Fire the Board

Legion1979 35

Everyone knows that DDOS & False echo is gold, but what to do with it? After all once the ICE goes back to their hand the Corp can just install again next turn; but if their hand size is 1 or 2, then that's all they can do or they will have to archive the ICE to draw their agendas & that's where Fan Site, Frame job & Itinerant protesters come in. They rush out a score & you rush the Fan Site, plus if you have Ray Out, then you'll access HQ as you pile on the Bad Pub. All the usual card draw & economy tricks are there in Diesel, Casts & Earthrise while Trope is in to guarantee quality recursion. Vigil was a conscious decision as you will either get free card draw (almost guaranteed when their hand size drops) or the Corp will make suboptimal plays to make sure that they deny you the free draw & either is win-win for you.

FA hurts this deck unless you can get your Spoilers & Fan Sites out early & the lack of breakers may be an issue against HB's ABT, so I'm open to options, but I'm really enjoying this deck so far.

4 comments
23 Oct 2015 MikeJS

I played against this deck and it is properly oppressive. It punishes you for doing what you want to do... namely score agendas. The False Echo/DDoS combo is real, and scary. I got to 6 points as fast as I could, all the while letting @Legion1979 trash my cards through Spoilers or access my hand upon Frame Jobbing withe Raymond Flint. Once he got set up, I knew there was no way out for me however. Sure this deck is going to lose to a Weyland that OAI or EBC some Ice, or a fast advance deck . If your corp goes long, though, this will choke you out.

24 Oct 2015 Wrecko

I like the deck idea. I had something similar but didn't go all in like you and had some breakers.

You might want to sub out the Diesel for Fisk Investment Seminar. For the same influence cost, you increase the chance of flooding the Corp's hand with agendas, which is particularly nasty with the decreased hand size you are chasing.

Since you have Raymond Flint, they are unlikely to keep Agenda's in their hand, so you may want to swap out a Fan Site and Frame Job for a Hades Shard and something else, perhaps another Itinerant Protesters to make sure you apply hand size pressure as soon as possible. Hades Shard would also work well with Spoilers.

Whenever I have a Blackmail deck, I always play Same Old Thing. Could you explain why you left them out?

24 Oct 2015 Chamomile

What about clone chip? You can use Echo immediately after using it.

24 Oct 2015 Legion1979

@Wrecko, On the card draw, I had very similar ideas to begin with. I left out the seminar for 2 reasons; 1st it's a Priority event which limits it's use a bit & secondly, it gives the Corp back the options that the reduced hand size denies.

As for breakers, I am constantly terrified without them, but the only option that can work in this deck is an AI breaker, so options are Eater which denied access, Faust which trashes valuable cards or Overmind which has limited uses, but I might try slot Apex: Invasive Predator's breaker.

True, that once Protesters fire with Raymond Flint in play they will rarely keep Agenda in hand, so his intended use is during the early-mid stage while you set up & once you hit the Bad Pub sweet spot, you can trash him to expose to see if a cheeky score is being threatened. I'm also concerned that I don't want to drop the protesters too early as they can score to cancel. Ideally you'll drop it when the Corp is on 4pts & by this stage you'll have all Fan Site & Spoilers out to capitalise.

I've decided to use Trope instead of Same Old Thing as I have DDoS & False Echo to replicate & expand on Blackmail's ability. There's also the fact that Corps expect Same Old Thing from Val, so it throws them off when they don't see it.

I also dropped the Shard because finding a single shard in a 45 card deck is heard enough, let alone Val's 50 card deck.I figured that best case scenario, the Corp would drop 4-6 cards due to Spoilers & I would rather the Fan Site consistency.

@Chamomile, I would love to have Clone Chip, but I can't spare the influence & so have to rely on Trope for recursion.