Grep Damage > DevNull

oasis 90

I was trying to get more mileage out of the "rig" armor concept. The general idea here being that installed things build up your board state and then can protect you from an unwanted .... welll... you know death.

It's a lot of influence to have a heartbeat, so I figured we'd make use of it with a couple other includes that aren't often there. Preventing the damage off of a skulljack by losing, imp for instance allows you to transition from controlling lateral servers with imp to controlling them with money. But, also, used up imps becoming plascrete counters is pretty good too.

This deck doesn't try to cash in on a paperclip engine, instead it's doing things like installing breakers, making money and running; which I hear wins games, and on the side is protecting itself from death by damage by using some of that passive board state that anarch likes to just build up.

The intention and avenue of correct play, imo, is probably similar to plascrete. Which, is, that unless you need to, you don't lose counters or board state to preventing damage. So, you prevent what's lethal because whatever you installed took economy to get into play to begin with.

But, losing cerburus, imp, a close to empty daily casts, or even a Bhagat to stay alive isn't really a bad proposition, and you can recover if you have to reinstall Paperclip if you're economy is strong enough.

Meanwhile, you're just playing your game. 2 credits for a mem isn't going to break the bank.

Null is kind of a placeholder here. I figured it'd do well with most of the breakers. I could see maybe wanting an injection attack, and maybe if null gets more breakers like NFR switching either mimic or yog out the argument for that card gets stronger. This can probably be run in any anarch deck.

The ultimate question being: is boom and or other damage a big enough threat in the meta to warrant this. The HB mushin no-shin decks, the pe stuff, the boom out of NBN decks and the weyland coming to kill you decks all seem more prevalent.

But, it's not clear that teching this way is warranted because there are still plenty of games where you just need to go fast. I kind of wish heartbeat were 2 inf, it'd make the proposition a bit more interesting because it'd be more doable, but still a clear opportunity cost for your deck.

This is not tuned in anyway whatsoever, but it's mostly just an anarch good stuff shell.

7 comments
25 Oct 2016 MrAaronSA

So, why is Heartbeat better than Plascrete Carapace in this deck? Your used up Imps and other pretend plascrete counters will take up memory.

25 Oct 2016 oasis

I don't think it's clear that it is, but here are some thoughts:

  1. Plascrete only protects against meat damage. Heartbeat protects against all types, including brain damage, which could be pertinent in a shell game meta that has plenty of HB & jinteki damage sources.

  2. Heartbeat doesn't have a 4 counter cap. It can protect (though it's more expensive) against a greater amount of potential damage.

  3. Heartbeat isn't ever really a dead card in your deck. Even in games vs non-damage heartbeat will still give you mu and potentially help with cards you can include in your own deck.

That said, there are opportunity and state costs and a bit of awkwardness that still revolve around plascrete.

25 Oct 2016 killj0y

I like some of the play you're working with using heartbeat to offset the anarch's natural tendency to self destruct. I don't know that it actually works any better than some of the alternatives. Hard to see if the tech is worth the price without any details on the number of damage focused corp decks you're likely to encounter in the meta.

25 Oct 2016 oasis

This might be a totally mindspace deck.

25 Oct 2016 killj0y

@oasis I think you're taking the key component in a Apex deck and trying to shoehorn it into other factions. Nothing wrong with that, in fact given Apex's limitations it's not really a bad idea overall. Heartbeat just becomes a seriously limiting factor taking out such a chunk of your influence that you can't really bring in the pieces from other runner factions that you need to solidify the outcome.

The alternative, running this in APEX means you can't get the resource based items you need most of the time and you have to pay for bigger icebreakers in your influence instead. Tough call.

Also It's not likely to come up but personally I've been seeing a lot of rigshooting potential in the current cycle and that could spell disaster for this type of deck if it takes off.

25 Oct 2016 oasis

Apex is a largely garbage ID that relies on spamming extremely powerful things like apocalypse and siphon. It's never going to be able to do anything with finesse outside of that narrow window of just occasionally running you down with curb stomping effects. And heart beat helps it do that, but it's totally not going to ever play a game like the one above.

I agree the 3-9 inf is a real deal killer if the meta isn't warped extremely by damage effects.

26 Oct 2016 vor_lord

Title alone is enough for me to heart this.