Dream eater

"I know how men in exile feed on dreams" - Aeschylus

Exile! If you believe the internet, he's just a worse Kate. I do not believe the internet.

The two main deck builds I've seen with Exile have been the Dirty Hands and the Homeless Kasparov builds. I've played both, and enjoy playing both, but they've never really clicked for me.

I found myself thinking that I would best like Exile in a recursion heavy deck where I got decent use out of everything before recursion. Someone mentioned in another deck (http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/12564/dogs-of-war) the massive swing they could get by playing Lady from the heap with Test Run, burning through the counters, and then playing her again next turn from the top of the stack. That sounded more appealing to me.

I started thinking of things that could be used quickly, and benefited from a reset. Most things were counter-based; Lady, Cyber-Cypher and Imp.

Imp really got stuck in my head. It's an incredibly powerful card, limited by the facts that it can only be used once per turn, and that it can generally only be used twice total. With all the shaper recursion, however, this deck can force 62 trashes. (Admittedly this would take longer than the average game). Nonetheless, I've bashed this deck together to test the concept.

Another direction I'm considering trying is more of a Prepaid VoicePAD build with Imp instead of Lucky Find, most likely. The money would suffer a lot, but hopefully all the card draw would keep the events ticking over.

The Plan!

So the basic plan is that Astrolabe and Exile's ability, you can keep the card draw coming with minimal investment on your part. Recursion should mostly be used on Imp, which should be used to trash everything you can access that you couldn't trash cheaply anyway. The only exceptions would be low-hassle cards like Quandary; any ICE you can break for 2-3 is probably fine to leave in.

I'm not sure the triple SOT is needed, but I figure it can't hurt. I might swap one or two for Earthrise Hotel, which would hopefully ensure that I pretty much never need to click to draw.

Sneakdoor Beta might seem like an odd splash, but it can surprise people quite badly. Also, decks that use things like Biotics, Scorched, Shipment from SanSan, etc, tend to let them accumulate in their hands. The chance to ping key combo pieces with Imp is glorious. Additionally, since I expect to be trashing a fair amount of ICE, forcing them to distribute the remaining ICE over at least three servers seems to be a good idea.

Considerations

No scorch or net damage protection: Yeah, I'm probably going to get a few beatings from this lack. But I'll give it a go; I can draw at the drop of a hat with clone chip, and in theory I can trash the most dangerous things if I see them in HQ or R&D. As it stands, I don't have the economy for Feedback Filter or the memory for Net Shield, and I don't know what I'd drop for Plascrete Carapace

Breaker Suite: I'll be the first to admit I've never been comfortable with an Atman-based strategy. It was all I could bring myself to do in not having a boostable Killer. So I've covered my bases, and I can't help but think I've done so excessively.

No Datasucker?: Nope. I'm all crazy like that. The only things I should really struggle with are high-STR sentries, which are what I intend to keep Parasite for. Faerie should stop me getting hosed too hard.

Memory?: Might be an issue. One thing I really like about Exile recursion is that you can overwrite your rig fairly trivially, adapting it to suit your needs. Although I probably can't keep everything I have running, I can hopefully keep everything I need running.

Barriers? Lady is all manner of efficient against, say, Eli. But using a counter on an Ice Wall or Wraparound... Blech. Even with all the recursion, I'd rather avoid it. Things like Ice Wall and Fire Wall with their variable STR will be super annoying, I think.

I suspect the main issue is going to be my lack of familiarity with Atman, but if anyone can spot any glaring deficiencies I'd be glad of the help.