One Smart Kid

@tonybluehose Now, I don't know much about this game, but my thoughts when looking at your list are:

1: Will you find your programs? Eventually you will, ofc, but you've got 3 cards to let you break sentries and 4 cards to let you break anything else - assuming you do find one of the ice breakers to begin with (otherwise the SMC will have to be used for one Or the other. And what happens if you run into a bad piece of ice early and they trash your Switchblade? (Oh, I just saw you got a Clone Chip - good one!)

2: Do you have enough economy? Kati Jones will take a while to get going even though you should find here easily. Sure Gamble can only do so much, and Trade-In won't do much for general economy. But I suppose it won't cost you much to keep the icebreakers going.

Maybe you've thought about this and feel confident - I'm just a noob trying to learn stuff :)

Cool deck btw. I like the ice breakers and all your hardware!

Hi @Ventrikel, This is definitely a rough draft, so thank you for your questions. The Data Folding + Lockpicks + Ghost Runners are going to supply a bit of econ, but I think that I might run into a problem in that department. In my mind it will be 1 or 2 from Data Folding, Click on Kati Jones, draw a card, make a run, do "something else." e3 implants should help too. Because this is so hardware intensive, the Trade-Ins are to look around for the Lock-Picks or the Silencers (selling the replicators after I'm done with them).

Keep in mind that this deck was put together yesterday. It will get tested for the first time tomorrow at my FLGS game night, so I'll come back and report how things work (and don't work).

Regarding your first question, the clone chip exists to save a program from bad news. Trade-In is going to be my "life-line" in situations where I can't find the things I'm looking for. Again, as an untested first draft deck, I'm super curious to see how this plays out.

As a general "piloting" rule, I like to give a deck about four or five games to see what I would immediately take out and then four or five more games to make sure I understand how to pilot it correctly. Right now, just from doing sample draws, I'm wondering of Dinosaurus needs to go...not sure if I'll want it/need it.

@tonybluehose thanks for that answer :) As I said, this much hardware is intriguing. I'll have to try it out myself sometime. I'll be checking back for your updates! Ps. I still think you'd need +SMC at least to get some reliable ice breaking ;D

How often do you find yourself installing a piece of hardware? Every turn? Every other turn? Two turns out of three? I'm just wondering whether Inside Man isn't better than Data Folding in this deck? They both have the same install cost, but Data Folding gains you potentially half as much money per turn. So if you install a piece of hardware every other turn they're equal, except that you can use Inside Man the same turn you install it. If you install hardware less often than this, Data Folding will be better.

My first time piloting this will be tonight at my LGS, @Popeye09, so I think you bring up a really good point. Data Folding is part of the economic package and since they don't "turn off" I like their use. But I can totally see myself clicking for credits early on to get my hardware off the ground.

I'll report back tomorrow with my thoughts. I'm pretty excited about the direction this take might go. Plus, using Lockpick to pay to break barriers is kinda funny :-)

Okay, after a fun evening of playtesting (and deck tweaking), there's a couple of changes that helped out. +1 Data Folding, +3 Diesel, +1 MemStrips, +1 Cloak...and then on the fence is +1 Clone Chip (though I'm not at sure at the expense of what...Clone Chip exists simply as a way to get out of jam since there are so few programs, but...well, just read below)

Taking out: -3 Dinosaurus, -2 Trade-In, and -1 e3 Feedback Implants

The deck, while one might presume that it is slow, it isn't. It feels more mid-rangey. I played four games with it last night and my rig was nearly set up after the first six or seven turns (again, that's not quite fast...but not slow either)

But, this thing is POWERFUL. There is a feeling of inevitability with One Smart Kid. Data Folding is dripping for two or three (in all my games this was the case), Sage was never under str. 4, and the highest it was str. 8, Switchblade + Silencer + Ghost Runner + Cloak made anything dangerous seem like butter.

At one point I was playing Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future and I decided to "save tempo" by letting my opponent keep Eliza's Toybox on the table. He rezzed a Janus, 2 Tollbooths, an Archer all on the same server and I was still a threat to that server.

(Granted I lost the game because of some decisions I was making, but it felt like to huge robots slugging it out. Big server? That's fine, my Hardware Rig has you covered).

The other game I lost was because after setting up my rig, the only two pieces of ICE my opponent rezzed were Excalibur and Mother Goddess. I had no answers for that particular set up.

Overall this deck was FUN and POWERFUL. I think there might be something here, so I'll keep exploring.

I'm going to publish One Smart Kid-Sophomore in a little bit that will have the adjustments I made. If you get a chance to build it/play it/play against it, I'd love your thoughts.

Thanks for the report! I'll check back for your adjustments. :)