I will find you . . .

chasertalk 46

I've been playing a Cambridge PE deck for the better part of 6 months. I won a local tournament with 25+ players and my corp went undefeated, with 5 straight flatlines. You could say I'm partial to this archetype.

A player in the local meta has been trying to make this identity work and I'd like to throw my proverbial hat in the ring.

The Basics: I feel like 9 of your influence is immediately taken. 6 for Snare! and 3 for Jackson Howard. Snare! protects your HQ and R&D and Jackson Howard needs no explanation in a deck with 13 agendas. The remaining 6 is where you decide how your deck will play. I feel the best options include Ghost Branch, Psychic Field, Cerebral Overwriter, and Data Raven.

I've chosen Cerebral Overwriter and Ghost Branch for my particular deck. Psychic Field is an incredible card but I was mainly using it as a deterrent against checking un-advanced remotes and thereby better protecting un-rezzed Dedicated Response Teams. I feel Snare! is enough for that regard. And it's probably more important to make running double-advanced remotes more precarious, hence my choice for Cerebral Overwriter and Ghost Branch. Finally, Data Raven has such synergistic potential but I suspect it will ultimately stand as an ETR ice the runner will simply avoid, and Weyland has plenty of other options in that regard.

In playing the deck, a great many of your turns will simply be: install-advance-advance. This is a stark departure from a Cambridge PE deck which tends to favor installations without advancement. This change will make the stolen agendas a bit more painful but puts you in a much better position should your agendas survive. Twice advanced Vulcan Coverup and Posted Bounty can simply be saved until the opportune turn. I'll admit, this is the hardest thing I had to learn in playing Cambridge PE - just because the runner ignored an agenda the turn after you installed it, you shouldn't immediately score it out. The fewer things you rez, even to score, means less information for the runner and quickly puts them in a more precarious position. The exceptions would be Project Atlas for a token, The Cleaners for the extra damage, and False Lead for click compression.

It's also worth noting you should aim to stay at a 9 credit minimum at all times. This gives you the leeway to survive a single Account Siphon and still trigger Snare!. Furthermore, you'll want to review the timing windows for rezzing cards during a run because of Dedicated Response Team. It's not as willy-nilly as triggering a House of Knives counter and you don't want to make a silly mistake.

Finally, if you're having trouble developing the steely exterior necessary to pilot this deck and unnerve the runner (and meditation isn't your cup of tea), store the monologue below in the back of your mind and let the gravel in Neeson's voice chisel your soul into a monolith of cold granite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZOywn1qArI

1 comments
6 Feb 2015 Myriad

Not that far off from my Argus deck right now. Although I am packing Veterans to do away with my bad pub that I will inevitably accumulate.

I do worry about your low strength ice. Hive, Shadow, Enigma and Errand Boy all are low strength and the meta right now is pretty in favor of Parasucker I think. I suppose Jinteki PE has been packing low strength ice since Cambridge, but most of this ICE is less taxing and dangerous.

With that said, Shadow, Taurus, Hive and Checkpoint seem to be the right call to me. Checkpoint especially is such a potent piece of ICE so long as you do not give yourself too much bad pub, or you put a gags iress in front of it.

My last few thoughts are untested and vary the playstyle of the deck from install, advance, advance to more of a shell game style like NEARPAD. GRNDL seems like the right call if you are going install, advance, advance. But changing those out for PAD Campaigns and perhaps trying to splash a midseasons or two in, enabling the threat of scorched or constant pressure from DRT unless they shake their tags. Although this eats all of your influence, it would basically lock the runner out of the game for a time. A single Midseasons is pretty easy to tutor when you are running Atlas.

Food for thought. Thanks for the list.