Aggro DDoS MaxX (SC winner)

phette23 2279

There are three major MaxX archetypes right now: control, combo, and aggro. Control focuses on MOpus or Data Folding econ to out-money the corp with Turning Wheel & Maw as win conditions (@Nemamiah's Maybe Maw Doesn't Suck, @Shmeguy Bendy MaxX), combo is the Clanarch deck which uses big Counter Surveillance digs to win in very few runs, and this deck follows the aggro template of landing impactful run events early to win before the corp can fully defend themselves (e.g. @SimonMoon's Turbo Bird). I don't think aggro is necessarily the best of all these, they all have different matchups, but it is interesting that MaxX can be so diverse with all of these archetypes winning at different store championships.

All credit to CTZ who came up with the basic shell of this deck way back during Worlds testing. Money, draw events, heap breakers, 3x Indexing + 3x Wanton Destruction for win cons is so, so strong. In about half your games, you'll be able to land a turn one or two Indexing or Wanton Destruction to start the game out way ahead.

I run a bit more economy in my build & have some different ICE answers in Ret Run Femme, D4v1d, & DDoS. DDoS in particular is worth explaining: it's devastating when you can pressure two centrals with run events (sometimes also Archives if you've Rebirthed into Omar), works well with Indexing because it saves you multiple ICE encounters, & is well-suited to this meta where corps are either fast (Titan, Palana rush) or spread thin on ICE (CtM, Reversed Stinson CI). The decks with few ICE also tend to run very good ICE like Fairchild 3.0 & Data Raven so avoiding encounters altogether is extra valuable.

I think a lot of the common questions about lists like this one (why no En Passant? why no cutlery? why no Turning Wheel? why no tech cards like Mercs or Citadel Sanctuary?) can be answered with: because it's not fast enough. The deck is not primed to win a long game & trying to make it so would undoubtedly detract from its strengths. You rely on disruption like Hacktavist & Wanton to buy time as agendas pile up because your remote lock is so strong with the heap breakers, Stimhack, & DDoS. I actually did not Levy in any of my games at the store champs which makes me wonder if Levy is even the right restricted card.

4 comments
26 Feb 2018 SneakdoorMelb

This is awesome, nice one!

28 Feb 2018 AkAnderson

Looks good! I want to ask about Mining Accident, but I have a feeling it fits into the Not Fast Enough category. Any thoughts you'd care to share on it? I like it in this setting, especially with DDoS but not sure where it would even fit.

28 Feb 2018 phette23

Yeah I follow @SimonMoon's logic & think Mining Accident is better in Val where you make repeated runs, not a few high-impact runs. I'd love to fit them in but they're probably cards 47-49 behind the 3rd IHW & Inject.

1 Mar 2018 AkAnderson

That's totally fair. I think I'm just feeling nostalgic for DDoS + Siphon and need my fix. Anyway, I plan on playing a ton of this over the weekend, so thanks for giving me something to look forward to.