Extinction Event - "Let's Get Skynet" (MWL Legal)

Somewhere between trying to make an Apex/Darwin deck and an Apex/Caissa deck (I managed neither), I was looking through cards to support Apex, and I realized that all of Adam's Directives are Virtual Resources. I'd never seen anyone do it before, but it seemed like a good idea. This entire deck has been built around that seed.

What developed is a deck built around the combination of Safety First, Endless Hunger, Heartbeat, and Wasteland. Once this combinations has been built, you have essentially combined the abilities of Gabe (gain bits) and Quetzal (break a subroutine), and gotten a free Mr. Li Junior out of the deal, as well. Everything else is about supporting that.

====================

Key Cards:

Safety First - The only one of the Directives to survive any amount of playtesting, Safety First takes a huge chunk of influence, but pays it back by giving you one free draw every turn.

Endless Hunger/Harbinger/Hunting Grounds/e3 Feedback Implants - Your primary icebreaker and the obligatory support suite. Aside from tracers and certain niche ICE, there's very little you can't deal with for one card and some credits, and/or Heartbeat-facetanking.

Heartbeat - The console is entirely necessary for the deck, not just because of Scorched Earth, but because with a max hand size of only 3, a single brain damage is hugely debilitating.

Quality Time - This seems like a supplemental card, something you easily pull. It is NOT. QT has one small but crucial purpose: Early-game digging when you're missing a piece of your core combo. You're slow without SF, harmless without EH, and vulnerable without HB. Get them all ASAP, no matter what you might have to pitch away in wasted discard.

Prepaid VoicePAD + Events - Even with the Most Wanted List, an Event economy is still the best option for Apex. Don't fall into the trap of feeling like you HAVE to install all three, though. If you don't draw the third until the late-game, you may only use it one or two times, which makes installing it a waste of a click and two perfectly good credits.

Wasteland - The second half of your economy. It takes three turns for each Wasteland to start paying off, compared to just clicking for a credit. Similar advice to PPVP, sometimes a click and a couple creds now is worth more than a couple more creds later.

====================

Support/Other Cards:

Crypsis - The only icebreaker that doesn't cost influence and isn't named Overmind. One virus counter at once is usually enough, but you can get up to two if you like to be prepared, or want to threaten the Corp with the possibility of busting through a big glacier. Three or more is usually a waste of clicks.

Kraken/Prey - The dream target is Turing (after clicking through manually), as it's the only ICE that neither breaker can deal with, but anything with a lot of subroutines that you'll be running through often is a decent target, even if it costs you several cards. (Archer comes to mind.)

Independent Thinking - While Quality Time is mostly for early game, Independent Thinking is mostly for late-game, when you desperately need the credits or the Crypsis or the Notoriety for that last push to victory. You can draw up to ten cards with IT if you pitch Safety First to double your draws, and if you're desperate enough that 5 draws is something you need, 10 is probably even better. This also creates a small combo, as pitching SF increases your hand size back to 5.

Notoriety/Apocalypse - Both of them have the same requirements, and both are answers to situations where the Corp ignores one or more of their central servers. Generally speaking, while Notoriety can be played at any time, Apocalypse should be played sparingly, and saved until you have another icebreaker in-hand, as you can bet anything the Corp will respond by ICing Archives.

Traffic Jam - Fast advance will dance all over you if you let it. Traffic Jam will slow that down. (Of all the cards in the deck, these are honestly the first two that I would pull for something more suitable for your local meta.)

====================

General Play Notes:

Everyone knows the Three Laws of Robotics. We don't use those. We have the Three Laws of Apex. They're a little more Skynet than I, Robot.

1) Feel no fear - Do not rush, but do not hesitate. Both are born of fear of what the future might bring. Victory for you comes from steady, deliberate pressure, pushing wherever you think the Corp may be weak without overextending yourself. Don't be afraid of losing cards, either, the deck is stacked thick with redundancies. The only one-of in the deck, Apocalypse, is a luxury, something you may not even get the chance to use. If there IS one thing to be wary of, it's brain damage, and even then, only before you have a Heartbeat.

2) Destroy your opposition - If something is causing you grief, making future runs expensive, it is much better to deal with it now than later. Anything that disrupts your slow, rumbling momentum will snowball drastically the longer you let it do so. Instead, crush it beneath the titanic strength of your rotating cogs.

3) Nothing is sacred - Your handsize is a miniscule 3. Don't hold off on using your Apex special on your Kraken because you MIGHT use the card later. Don't cling to that Crypsis because you THINK you can install it in a couple turns. If something is not useful to you by the end of your next turn, it is not useful to you at all.

====================

Specific Play/Meta Tips:

The Magic Number is 4 - Turing, Ichi 1.0, Data Raven, Clairvoyant Monitor, Neural Katana, almost every piece of ICE that EH + e3 can't deal with costs at least 4 bits to rez. Keep this in mind if the corp is low on bits and has unrezzed ice.

Laugh in the face of Komainu - You will rarely have more than two cards in your hand during a run, and are just about the only identity in the game that can afford to run with a completely empty hand. Abuse this for all it's worth.

Haas-Bioroid is your rival - Not just because they enslave machines, but also because they are by far the most common corp to carry sources of brain damage. While you should always be careful of facechecking before you have Heartbeat, this is especially, ESPECIALLY true against Haas-Bioroid, who run your main early-game nemesis, Ichi 1.0, with far more regularity than other factions.

Other Deck Options:

Faust over Crypsis - I abandoned the idea of using Faust as my back-up breaker, but you could theoretically fit two in. This is much easier if you're playing somewhere casual that doesn't use the Most Wanted List, requiring you to only pull a single point to make room.

Overmind over Crypsis - Kinda janky, and basically requires that you install OM before EH, but it's a possibility. However, it severely lacks in longevity.

Other Icebreakers - This would be a meta call. If you never see Data Raven but Resistor is huge, maybe a Corroder is what you need. Mostly worried about Tracer ice? Gingerbread's your man. Influence is again an issue, but may be more or less of one depending on what you pull out.

HQ/R&D Interface or Legwork/TME - Making each run count for more. This is something I desperately want for the deck, as even a single Interface would greatly increase the amount of pressure you can put on the Corp. But again, the bottleneck is influence.

Drive By - Keeps the Corp from playing keepaway. Useful, especially if your meta has a lot of Replicating Perfection and/or Off The Grid.

Infiltration - A little less useful than Drive By, but doesn't cost influence, and can be used for bits or exposure as the situation calls for.

Levy AR Lab Access - Levy takes up way too much influence to use more than one of, but running only one is contrary to the build philosophy of nothing being sacred. Run it only if you're in a meta full of very long games and you need that extra oomph of recycling your Events to carry you through.

A Note On Tweaking:

Learn from my mistakes. Avoid trying to fit in viruses, or Magnum Opus, or cloud breakers, or anything that just turns Apex into an inferior version of someone else.

A good rule of thumb when adding a card is to ask yourself "Would another identity do this better?" If the answer is yes, go put it in their deck instead. You'll never be a legendary killbot if you're still trying to ape the humans.