Brain Implants

Waterpile 248

This guy is rather difficult to build for. We're missing card draw, we're low on money, we don't have enough cards to trash.

Usual shenanigans here, except for a couple things...

Brain Cage lets you hold your cards for 2 reasons: placing cards facedown and recovering from the Apocalypse. Also, you can eat the brain damage it gives with Heartbeat. Combos well with Quality Time.

Faust is your filler for anything that doesn't have ETR. At most, I'm hoping to spend 3 cards from hand to break along with e3 Feedback Implants. Bioroid ice you can click once and break for credits with e3. Works well with Brain Cage.

e3 Feedback Implants is a must have in Apex unless you're running 3 Levys.

Quality Time will give you some draw. Still not perfect. But perfect enough for the influence.

Account Siphon allows you to slow the game down early if you get out an early Endless Hunger. Also turns on Apocalypse at times if needed.

At least 1 Apocalypse in the game is going to help clench this. Build some money up, and don't play all your cards because they'll all get flipped over when you pull it off. Perfect hand after Apocalypse: Heartbeat, Brain Cage, Endless Hunger, Medium, e3 Feedback Implants, Faust. And Faust is really best case scenario but not completely necessary since you just wiped the Corp board state clean.

Hunting Grounds is great for Data Raven and Tollbooth especially. But if you don't anticipate seeing any of that, throw it facedown.

Infiltration makes sure you don't waste clicks/cards getting into a trap and protects you from ice you're unsure of. Or it's a quick pick-me-up on your credits if you're confident.

I've seen a lot of bashing on the Q-Coherence Chip, but I'm a fan simply because it allows you to get out the MU earlier if you don't see a Dyson Mem Chip. Obviously don't trash your Harbinger if you need the Q-Coherence Chip.

Started with Chop Bot 3000, seems obvious, but it's not a good card here. Cycles your deck and prevents you from maintaining your board state. Get your draw from somewhere else.

9 comments
29 Aug 2015 PeterCapObvious

Earthrise Hotel would be a decent addition to this deck if you're concerned about card draw, and maybe Symmetrical Visage if you feel you will be click drawing at the same time before running.

29 Aug 2015 esutter479

Q-Coherence Chip also helps against those pesky Power Shutdowns for 0. Good solid defensive choice there. I was wondering though, what happens if/when you encounter Swordsman or Turing? You don't really have an answer for either one of those. You COULD walk through Turing, burning through your clicks and Prey on it...and I guess you could take the net and hope you draw the 2nd Faust soon after the first one goes down (once again using Prey to eat the routines and get past it), but I dunno. I'd rather have Parasites around for such encounters...just me though. :)

29 Aug 2015 OrdiNeu

@PeterCapObvious Neither of those cards are usable by Apex without Cerebral Static

1 Sep 2015 hi_impact

@esutter479Endless Hunger is not an AI breaker, it doesn't lose to either Swordsman or Turing. Yea, Faust does die to one, but losing breakers is going to be commonplace for Apex.

Endless Hunger still can't break Turing due to its clause but Swordsman isn't really a problem for Apex.

1 Sep 2015 Waterpile

@esutter479 @hi_impact I really like to keep Faust in play if I can. It helps against the "trash a program" ice fairly well (which Endless Hunger is vulnerable to).

With Turing, I don't think there's any way to get around playing a decoder. I'll probably slot in 1x ZU.13 Key Master since it works well with the Dyson Mem Chip anyway. Else, I'll need Parasite to kill those pieces, but I'm not particularly fond of that.

Might drop a Siphon or the Medium to make room for these new cards.

1 Sep 2015 hi_impact

@larryc506I know this sounds crazy, and Faust is damn good with Apex, but have you considered Always Be Running + e3 for breaking all the weird shit Hunger can't deal with?

5 Sep 2015 stimmyrobbins

The honest truth is that FFG put out Adam and Apex together with Sunny so that we would all waste time and stay preoccupied with the game. Sunny is the only usable one out of the three right now. I have played a few days refining my deck with apex. I found that more than I like apocalypse goes face down or trashed and corps with thin agenda suites are a problem. Everyone should just focus on Sunny and not fall in FFG's trap. :P

24 Sep 2015 scd

Or maybe we can have fun playing weird decks like Apex rather than playing the same Sunny decks everyone else is.

26 Sep 2015 Myriad

Adam is totally playable and pretty damn competitive. Not sure what stimmy is smoking.

Apex though is hungry for something to help him out. It has a lot of problems at the moment that no one has seemed to crack.

1.) Card draw. It has no good options to draw. Passive draw is the thing right now, but that leaves chopbot and safety first. Which is fine in this deck, but eats precious influence.

2.) Econ - Wasteland would be a great card if Apex could trigger more trashing regularly. Works with Chopbot, but Chopbot kind of eats away at your board state, which is what you are kind of.... building towards?

3.) Leveraging game state post apocalypse - You basically lose against fast advance. Against glacier you get locked out pretty quickly. Against Butcher Shop or flatline you cannot play apocalypse.

You have just about enough influence to solve two of these problems, but not all three.