Okay, let’s get real here: Adam is defined by his directives. Use them. Embrace them. Emulate love towards them. Don’t look at them as limitations or restrictions, look at them as what they are: a prebuilt mini-rig from turn 1. Be smart. Be careful. Be Aggressive. You’ll wonder how you functioned without them.
Before your directives though, we need to get your consciousness online with Brain Chip. This one card enables everything else with Adam. It’s your brain. Mulligan for it. Dig for it. Feed it. A single agenda point stolen gets you out of Scorched Earth death range, and everything beyond that lets you spiral out of control.
The First Directive: Safety First. This directive will take care of all of your draw power for most of the game. Be smart about your last click each turn - if you’re at 3 cards, consider installing something - you’ll want to install it anyways, and then your Directive will keep you moving forward and keeping momentum. The lowered hand size isn’t that big of a drawback, honestly. Turn 2 Scorched Earth is a worry, of course, but that requires the Corp have some way of tagging you - Sea Source, Midseason Replacements, etc. These all need the corp to have more money than you do, and need you to make successful runs - just play carefully. But you HAVE to run, due to your Second Directive, right? Then get the corp to rez ice and bounce off of it - then spend the rest of your first turn getting economy or installing protection. Slow down your play, but don’t lose your aggression. Don't want to play slow? Install New Angeles City Hall and become untaggable. Public Sympathy and Brain Cage are tempting, but they are merely useless derivatives of your Brain Chip and should be disregarded. You must defeat the Corporation. You must reveal their agendas. You must run.
The Second Directive: Always Be Running. Now, I see a lot of people see the fact that you MUST run as a huge drawback. This is what you should be doing. You were built to run. This is not a drawback - this is your nature. Being able to spend to get through ANY piece of ice is absolutely insane. Abuse this power. Get access as much as humanly possible. Upgrade yourself with e3 Feedback Implants and no ice can stop you. You’re not losing tempo - you’re forcing the corp to respond to you. Force them to install ice. Force them to rez ice. Force them to try to stop you.
The Third Directive: Neutralize All Threats. This is your powerhouse. This is how you force the corp to try to stop you. Of course you must trash what you access. You must overthrow the corporation. You must cripple them. Accessing two cards off the bat allows you to apply equal early game pressure to both R&D and HQ. Get an early R&D Interface installed, and you’ll force the corp to get two ice on both R&D and HQ - and, of course, any scoring remotes. That’s six ice that the corporation must install and rez to stop you. THAT is losing tempo. You want to trash their econ assets. You want to put the corporation into a state of panic. You do not want the corporation to feel safe.
Embrace yourself. Embrace your Directives. Embrace your aggression. You are a bioroid. You are efficient. You are Adam.
