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Anima 1

I'm publishing this list in hopes that people might give me ideas and advice to help refine this deck. It has a strong late game, consisting of highly expensive-to-run central servers and the ability to chain score agendas out of hand, as well as loads of recursion to grab combo pieces as you need them, but the first several turns tend to be pretty weak.

The general strategy with this deck is to always be drawing, playing operations for econ, layering your defense to the point that it becomes taxing to run through (usually 2-3 ice deep), or scoring out of hand when the opportunity presents itself. Ideally, the first agenda scored will be an Efficiency Committee, which you can then leverage into scoring your 3/2 (install, advance, use committee token, advance twice using SanSan) or Mandatory Upgrades (Biotic Labor, install, advance x 2, use all 3 committee tokens, advance 4 times with a pair of SanSan shipments). If the requisite 2 biotic labor haven't shown up during an appropriate turn, but you do have 1 biotic labor and a shipment, using them to score a 3/2 agenda out of hand makes a lot of sense, especially if you then use Archived Memories or Jackson to put those combo parts back into play.

The ICE is intended to be both taxing and cost-effective, and so I have prioritized multiple sub ICE, as well as keeping most of my code gates strictly above 3 str. Minelayer is the only bit of ice that doesn't have multiple subs, but since he is the HB equivalent of Chum (rez for 1, break his sub or he'll make things more difficult for you in the future), he is still quite taxing for his cost. The pair of Wotan are meant to be paired with the Bioroid Efficiency Research and seated in front of HQ, which allow me to trade 3 coins in rez cost for either a big install plus 4 credit per run tax (femme) or a one time 12 credit burst (corroder), after which I'll usually use Archived Memories -> BER to rez the Wotan again.

The biggest problems this deck faces are Vamping decks and highly aggressive Atman decks. Neither has been very common of late, and even stopping Atman is only somewhat harder than usual, but those Vamp decks absolutely wreck me. If anybody has suggestions for such a situation, please do share.

2 comments
20 Dec 2013 Kable

You do know that you cannot play two Wotans, don't you? Anyway, "one turn superfasterthanlight advance 'till I win and your deserved victory is MINE" is a really solid style, and even though it seems quite tricky, it really isn't THAT tricky. Why don't you try to smash in some REALLY painful ICE, other than Wotan? Take away Enigma and Viper and kick in some Ichi 2.0 or even a Janus. Their surprise value and high pain totally repays the enormous costs. You have 13 ICE, dammit, make them count :)

21 Dec 2013 Anima

I know I can't use both Wotans at once, and that's fine - one on HQ is plenty. Losing Enigma and Viper would significantly weaken my early game (which is not superb already), and paying to manually rez such massive ice is really not a part of my game plan. That money goes toward making my HQ capacity effectively infinite until I've got my combos set to go.

It also seems like you've got my deck slightly confused with one of those single turn win decks, such as Doran's Blades on this site. With apologies if you didn't make that mistake, this is not such a deck. This one scores no more than 1 agenda per turn, and does so relatively cheaply -- though it is true that it can be as quick as Astro-chaining if the first agenda is an Efficiency Committee.

On post-game advice, I've decided to make a couple changes: -1 Mandatory Upgrades -1 Green Level Clearance +2 Profiteering

My opponent reasoned, and I agree, that by the time I'm ready to score Profiteering, the 3 extra BP won't be a huge problem. First, I'll be within about 4 turns of the game's end anyway. Second, I'll have most of my agendas in HQ, usually with a Wotan and 2 other taxing ice (Eli, Ichi) sitting on top. Third, it could help alleviate my weakness to Vamping and, to a much lesser extent, Siphons. Fourth, it's not like scoring a Mandatory Upgrades was ever more than just a fun trick when I've already got EC > SanSan scoring enabled.

Any thoughts on the matter?