Martian Thunder

So this went 3-0 at a small GNK today and took me to the top of the class. A few notes: Dummy Box is my last, best hope against Boom/High Profile target. Once you have it, they probably can't chew through your Paparazzi. As a one-off it's probably not a good plan and I suspect the influence could be better spent on something else.

Rebirth is a little secret sauce. Liza Talking Thunder: Prominent Legislator generates her tags so quickly that she can often rebirth into something more productive. Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter is the obvious example but Los: Data Hijacker or 419: Amoral Scammer have their uses.

The rest is pretty obvious but one thing to realise: you don't need Counter Surveillance to win. She is rich, fast and oppressive with a bunch of options.

The three games.

First was against a Skorporate Town. I kept accidentally stealing agendas. Lost a Paragon, Tycon, Femme and two turtles. Because he had no tag punishment and I didn't need my resources, I let a Corporate Town ride for a whole game. Rebirthed into Los: Data Hijacker, attacked all his servers forcing him to rez a lot of ICE. By the end of the game I had dragged him down from about 40 credits to being too poor to rez his Archer. Never saw counter surveillance the whole game.

Second was against a Psychographics CTM. I trashed his assets early and Diverted his Funds to keep him poor. Stole some agendas off R&D. Resorted to putting a Femme Fatale on the resistor protecting HQ: it was a hilariously big resistor. My main goal was to keep him too poor to score a psychographics until a 12 deep Counter Surveillance sealed the deal.

Final was against a Punitive SSO. He struggled for early ICE while Liza went to town on his centrals. He managed to score a Hollywood Renovation but credit-kiting an Anima narrowed his options and two big Counter Surveillance digs won the game from R&D.

Looking back at it: Liza and Paragon is terrifyingly quick. I didn't like Aumakua as my main breaker because it could take a long time to recover from purges. Interdiction was for any cheeky Crisium Grids or as an emergency response to scarcity but I only drew it once and never needed it. It had previously been Emergency Shutdown.