[startup] Cyber Sable

Satoshi 450

A fairly regular Sable deck which seems to have a decent matchup against most startup corps. The main idea is to get your cybernetics down early and use them to pressure the corp, particularly PAN-Weave, Zenit Chip JZ-2MJ, WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ in roughly that order of importance.

This started as a riff on Lewis P.'s sable deck.


Mulligan plan: Mulligan for important economy pieces like Pennyshaver, Info Bounty. If you have Smartware Distributor and an economy event or Cezve it might be okay. It's somewhat better if you don't have icebreakers in hand initially.


In Parhelion startup, there are very few cards that can directly trash hardware now (Winchester has rotated). The main one is Ansel 1.0 and you can click through that. If you don't have icebreakers in hand (which could be trashed by net damage), and sometimes even if you do, it generally makes sense to run your mark and face-check ice as long as you have a click, especially if you have Pennyshaver and/or Info Bounty down. Pressure the corp this way and force them to rez ice, and get money and clicks.

Your deck also runs fairly rich. Try to contest the corps early asset econ like Marilyn Campaign and Regolith Mining License, particularly if you have Pennyshaver. If you can deny this econ early it will make it hard for them to rez enough ice to deny you Info Bounty and PAN-Weave runs. It's okay if you spend more time running than drawing and installing once you have Info Bounty and Pennyshaver down, even if you don't have all your icebreakers yet.

Do not underestimate how impactful PAN-Weave is. If you can continuously use PAN-Weave on the corp for 3 or 4 turns it will seriously throw off many corp economies, as long as you are also denying Regolith Mining License. It is extremely painful for the corp to click three times for credits and then you steal one of those credits, every turn for several turns. You should do this if possible even if it's a net loss for you to run HQ, as long as you can make money elsewhere in the course of your turn.

I usually try not to use Mutual Favor until I've drawn at least one ice-breaker, but sometimes it's worth it to use it early anyways, particularly if it will enable PAN-Weave runs.

I usually install Zenit Chip JZ-2MJ in every matchup, even Thule Subsea: Safety Below. Against Thule Subsea: Safety Below my plan is to accept that I might take a second core damage at some point -- we will deny their econ so that they cannot rez ice or score, and win with R&D lock and get the Ontological Dependence's before they can draw and score them.

Our multiaccess plan is WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ backed up by The Twinning. Having tried Deep Dive, Conduit, and The Twinning, I like The Twinning the best in this deck. The reasons are that

  • Deep Dive is sometimes too expensive to land in a single turn, and can be lost to random net damage or effects like Crisium Grid.
  • Conduit puts on additional MU pressure and doesn't charge up as fast as The Twinning. It's usually good to have 2x Cezve installed to ensure you make money running your mark, and while you can run T400 Memory Diamond copies if you want, this adds another hurdle to setting up your rig and slows you down.
  • The Twinning is easy to charge using Cezve.
  • The Twinning can also give you multi-access in HQ which sometimes is important. It's never really worse than Docklands Pass (which is a good card), and sometimes better since it can also do what Legwork does, or it can stack with WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ to access 6 cards in R&D.
  • The Twinning is reasonably affordable in terms of credits and influence.

We have 2x of every cybernetic -- it is really important that we actually draw them and get them down so that we can get their effects, and to make Tremolo effective. This is a big difference between Lewis P.'s deck and many other Sable decks, which sometimes run only one of each cybernetic. It's really important to have two copies of these so that you can get them down before they are irrelevant, and so that if for example, meat damage from one of them trashed another, you still have a backup you can draw. (Sometimes Katorga Breakout ends up getting used for this.)

Compared to Lewis P.'s deck, there are a few key changes:

  • Going to 3 Pennyshaver and 3 Cezve is important, these cards are really important for making it cost effective to run your mark. The duplicates that you draw are usually sacrificed to meat damage from installing cybernetics.
  • I added Smartware Distributor, because sometimes in the early game, you get into situations where you decide it isn't worth it to run the centrals, because the corp has gotten too much money and it won't really set them back, and you may suffer tags and net damage, without having enough Info Bounty/Pennyshaver/Cezve goodness to make it worth it. In those cases, you will sometimes end up clicking for credits. I find that after adding Smartware Distributor I essentially never click for credits and it smooths out tough early games like this. Once you've built out enough board presence to start running again you usually forget about Smartware Distributor.
  • Hyperbaric is needed rather than Cat's Cradle, otherwise you simply lose to Pravdivost Consulting: Political Solutions decks with Mestnichestvo, or decks with Tollbooth. Hyperbaric works very well with Cezve and is consistently good across corps.
  • I cut a number of the events. Tread Lightly is good but I feel Inside Job sometimes has more impact, both early and late. Sometimes I have recurred Inside Job using Katorga Breakout in order to bypass a nasty ice on the remote, but it rarely makes sense to use Katorga Breakout to recur Tread Lightly, at least in my testing. In one version I tested, I kept many of these events and also added Prepaid VoicePAD, but ultimately I feel like if I have a Smartware Distributor and click on it several times, I don't need to have Prepaid VoicePAD also and Overclock also to give me credits. So, somewhat less events and support for playing those events -- Smartware Distributor is boring but consistent. It enables you to run aggressively early and still be able to bounce back and install your things without having to click for credits.
  • I went up to 3x Mutual Favor. I'm not sure it's needed but I think it's a safer option particularly if you lose one to random damage. It's helpful in Ob when you really want to find the second Carmen.

Against Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel., usually the end state is that you end up installing two copies of Carmen to defeat the Stavka + Hafrún nonsense. You will usually need to get creative about trashing things to Anvil, but you have a lot of duplicates of cards, and things like No Free Lunch and Smartware Distributor can often be fed to the Anvil. Be very wary of ZATO City Grid. You do have Katorga Breakout but usually I am very conservative about contesting the remote after the early game unless the corp is on low credits.

In some versions of the deck I had T400 Memory Diamond. In most corp matchups this doesn't help that much, it just means you can have a third Cezve. It helps a bit in the Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel. matchup because then you can have a full rig with 2x Cezve and 2x Carmen. Versus PE you really do want to install Zenit Chip JZ-2MJ for extra draw, and T400 Memory Diamond brings you back up to 5 hand size.

PE is definitely a hard matchup for this deck, but PAN-Weave pressure is a reasonable avenue towards victory. If you want to improve this matchup at the expense of others, you could try slotting Verbal Plasticity or Earthrise Hotel, possibly cutting a Pinhole Threading or something.

Given the soft econ denial plan, it would be cool to try running Emergency Shutdown to lean into that -- you can recur with Katorga Breakout. I didn't test this extensively.

You could try doing Red Team instead of Smartware Distributor, a lot of Nyusha "Sable" Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy decks are on Red Team. However, I find that this deck makes enough money without, and Smartware Distributor is just there to carry you through any rough patches in the early game when you can't make profitable runs. If you wanted to slot Red Team I would consider if you can also make more extensive changes to slot Career Fair and Earthrise Hotel as well. I think you don't really need this if you are on Pennyshaver and not Endurance.

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