Manta Grid Vacation

Income Tax 357

VISIT MAGNIFICENT MANTA

It's always the perfect time for a family vacation and a Manta Luxury Unlimited® vacation includes more of everything for everyone, from every land and water sport under the sun, to anytime gourmet dining at up to 20 specialty restaurants, activities and amenities for all ages, and luxurious family-friendly suites. You'll find more inclusions, more choices and more ways to enjoy your time together.

Beaches Re-imagined: Our all-inclusive Resort is set along the most beautiful, unspoiled and alluring white-sand beaches in the whole Caribbean. You'll find we are located on the calmest, most protected shoreline and that's completely by design.

Perfection That Can't Be Replicated: Each family is assigned a personal Jeeves Model Bioroid, whose sole purpose is to make your special vacation the most memorable ever. The Jeeves handles every detail of your vacation with unobtrusive grace. From drawing a rose-petaled candlelit bath to pressing your wardrobe, whatever your whims, your bioroid butler is there to make sure every moment of your stay is beyond flawless.

The Secrets Within: We know the New Angeles coastline intimately and are ready to let you in on all the secrets that paradise has to offer...

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According to the World of Android book, the Manta district is HB-owned beachfront property that caters to the upper class. Not all that surprising, seeing that HB has robo-butlers and luxury hoppers. It's easy to see that they'd branch into the resort business, banking on declining interest in cloned butlers following the election in Mumbad. It's neat that FFG is releasing a card related to Manta now, especially given the scarcity and financial instability caused by the 23 Seconds incident.

In the spirit of this bit of flavor, I've built this deck. I realize that it's not as optimized as it could be (Rebranding Team? No SanSan?), but I'm having fun with it.

Game Plan

Prey on the runner's impulse buying. They're flush from that Khantract, so surely they can afford to buy a new PAD or a diet Astrobar. The runner will spend and spend until their money is gone. Money spent on trashing your assets is money not spent on:

To score, simply install in a strong scoring remote. Most of the agendas are 4/2s, so you can bluff all of them to be an NAPD (which you should almost never score unless it's match point). With the help of Jeeves and Manta, you can never advance most of the agendas. If you have Jeeves on the table and get a proc of Manta, you can actually score them out of hand.

Salsette Slums got you down? Just buckle down and build a scoring remote. They've still got to pay the clicks and credits to trash your stuff. Use that time to score your agendas.

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Notable Cards

Jeeves Model Bioroids: Such a flexible card. Score 4/2s? Sure. Purge virus counters? Gain a pity click to do something. Got a bunch of assets from your Sensie draw? Install all the things, then fire off a couple of installs from your Friends to seal the deal.

Manta Grid: This card forces the runner to play differently. Given how poor it forces the runner to play, they either waste 5 credits trashing it or spend time building up to become wealthy. In that time, you strike.

Clone Suffrage Movement and Sensie Actors Union: Only a 2 credit tax you say? Yeah, sure. Then they come back with Friends, eating away 2 more credits and a click. Eventually, the runner decides to let you have your board state instead of fight the march of commercialization.

Rebranding Team: Best if scored early, which is a strong possibility if you have Sensie up. Once it's scored, each trashed asset has a hidden cost of draining the runner of an additional cred on rez. With Friends, the runner soon learns that it's sometimes better to let the corp keep their toys.

Friends in High Places: The card that brought Spark back. Go ahead, trash my Product Placements. They shall return, stronger than before. It's even better to recur ice that died to Parasite or Cutlery, since most of it is pretty affordable.

IP Block: An honorable mention. Without link, paying through the trace is like breaking it with Paperclip/Corroder. If you manage to land Hard-Hitting News, all the better.

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Credit to the creator of Griftopolis for the initial deck idea. Hopefully, you don't see this as too grindy. I tried to come up with a deck that could go either asset spam -or- pseudo-glacier.

21 comments
17 Jan 2017 Mechanoise

Dammit you stole my idea!! :P My decklsit also contains Manta Grid and Virtual Tour in Spark, but your decklist is a lot more geared to leveraging the ID's ability with the never-used-Rebranding Team. Very well done, I look forward to trying this at my local meta and see how much better it is than my original build!

17 Jan 2017 grimsleeper

Thanks for sharing the list. I saw this deck on CodeMarvelous' stream and thought it was a very creative idea and I cannot wait to try it out myself.

18 Jan 2017 YankeeFlatline

this deck is hella fun

18 Jan 2017 Income Tax

I'm glad you're all having fun with the deck!

19 Jan 2017 Feed

Any reason why you're running HHN with no tag punishment over something like Ad Blitz?

19 Jan 2017 Feed

Also why NAPD Contracts over something like Project Beale when Valencia is everywhere?

Just picking your brain :)

19 Jan 2017 YankeeFlatline

Thinking of switching one PAD for a NASX. What about Midseasons/Best Defense to strike back against remote luck or Sifr?

20 Jan 2017 Income Tax

@Feed: HHN is more a taxing operation. No one wants to keep tags against NBN, especially when they want to keep running that sweet Temüjin Contract/Net Mercur train rolling. If I could fit in some decent tag punishment (Closed Accounts and The All-Seeing I come to mind), I would. Only issue is finding where to put it.

As for Ad Blitz, I'd slot it in if I changed up the agenda suite. Net Quarantine and Remote Data Farm come to mind. There was a draft of this deck that tried AB with the whole Aryabhata Tech route, but it kept crashing against high link runners. With NQ out, I'd be willing to give it another shot.

I hate Beale because it's just a blank 3/2. NAPD is a tax that, if things go according to plan, the runner simply can't afford. No one wants to hit an NAPD Contract and a Mumbad Virtual Tour on the same run. Like I said. they're more for the runner than for you to actually score.

@YankeeFlatline: I like the swap for NASX. Just be careful against Rumor Mill. If they drop it, the deck will grind to a halt until you can get a Scarcity of Resources on the board.

Like I was telling Feed, I'd love to slot some punishment operations against the runner. Hell, Financial Collapse might even be fun. Only problem is slotting them in. I might want to try dropping the Hedge Funds to see how it went, but they just smooth out the econ of the deck in the face of Whizz.

20 Jan 2017 Income Tax

@Feed: Oh man, I was up way too late last night. I thought you were talking about Media Blitz. As for Ad Blitz, I didn't think of it. With a scored Rebranding Team, it turns into Super Friends (new deck name!).

20 Jan 2017 Income Tax

I've been testing the following changes to good effect:

-1 Manta Grid, -1 Hedge Fund, +1 Ark Lockdown, +1 Best Defense

22 Jan 2017 YankeeFlatline

Working on an adaptation of this into an RP deck, so far I won a game

4 Feb 2017 YankeeFlatline

beat two salsette decks in a row with the newest version of this, feeling good

10 Feb 2017 Omadon

This decklist makes my toes curl. I must build it immediately.

13 Feb 2017 BizTheDad

I played against this deck. First I was shocked at how much money I got given I play a run-happy criminal deck. Then I was shocked at how much money I didn't have given I had trashed anything and everything. Yeah, I overindulged on the endless PAD's and Astrobars...

Playing against this made me realize (I don't know why I didn't realize it earlier) that I need to think long and hard about what I should and shouldn't trash now that FIHP is out.

14 Feb 2017 YankeeFlatline

@BizTheDad you gave me a 7 click turn when you medium spammed an R&D with Manta Grid on it without any credits lol

14 Feb 2017 BizTheDad

No comment.

18 Feb 2017 Income Tax

@Omadon: Glad you like it, haha. Tell me how it works!

@BizTheDad: That's exactly the sort of decision making I wanted to encourage!

@YankeeFlatline: A 7-click turn is beauty in motion. Oh, by the way, did you publish that RP list?

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One last set of adjustments (what I'm running on Jinteki right now):

These changes grant an additional path to victory through SanSan (another must trash FA tool) and more things to recur with Friends.

Weak points:

  • NASX and Special Offer. Might be worth rolling back to just PAD #3 and a legitimate piece of ice.

  • Friends #3. Sometimes, I don't want a bunch of Friends clogging my hand. Potential replacements include Beanstalk Royalties (Account Siphon recovery) and Enforcing Loyalty (I really don't like Şifr).

18 Feb 2017 Income Tax

Addenum: Can't drop Friends #3 for non-HB cards. Forgot about that sweet Jeeves alliance requirement. Maybe toss in a Green Level Clearance for cycle or a cheeky Rototurret.

18 Feb 2017 Omadon

@Valranoth - just wondering. Have you considered Full Immersion Rec Studio? The interaction with Actors Union/Suffrage Movement is horrific, and it lets you occasionally score agendas out with an in faction ASH effect :>

That said - not entirely sure off the top of my head what I'd cut for them.

19 Feb 2017 Income Tax

@Omadon: I have tried it. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things holding it back.

  1. It exchanges that extra click pressure that multiple remotes forces on the runner for a higher trash cost. While this is normally a good thing, I find that most runners just trash the things on the studio rather than pay the extra cost to trash the whole shebang. Now if there was a card that reduced the number of cards they could access, then maybe we could get a stew going.
  2. Imp exists.
19 Feb 2017 YankeeFlatline

@Valranoth re: RP deck, no it sucked