they work in the deck. I might drop one Drug Dealer and one Datasucker for the Clot and add in a Quality Time and see how that goes. Also, that's a neat point regarding the self-trashing of Clot!

14 Oct 2015 LSK

No credit to netrunnerdb.com ?

14 Oct 2015 gandrasch

I play a similar deck, but with Corroder/Dagger/Study Guide suite and Multithreader.

I'm not totally sold on DaVinci and the Levy in this deck. Do you use it often?

14 Oct 2015 ihmcallister

I used Street Peddler over Data Dealers for a while and found it was a lot faster, with few events that might be a good call.

14 Oct 2015 Eolas

@LSK Considering the deck idea started with me wishing I could bring Aesop's Pawnshop into Apex: Invasive Predator, not really no. Glad to see that I'm not the only one toying with the idea though.
@gandrasch Levy AR Lab Access won't always be useful, but if the game goes long or if you are facing Jinteki Thousand Cuts I'm definitely glad to have it. DaVinci is great for allowing you to stay aggressive checking servers while at the same time not slowing down the rig building. I am always happy to see DaVinci in my hand.
@ihmcallister I like the idea of Street Peddler in this deck as it provides yet another effect, but I guess I would worry too much about trapping multiple Wasteland on one.

15 Oct 2015 RaidJTC

Good list! I had fun running something similar for the past week or so. Just a quick clarification question though. Does pawning harbinger the first time turn off Hayley's ability? It says that you install it facedown and thus it is an installed card with no type. Me and a few people I discussed this with seemed to think so.

15 Oct 2015 Eolas

@RaidJTC I didn't think about this interaction originally but I'm not entirely sure to be honest. I guess since the Hayley trigger is simply when a card is installed, it doesn't matter that the no facedown Harbinger has no type or cost and it would eat the trigger. A bit of a bummer, but terribly difficult to play around.

15 Oct 2015 Eolas

@RaidJTC I didn't think about this interaction originally but I'm not entirely sure to be honest. I guess since the Hayley trigger is simply when a card is installed, it doesn't matter that the now facedown Harbinger has no type or cost and it would eat the trigger. A bit of a bummer, but not terribly difficult to play around.

26 Oct 2015 fiveplus5is55

Hey, really neat synergies are there in your deck, I was especially surprised on how useful DaVinci is. But Wasteland is just not worth it to pay influence. To let me explain:

Wasteland is best compared as a drip econ like Underworld Contacts or Data Folding. But it is ever hardly better than them. Sure you can trigger it sometimes on your oponents turn, and therefore twice , but often especially early, none.

You might gain 15+ creds on the first Wasteland you installed over the course of a game, but that doesn't mean this card gave you +13 credits for 2 clicks.

I went into great detail in my Sunny deck on why Data Folding sucks in her decks. So you can apply the same reasoning i explained there to every drip econ. However, i do think drip econ is best in Shaper as they have the ability to stall games with clot for instance

Compare it to a Pre-Paid Kate deck: If a game goes long, and you could even Levy, how many credits did you gain with your burst econ? How many credits was each Pre Paid worth? you prob gained 70+ credits off your sure Gambles, Lucky Finds and Dirty Laundries.

To me drip econ is often a trap in todays games. And in here we paid 6 influence for it.