Eschatology

jalube 83

Here's a Reaver/Faust/Apocalypse Apex build. This is the first Apex deck I've ever built or piloted, so suggestions are welcome. Seems to do decently in the casual room.

Like all Apex decks, our plan here is to bring about the end of the world. And every scheme to effect the fiery annihilation of all that Is or Was needs a robotic beetle sidekick, so we're going to mulligan every hand that doesn't contain Chop Bot 3000.

Cycle through the deck with our little insectoid assistant to set up, facecheck relentlessly but smartly. Get 1 or 2 Reavers online, get Faust. Fire a Hopper (or Hunting Grounds in a pinch) on the corp turn to draw a bunch of cards, use Chop Bot to draw a bunch more at the beginning of ours, then pray that our mitt is full enough for the ultimate Faustian bargain. No fluff, no extra clicks, just Apocalypse.

Card choices:

Faust, Eater, no Endless Hunger: Faust gets us through anything and EH has too many issues with very common ICE. 2 Eaters are backup. They were 1 D4v1d which is much better when you draw it, much worse when you don't.

Econ: seems to be enough, hasn't been an issue.

Prey: I rarely actually play this card, should probably be something else. This is basically here for Turing on a central, but also helps with Popups and the occasional Swordsman.

Rigged Results: Gets played maybe once a game, but usually for great effect - allowing an Apocalypse that wouldn't otherwise be possible or sniping something critical out of a remote.

Interdiction: seems like the best influence-free current for this deck (ELP must be gotten rid of), and has occasionally saved my bacon.

Levy: we draw a tonne of cards, so we actually need to play this in a critical mass of games.

Heartbeat: we don't need the MU at all, so this is only ever installed as damage protection.

Hunting Grounds: necessary for Komainu in particular.

Goodbye to everything!

5 comments
21 Dec 2016 MrAaronSA

I like your deck. The only thing I don't agree with are the Eaters which, while may be nice for backup, are redundant and don't mesh as well with your gameplan of drawing tons of cards. For that influence I think either the conspiracy breakers (Paperclip, Black Orchestra, MKUltra) or even DDoS are better includes.

21 Dec 2016 Narduwel

I have run a deck with a similar build. I have recently switched to using the aforementioned conspiracy breakers in my Apex deck and have been pretty happy with the results (although I have only played it twice). In both circumstances, I have found it necessary to have 2 Levy, otherwise you run out of steam really fast with Reaver+Chopbot. Though after looking at your deck and thinking about it, I think using Sports Hopper is actually a really good call. I haven't used it before because I didn't want to spend the 3 credits to install it, however, I didn't consider the trash ability for out of turn wasteland and reaver.

21 Dec 2016 jalube

@MrAaronSA Ok, you've convinced me. I'll try it out with a couple conspiracy cards.

@Narduwel I would love to have 2 Levys, but mostly because I have to play more cautiously if I have the singleton in hand. I do sometimes find myself at the bottom of the deck on the second pass through, but haven't lost yet because of it. And yeah, I'm always happy to draw and install the hoppers.

21 Dec 2016 Narduwel

Another note, I recommend using injection attack instead of infiltration. When using Faust, I have usually managed to save at least 2 cards (not including the use of Injection Attack). When using Eater, you can save at least one credit per ICE. Additionally, Injection Attack gets around ELPs additional cost and can make Apocalypse easier to fire against deep servers. Injection Attack also works pretty well with MKUltra and Black Orchecstra.

22 Dec 2016 EnderA

I agree that the conspiracy breakers would do wonders, since you already have Chop Bot to reset them post-apocalypse.

I would consider Déjà Vu over a second Levy. 1 fewer influence, and brings anything back, including a Faust killed by Swordsman, or an Apocalypse.

Cool deck.