Exam Term

Have you been counting my influence? Notice a suspicious lack of several points? Could be a Levy, could be a Gordian, could be a Paperclip.

It's none of those. Welcome to Exam Term. I hope you've studied.

The core concept is this: make boatloads of cash, as only a Criminal can, and slap down your breakers, while keeping your combo pieces in hand. Combo pieces in this case are:

Inside Job, because sometimes the nasty stuff is on the outside.

Spear Phishing, because sometimes the nasty stuff is on the inside.

Chop Bot 3000, because all those facedown cards have to be used somehow.

Keyhole, because we don't want them to be able to re-ice after our first Apocalypse.

Apocalypse, for the power turn.

We get there by drawing with Earthrise Hotel. Toss breakers into the bin if you have to, because we'll get them back later with Steve's ability. All the while, you want to be building cash with Account Siphon, Temüjin Contract, and the rest of your econ. Make absolutely sure you know what ice is over central servers, because this comes into play later on. Take note of how much the corp is drawing. The very presence of your breakers will make them overthink icing their scoring remote, but don't be afraid to contest it early, if you can. Against wide decks, use Security Testing and Desperado to increase your cash, managing assets as necessary.

Count cards. Seriously. Your first Apocalypse should come after around 20 cards drawn by the corp. If you're lagging behind, burn Aaron counters to find stuff if necessary. Again, we can recur stuff from the bin, if necessary.

The Power Turn

All set up? Good. Have a very careful think about what order you're going to hit the centrals in. If you do it right, you'll trash all your breakers, so they won't be turned face down by your final click. At this point, if there's a rezzed Sapper/Ichi somewhere at the bottom of a central, hit this last and let the sub fire. Hey, doesn't matter to us, right?

Now you've hit all three centrals, ask your opponent (politely) if they want to take any actions.

Expect this reaction:

Then proceed to wreck them.

Your next few turns should consist of a combination of locking down HQ, dropping Keyhole and milling them, getting the facedown cards into the bin with Chop Bot 3000, and gearing up for Apocalypse 2, Electric Boogaloo.

After the second Apocalypse hits, run HQ, and show them two Apocalypses. Break your enemy utterly. Of course, this is assuming you haven't won at this point.

Hate against this

Fast advance/rush. Unfortunately, this deck can suffer from issues of "Why can't I find my breaker?", which lets your opponent score out with impunity. Use Account Siphon and bypass effects to mitigate this, and a Legwork always helps to clear out HQ.

Crisium Grid, Mason Bellamy, Marcus Batty, Caprice Nisei, or anything that runs a risk of forcing you to spend more than 1 click on a run kills you. Mitigate this by hitting centrals often.

Flatline decks. Yeah, there's very little hate in here for flatline. Just play it carefully, and use replacement effects where possible to avoid the Midseasons.

Net damage. Oh man, does it suck. Hostile Infrastructure can just straight up kill you. Kakugo is irritating to deal with. Bioethics locks can be difficult to break. Maybe Caldera might find a home here one day.

Have fun with it. Oh, and it's called Exam Term, because that might as well be the Apocalypse.