Bleep You Mother Bleeper! Madison Regionals 1st Place

rubyvr00m 882

This is my version of Apocalypse MaxX that took down a 58 player Regional at I'm Board in Madison WI. Shoutouts to all the runners out there who helped pioneer the aggro MaxX lists, particularly @LSK, @d1en and of course, the OG @SlySquid. Without their efforts I'm sure this deck wouldn't be as solid as it is today.

MaxX has been my favorite runner ID since Order and Chaos dropped. I've tried every build you can think of -- from Reg MaxX (Standard Breakers/CloneChips), to Minh MaxX (DLR), to SlySquid's Mother F**kin' Deck (the original Eater/Keyhole Build). Of all the builds I've tried, I think this one is by far the most ferocious and is fairly well suited in the current meta game.

In the past 3 store champs I played in, I had taken different Whizzard and Noise builds, but lost a fair share of games because I would not get the Wyldside/Chronotype combo set up fast enough. I would regularly end up losing a click every turn for the majority of the game without ever turning off that pesky Wyldside drawback. The majority of corp decks at the moment are putting more and more pressure on the runners clicks, which makes clickless draw one of the fundamentals of winning games. Rather than leaving that to the will of RNG from my deck, I decided to play an ID that had the draw built in, and it certainly paid off.

On the day this deck only suffered losses to IG Bioethics Lock/Superfriends and one odd Jinteki: Biotech flatline deck using the Brewery that I probably could have won if I hadn't made the critical error of deciding to go tag me after I keyholed a Scorched Earth into the bin and assumed he didn't have influence for a second one that happened to be in his hand. In the cut it beat IG twice, once on a timed win and the other on points (thankfully @spags was too broke to play a psi game on a future perfect steal).

I wouldn't claim that this deck is absolutely tier one by any means, and it certainly has its fair share of poor matchups. What it does have is the ability to exploit a weakness and blow an entire game open. The times you win with this, I can assure you it will be swift and definitive, often leaving your opponents with very few options to protect themselves from you tearing their board-state down to bits. Sure, sometimes you will fall flat on your face but with some practice you can identify bad situations and prevent them before they get out of control.

DDoS is definitely the MVP. You can use it to hop ice and trash Crisium Grids (the mortal enemy of replacement effect decks like this one). You can use it to safely land turn 1 or 2 Account Siphons. You can bust into a rush decks scoring remote early in the game. Perhaps most importantly, you can keyhole through a single iced R&D 4 times in one turn for no money!

It isn't the easiest deck to pilot. You have to be aware of where your recursion is at all times and how safe you are to spend a Same Old Thing or a Deja Vu on something like Account Siphon or DDoS as opposed to getting the Levy. You have to watch out for things like Hostile Infrastructure and Chronos Project because they will probably wreck your day.

That said, if you're tired of the same old Whizzard/Noise/Hayley tier 1 shenanigans, and you'd rather just pick up all of your opponent's hard work and toss it in the trash can, this is definitely the deck for you.

11 comments
24 Apr 2016 ElderMason

As a MaxX fanboy I wanted to play her for Regionals but worried about the IG matchup. Did you face any IG? How do you deal with it effectively?

24 Apr 2016 rubyvr00m

I faced IG 4 times in the day. I lost to it twice in swiss rounds because I tried too hard to trash their assets. In the cut, I got a timed win by getting two points and then recurring I've Had Worse with Deja's as the Bioethics hit me for 3 every turn until I got a timed win -- not the most decisive victory but I didn't have much choice. I played it again in the 3rd round against Spags and basically got some lucky Keyhole + DDoS action that left the win in archives (TFP + GFI after I already stole a Fetal) and he didn't have the credits to win the psi game to save it.

Again, neither victory was super secure, but until Salsette Island comes out and neuters IG a bit I think the best path to victory is to win early or try to take it to time. At a certain point it becomes an inevitability, but you will almost always get more points than them.

24 Apr 2016 ElderMason

Awesome. Might have to go back to it. Congrats!

26 Apr 2016 JohnnyCache

@rubyvr00m It's ok you can swear on the internet. I promise I won't tell anyone.

26 Apr 2016 rubyvr00m

@JohnnyCache Sure I could sling F-bombs around, but it's more fun to let the deck do the talking. Your opponent will feel more than the sting of foul language when all their server construction gets tossed in the trash can.

26 Apr 2016 helloledbetter

Congrats on the win @rubyvr00m! I've very recently started playing (and loving) this deck. Since my regionals are (hopefully) going to happen after Salsette is legal, which slot would you give up for it? One of the Keyholes? Inject?

26 Apr 2016 rubyvr00m

@helloledbetter I'm glad you're liking the deck!

I wouldn't cut a Keyhole. In my experience you usually want to have one installed when you Apocalypse and another in your hand to lay down the following turn, since the installed one gets flipped over. Also, do remember that you have no Aesops or Chop Bot, so you don't really have a way to get those face down cards back. Keyhole is also strongest in the early game before they can stack ice on R&D so you definitely want to see it early. Having 3 Keyhole and 3 Eater is enough to typically find one in hand and be able to retrieval run whatever you're missing.

I would say there are a few flex slots you could mess with. The turntables are exclusively for Astroscript so if you don't expect a lot of fast advance you could cut to 1 or 0. On the day of the tournament I think I installed it once and never actually fired it before Apocalypse turned it over.

The Morning Star could also probably go, it's really only there because Superfriends IG was decklist of the week and it runs Hive. I don't have time to break that jazz with Eater.

I also think you're right that it wouldn't hurt much losing an Inject. Though I will say that in a deck with this many events and resources, Inject typically nets you 3-4 draws and does wonders at keeping your DDoS and Account Siphons in your hand instead of the trash so I definitely wouldn't go below 2.

The Hacktivist is also a meta call, but since asset spam will probably be around awhile, it may still be worth it. I think you could probably slot Mumbad Slums in it's place and do alright. The only real drawback there is not being able to shut off an opponents current at will.

Last thing, if Haarp or Weyland flatline decks are lurking around your meta, you should probably bring a Plascrete or two. I gambled that I wouldn't run into it much and got scorch killed by a Biotech deck in the swiss rounds.

Anyways, good luck at your regional! I hope you bring MaxX and tear down some servers!

26 Apr 2016 Nailouu

How did you manage to win without Hades Shard, and would you switch y0g for it? I have played very similar deck for a long time (~ 5 SC and GNK wins within last year) and almost every game that wasn't total steamroll was won by hades shard. I didn't play apocalypse, but almost identical deck other than it.

Why morning star over corroder, install cost is huge and with only 2 retrieval runs you can't really trust it?

Otherwise, nice deck! What do you think about slotting 2nd amped up? I've got very good results with it.

26 Apr 2016 rubyvr00m

I don't think I could ever bring myself to cut the Yog.0. In my meta I see a fair amount of HB, and a Turing on a central can really wreck your day. I often wish I had two so that after the Apocalypse I could install another,

Morningstar is because people play IG with Hive and never plan on scoring. I would probably never install it in any other matchup. If you don't have that cancer in your meta you could cut it for Corroder or you could drop your barrier breaker all together.

A second Amped Up is a cool idea, but I don't know that I'd risk it considering there is so much net damage in the meta at the moment. There were a number of games where I felt like even playing it once was too risky.

I also tested a bit with a one of Singularity but found that usually when I wanted to play it, the corp had a Caprice/Batty on their scoring remote and it was too much of an investment for something that wasn't necessarily going to land. It usually seems better to just Apocalypse if they're trying to score in a padded remote.

As for Hades, as strong as it is, there just isn't influence. DDoS is often enough to get you into archives for the win, and if that doesn't work you can just Apocalypse and then go get those sweet agendas.

26 Apr 2016 helloledbetter

Thanks so much for the awesome response! It's my first regionals so I'm not too confident about what to expect, but I will likely err on the side of Plascrete & Morningstar. I've yet to play against the gross IG decks that are so much trouble but your writeup will really help when the time comes. Thanks again @rubyvr00m!

26 Apr 2016 rubyvr00m

@helloledbetter No problem man! This community has helped me a lot and I like to pass the wisdom along!

I went to my first regional last year and came in 58th/78, so remember that if you fall flat on your face like I did that you can always buckle down and improve! I never thought I'd win a regional, so you might end up surprising yourself.

Good luck!