Random ID Challenge: Week 1

*** The Challenge *** My friend and I are exploring some of the lesser used IDs in the game and testing our deck building by having a weekly random ID challenge. I'll publish whatever nonsense I come up with each week and some of my thoughts behind it.

First week and I drew Nisei Division, something I actually wanted to mess around with now we have new Psi ICE available. Now the keener eyed among you with have noticed exactly zero new Psi ICE cards in this deck. As it is so ICE light, Upayoga does next to nothing and in testing I decided to go for Cobras and Cortex Locks over Chetana. The extra credit from a Psi game means nothing and it's nice to have a solid target for Batty rather than another Psi.

Anyway, I wanted to go for standard Mushin No Shin traps and Cerebral Casts to land a load of brain damage but I wanted to do something different if the runner decided to take the tag (the standard being Scorched Earth). Instead I decided to add two Exchange of Informations and have the agenda suite completely as 3 pointers and 1 pointers. This changes the dynamic of the game completely as you no longer mind gambling on Mushining out a 3 pointer when you have a Cerebral Cast in hand and a Clone Retirement scored. I've won a number of games online by actually getting to 7 agenda points which isn't something this style of Nisei deck tries to do.

This is largely due to the element of surprise as no one expects the Exchange of Information but this naturally disappears after a few games. An early run on R&D seeing this card can really ruin your day as corp. This is what happened against my friend, who amazingly drew Whizzard as his runner and played Dumblefork (rolls eyes). I won the first game very quickly as he hit a 4 advanced Cerebral Overwriter, the second game I won again using Exchange of Information to get to game point and encourage some reckless running and the third game I lost in a big grind now that he knew my gimmick.

Overall, a lot of fun to try something different :-).

Series so far: 1-0