Accelerated Shipment from Hand v3

Up Front -- this is a cheese deck, and although not completely competitive, it can win enough. The premise is to win outright from your hand with a multiple variations of an 9-12 card combo and 4-13 credits.

Ongoing stats: 83 wins, 20 losses. Average turns to victory = 7.94

Edits from v2:

• Switched the code gates to Quandry
• changed the Eli's to Wall of Static
• swapped out the 3rd Biotic for another Shipment from MirrorMorph

The ICE change is to make it cheaper, and although I like the Eli click attrition, sometimes one just needs to stop a Siphon.

First up, I want to highlight what PeekaySK has pointed out already in the excellent writeup in his Cerebral Giraffes deck--that is that Blue Level Clearance ramps up the Cererbral Imaging identity greatly.

Its pretty basic on strategy, massive draw potential, and the X-level clearances help keep your credit pool about where it needs to be. You're driving at a core set of cards in hand:

• Power Shutdown
• Accelerated Diagnostics
• At least 2 Agendas.

Supplemented to this, although not explicitly required is:

• Biotic Labor
• Archived Memories
• Shipment from Kaguya

There are so many win combinations, is it mind boggling. It will take 9-12 cards, and 3-13 credits for the bulk of the win conditions. The trick is figuring it out.

Backing up:
You want to draw -- draw as much as you can. Use the X-level clearances, the Anonymous Tips, and even Jackson Howard, although NEVER remove him from the game. Do not blind play a hedge fund unless you need it. The draw is often better, and the Hedge Fund is nice to have in hand for Siphon recovery.

The trickiest part of this is that you actually WANT to discard the Shipment from SanSan. To do this, you want to be careful about keeping hand and credits about the same.

ICE selection is just meant to be a spread, and cheap to rez. They don't really stop for long, just slow down hopefully. Pick whatever you like, but keep it cheap. Use Guard instead of Roto if you want, it doesn't insta-die to a parasite, but then again the surprise program trash is a good way to slow things down.

Combo up: Now solve the puzzle. When can you win outright from your hand? You'll need minimum of 9 cards, and typically 10, accounted for in many varied combinations. The only card you absolutely need is Power Shutdown, then if you view Interns and Archived Memories as wild cards you just need to account for the other 9 and sprinkle in Biotic as need be. So, wilds aside, here is what you want:

• Power Shutdown
• Jackson Howard
• Accelerated Diagnostics x2
• One of each Agenda
• Shipment from Kaguya OR Shipment from MirrorMorph
• Flex slot: Biotic Labor, 2nd Jackson Howard, Archived Memories, 3rd Accelerated Diagnostics, Interns

First an example:

1. Power Shutdown
2. Biotic Labor
3. Install Jackson Howard (burn him to seed the Accelerated Diagnostics)
4. Accelerated Diagnostics - Shipment from MirrorMorph (1 of each agenda), Shipment from SanSan x2 (Score Efficiency Committee +3 clicks)
5. Archived Memories (Jackson Howard)
6. Install Jackson Howard (burn to seed Accelerated Diagnostics)
7. Accelerated Diagnostics - Shipment from SanSan x3
8. Shipment from Kaguya

Count 'em: 10 cards from hand, 8 credits.

If you are scoring through an Efficiency Committee you need to fire off 6 of the advancing shipments, with at least 1 being a Shipment from Kaguya. This gets you 12 advancment tokens to spread on 3 agendas. The reason one needs to be a Shipment from Kaguya is because you need to finish off the odd numbered agendas.

There are MANY ways to win--the challenge is in figuring out the puzzle. Total number of clicks is 15: 12 (advances), 3 (installs). So the puzzle is in getting those extra 12 clicks to get up to 15, and there are many ways. Primarily, the Accelerated Diagnostics gains +5 clicks if you use it with 3 double cards. However, it cost a click for Power shutdown, and a click to install Jackson Howard so the first Accelerated Diagnostics will net you at most +3 clicks. Being as Power Shutdown only needs to fire once, the 2nd Accelerated Diagnostics can gain you 4 more. Shipment from Mirrormorph gains you 2 clicks, Efficiency Committee gains 3 more, and Shipment from Kaguya gains 1 click.

• Accelerated Diagnostics x2 (7 clicks)
• Efficiency Committee (3 clicks)
• Shipment from MirrorMorph (2 clicks)
• Shipment from Kaguya (1 click)

Total: 16 (adding the 3 normal clicks)

Easy right? There is even a spare click there to Archived Memories up something we need. Well -- not so easy. 2 reasons:

1. You do not always have all the cards you need, and so you have to make concessions from the optimal path, which is using all Shipment from SanSan with your Accelerated Diagnostics.
2. When the clicks are used is extremely important. You don't get an advance up-front on them all, and you have to generate as you go.

Once you have the base math in your head, you can begin to recognize when its go-time. If you don't have a card you need in hand, then add a click to sub a wild card (Archived Memories). Compensate with Biotic Labor for each of these needed. If you have a 2nd Vitrivius in place of an Efficiency Committee you can either A. add a click (i.e. one less advance needed), or B. add a click (over-advance and one less Archived Memories to play). Not using Efficiency Committee then only loses you 2 clicks, which can be purchased for 8 credits with Biotic Labor x2.

• +1 click if your opponent leaves a Jackson Howard on the table for you.
• +4 clicks if you go through a 3rd Accelerated Diagnostics. Although typically you only do this in trickier combos.
• -1 clicks when you play a non-double with Accelerated Diagnostics.
• -1 click to "find" a card in archives with Archived Memories or Interns.

Key Points

• Typically you want 5 of your Shipment from SanSan's to fire through the Accelerated Diagnostics. Anything else amounts to a click-loss. If this is not possible due to one of them being in your hand, you need to account for the click-loss.
• Normally you are looking to fire through an Efficiency Committee to gain 3 clicks, however it is possile to use a 2nd Vitruvius instead.
• It helps to see a Shipment from Mirrormorph OR an Interns in the archives.
• It is possible to do it without a Jackson in hand or on table, but normally you want one in your hand.
• Sometimes they leave a Jackson on table (not smart) -- then everything gets easier.

Key Ommissions:

• Panic Button. Not because of money, but because it takes a click to install and also its a trashable card for the runner to help dig R&D.
• Reclamation Order. On first glance seems good, but there are surprisingly few combos that would benefit from it.

The Pain

• Medium, Nerve Agent -- Any Multi-access is killer.
• Indexing - Those Chaos Theory builds that threaten with both Siphon and Indexing... rarely can I overcome this.
• Imp - Hitting Power Shutdown, or Accelerated Diagnostics.
• Vamp - Game over.
• Account Siphon. Yeah -- nobody plays this (eye-roll). I can usually soak one Siphon, but most Siphon decks are geared to do more than one and then it hurts.

Conclusion

Although not all-around versatile, the primary thing is that the deck draws so darned fast. It does not actually very long to setup and you can surprise people. It is not as competitive as PeeKaySK's version, but it sure is fun to potentially be at a winning state from nothing in any given turn after the 4th or 5th (averages turn 8).