Never tell me the odds

Diegofsv 1368

Sir, the possibility of successfully piloting an APEX deck is approximately 3,720 to 1!

I love Apex: Invasive Predator. He is so different and thematic. However, piloting a good deck with it is pretty hard. This is my first version of a deck that I'm trying so hard to overcome Apex: Invasive Predator downsides and going for a late game that usually works. Here is the writeup:

1 - Apex sucks and card draw - Safety First + Brain Cage and Chop Bot 3000 helps A LOT with it. With some Wasteland installed and even your credit problem is solved.

2 - Apex sucks at creating credits. - You may think that you don't need credits at all because your facedown cards are your economy. But what happens to you after a Apocalypse? You need the credits so you wont get SEA Sourced and die a horrible death. Day Job is here for that, go create credits, you NEED IT.

3 - Apex HATES code gates and Architects - ZU.13 Key Master and Mimic are there for it.

4 - It takes a long time to hav facedown cards to trash - Pawn and Harbinger are there so you can have your food there faster.

5 - Apex hates Resistor - Yes, he hates it :/

6 - No multiaccess - Thats right, but a right timed Apocalypse can fix this.

Anyway, this deck, like all APEX decks I think, is heavily dependent of the right time to Apocalypse. FA asks for one early on, Butchershop and scorched decks needs a rich and tagless apex before it. Spark will probably make you cry if you dont hit the apocalypse fast with all those damn Adverts, and Foodcoats and PE can't be to heavily guarded or will be impossible to hit it. If you can hit one or two Apocalypse, things starts to work and you can probably win. I love to use Utopia Shard before the Archives-apocalypse run so you know that you removed those damn Scorched or SEA source from the corps hand and will live another turn. I'm starting to get the feel as to how APEX works (I played mostly as Adam until now) and you should be prepared to a late game runner. Any feedbacks here is highly appreciated.

3 comments
28 Dec 2015 FragSpider

Interesting deck; I'm sort hooked on Apex at the moment, and I must agree; he's an odd thing to work with. Can't generate creds well, can't really spend much influence on a standard rig (let alone the recursion to bring it all back post-Apoc/trash)... yet he's is brilliant as an anarch-like tank for smacking into things.

Certainly in agreement that he hates Codegates and Architect! So many of my games have devolved to hatred of Turing (thematically... how does Apex fail the Turing Test?!), Hourglass and Flare. Architect gets a little less hatred, but can be grating especially when he's sat over Archives!

Interesting idea with Safety First for card draw and using Brain-Cage to help mitigate the hand-size reduction. Might have to consider that myself in my current build! :P ChopBot also makes sense, especially considering his inherent power.

Although I do wonder if a single ZU13 is going to be that locate-able in the deck? In games with my Apex deck, I have found the addition of Special Order or Independent Thinking (really useful post Apoc) to work wonders with getting more components out into play.

And Utopia Shard is an interesting choice too. I've been suffering a fair bit with 'Corp Still Has Too Many Tricks in HQ' with Apex, so removing those cards has become more appealing...

28 Dec 2015 Diegofsv

@FragSpider Most of my games I buy out the whole deck by mid-game, so you will probably have your ZU.13 Key Master faster than you think. Usually, if I can survive through the slow start and hit a mid-game Apocalypse, everything just works.

28 Dec 2015 FragSpider

@Diegofsv Thanks for the response! Ah, so not too much of a problem then. And I can understand that mid-game Apocalypse situation. Too often I can't get the 2nd Apoc to complete which leaves the Corp in a very strong position.

Anyway, you've certainly given me food-for-thought, so thanks for sharing your insights and deck!