Top of the Foodchain 0.1

Apex: Invasive Predator has been a challenge to conceptualize: his power cards are hyper situational, his memory usage is obscene, his money is abysmal, and his card draw is lackluster. There are basically two ways I can see running Apex. The first is to use Endless Hunger, HQ Interface and R&D Interface and just say "I'm going to beat you before you beat me," and run through anything that's not an ETR and let it fire--you take takes, you take net, you take meat, you take program trashing and you just... hope. There's merit to this, and I think that I'll try that out at some point. This is not that build. This build tries to use Endless Hunger to beat the corp the old fashioned way--breaking ice and accessing cards. So, lets look at each of the above problems.

Card draw is tricky. Apex needs cards in his hand so that he can install them at the beginning of his turn so that he can do his cool things. The only problem is that the best card draw engines are either non-virtual resources (Wyldside and Earthrise Hotel) or heavy on the influence (Diesel). This leaves either Quality Time, which is pricey, or the much-maligned Lawyer Up. I went with the latter, thinking that the cost-to-click ratio favors Apex's money problems, and also helps a bit with tag-removal if you get Midseasoned. I've strongly considered moving toward Safety First, since it's a virtual resource, but it's very influence heavy and I'm trying something else first.

Money is the second issue since all of my favorites are again either non-virtual resources (Daily Casts, Armitage Codebusting, and Kati Jones), influence heavy and memory heavy (Magnum Opus), or both influence heavy AND non-virtual resources (Liberated Account). Data Folding makes you excited at first, since it's a virtual resource, but then you look at the memory usage of Endless Hunger and cry a bit inside. I ended up deciding that even Lucky Find was a bit too much influence in a deck that needs so much. Thus, we're left with Day Job (which is awesome but cedes tempo), Sure Gamble, Wasteland, and Ghost Runner, which are actually pretty good once you're up and running (and Multithreader helps pay for the Knights).

Memory usage is a big problem as well, since Endless Hunger is apparently even more hungry for MU than it is for facedown cards. I decided to solve it and the "only break ETRs" with Deep Red and Knight. Knight is great if you place it only on faceup cards and don't run into Blue Sun (which is at an ebb in the meta, thankfully!), and you're always running a Levy AR Lab Access to help recur them. Knight and Endless Hunger, though, pair wonderfully with e3 Feedback Implants, helping you get through some of the nastiest ice around with Endless Hunger's first break followed by your secondary e3-assisted shenanigans (ice such as Archer, Wotan, Orion, etc). It also helps early aggro against any bioroids (sorry Eli, you keep getting worse).

In terms of "how do we win this thing?" is the major problem for me in dealing with Apex. You can run Interfaces, but then don't really have the influence you need for other things. You can run Keyhole or Medium, but I don't you've got the card draw to sustain it when that influences is there (let alone the MU!). This is a first attempt. You're going more for the criminal approach of many accesses rather than the shaper route of power accesses, and particularly threatening the remotes. FA is a problem, but you should be able to threaten centrals enough to make it a bit more difficult thanks to your efficient rig, Preying on weak ice and parking Knight on strong ones without an ETR. Ultimately, you want to have DDoS installed and then create a power turn to spring Apocalypse--honestly, I really want this to happen and the Johnny Jank is the only reason I'm including both Apocalypse and DDoS. I'll probably have to cut it eventually (probably for a Medium or RND Interface and another Sucker, which pairs well with Prey).

The rest of the deck is filler (Q-Coherence Chip) to feed Apex, situational cards that can either save you or--again--feed your friendly predator (Plascrete Carapace), or else just "good stuff" neutral cards, like the Shards.

This is still in early alpha testing, but it's an attempt to see what's what with this enigmatic runner.