[Standard 24.03] Meeting of Minds... in a Café

Deck idea

Instead of assembling a revolutionary crew to liberate Brazil, we invite many unique Connections to chill together in Pauleʼs Café to run a... freelancing job? idk lore pls.

Perks with Pauleʼs Café:

• Credit factory: Bigger credit discounts than DZMZ Optimizer. Installing Conduit for just 1c sure sounds nice.
• Click efficiency: Clicklessly host your installs with Juli Moreira Lee.
• Programs on demand: Mid-run installs great with transient credits (Trick Shot and Overclock). Authentic Shaper toolbox experience.
• Pseudo hand size: Hosting programs/hardware you may not need yet so that you can save credits and draw into events or resources greatly helps consistency of the deck. Off-turn LilyPAD proc (no Paule discount/Coalescence on Corp's turn though) might save you from some kill combos.
• Cool tricks: Passing through an outer Winchester like it's nothing, then installing a Cleaver to break the innermost barrier is just too fancy for SMC or Simulchip.

Weaknesses with Pauleʼs Café:

• It's a resource: Weak to tag punishment.
• It's a resource: Under the Bus (even though it's not a connection), Wake Up Call or Working Prototype wrecks. Don't host more than you can install on the Café if you suspect to get tagged / prototype'd.
• It's a resource: Resource-trashing ICE like Hammer or Colossus will ruin the game plan without Physarum Entangler.
• Takes many turns to set up. Harder to contest early compared to regular SMC Lat (e.g. Ride or Dive). Thus deck is more reliant on card draw: Spec Work, LilyPAD and Dr. Nuka Vrolyck and Lat: Ethical Freelancer are there.

Building the Café crew

To get the full discount out of Pauleʼs Café, we need 4 unique connections (LilyPAD, Buzzsaw, Conduit, K2CP Turbine). Aesop’s Pawnshop and Juli Moreira Lee are our irreplaceable combo pieces, Dr. Nuka Vrolyck is great card draw (double Diesel with Juli), and we still need 1-2 more mainstays when Nuka and Juli depletes.

DJ-Steve and Miss Bones are universal good cards in Standard. In NSG formats, Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra, “Pretty” Mary da Silva and Eru Ayase-Pessoa are also worth considering. (Note: Scrubber is not unique)

Tricky piloting

The early lines to contest remotes are: (Muse ->) SMC -> Cleaver for barriers and Muse -> Entangler for bypasses. Dangerous ICE to facecheck into are ones that can tag and/or trash resources: Hammer, Virtual Service Agent, Ansel 1.0 etc., so one should avoid checking ICE last click.

Cyberdelia is there for MU and sustain in a long game. With 7MU we can have our full Conduit rig while recurring Muse-Coalescence with DJ Steve to extract full Pawnshop value - that's 3c to gain 10 over 2 turns! But don't chase the full rig against rushy decks, use Pauleʼs discount on breakers/Muse instead.

In playtesting this deck is the weakest to Oppo Research. One greedy Bellona steal and your board is gone in 2 turns. Sometimes even if the Corp is rushing, we must be patient. To play control requires healthy capital and safety of board.

Cards to (not) consider

The Class Act: To set up the engine, we need quality draw. But the catch 22 is that to get quality draw we need to find the single copy of TCA. Ultimately the 5 influence is better spent on other cards, say Miss Bones and the almighty Physarum Entangler.

Environmental Testing: The obvious include in all the Muse - Coalescence decks. However our weakness is early game when the engine needs to be set up. The 3c upfront cost was quite prohibitive when we also need to install other resources the hard way.

“Pretty” Mary da Silva: It's cheap, it's powerful with Trick Shot, it's a unique Connection, but ultimately it's a win-more card that doesn't help the set up much.

Deep Dive with Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra: Great against asset spam, but we are already pressuring with Conduit that Deep Dive feels unnecessary. Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra in the late game is good to refine excess Juli Moreira Lee counters into pure clicks.

No Free Lunch: It's greedy to not run this against Public Trail influence wise, yet running just 1x means it's inconsistent to find early, when our econ is most fragile.

Rejig: A solid option, competes with Overclock. Personally I valued the click compression of Overclock having a run attached to it for earlier aggression, but Rejig could be better instead if Public Trail or Under the Bus is prevalent.

Diesel: Similar reasoning to Rejig. Spec Work is preferred for click compression, but honestly attractive for consistency reasons. May cut SMC/Overclock for a couple copies.

Cyberdelia: Pauleʼs Café overlaps with DZMZ in terms of installation discount, but we still need more MU for the Pawnshop in the late game (3 breakers, Conduit, Turbine, then some spare for Muse-Coalescence recursion/Trojans etc.), and extra drip sustain. Very worth considering when it's installable for just 1c.

Chameleon with Cybertrooper Talut: Great for early game pressure, works beautifully with Muse too. However, its biggest problem is not being able to handle subtype-specific ICE like Virtual Service Agent and Hammer.

Cupellation: We are weak against tags, and the worst form is Oppo Research. Cupellation can deal with key assets/upgrades without fear of retaliation, improve HQ runs, and in a pinch sell it away.