My Starting Steve

scd 190

[Lemuria Codecrackers added to get it up to 45 cards. No, I'm not playing them.]

Here's my Starting Steve for the Terminal Directive Campaign. Playing vs. my wife, who is starting with the recommended Skorpios.

I chose Steve rather than Ayla somewhat reluctantly; Ayla seems more interesting and more generally viable than Steve, especially vs. Skorpios with limited recursion in core Shaper. But, I also wanted to not avoid her ability entirely (as I'm a more experienced player than her, and wanted her ability to be consequential so she'd have more fun). I'm therefore stuck with Steve, and after a test game or two, even though Skorpios shuts down Steve for the most part, there's at least a modicum of interesting strategic decision-making. Trying to bait out the Skorpios ability is actually fun?

But, I'm well aware that Skorpios (either Corp, really) snowballs as the campaign continues, and that I'm starting on the back foot here. Rather than make a Really Awesome Steve, I decided to start with the recommended deck from Terminal Directive and tweak a little. So:

  • Getting rid of a Laguna Velasco District (nice draw, just too expensive) to make room for a single Corroder, and making room for a second Special Order so I can get that Corroder out when I need to. Keeping a singleton Aurora in there, just in case.
  • Dropping the Akamatsu Mem Chip (why was this in here? would I really need to have 6 MU that often) for a singleton Stimhack which should give me money for a hail mary (and, ahem, also get me closer to the suffer two brain damage objective for the organized play kit).
  • And, the recommended deck ends up taking up only 14 influence, so I'm throwing a Sacrificial Construct in to defuse one of Skorpios's RFG trashes.

So, that's all. It's just a Starting Steve. Nothing special here, probably terrible. But, wanted to stay close to the recommended decks and, well, here it is!

2 comments
10 May 2017 Sanjay

I've really been appreciating people posting their TD decks on here. Thanks!

I liked your write-up too. The Steve vs. Skorpios interplay is really interesting.

10 May 2017 scd

After 5 games, I've won 4 and lost 1 (to a flatline, because I stupidly ran a Snare on 4th click and then got Scorched). I don't think I over-did the tweaks to this deck to make it significantly more powerful vs. Skorpios, I think it's just been a mix of getting lucky (lots of lucky singleton accesses of big fat Grafts off R&D), as well as my experience at playing. It's frustrating for my wife, so I'm going to sit down with her and help her redo her deck entirely to combat mine more effectively. While TD is interesting, there are things they could have done to balance experience level a bit better here.