Mad Hatter

Amuk 40

Mad Hatter

I liked the idea of InsightHat but decided to adapt it to my own playstyle. And, of course, a nearly perfect name was just sitting there unused.

I played it in the Louisville Regional and it did well, though a couple of serious flaws were made apparent. The worst is that a Mirāju behind any even remotely taxing ICE on R&D broke the deck.

As with the original, the ideal is to make two runs the whole game. I had two games in the Regional in which my first run scored 5 points. There are a lot of 3-pointers in the meta, so this is hardly exceptional. But, the deck lacked a solid alternative plan if Insight whiffed and the game was getting late. So this is the version I'd run if I had a chance to redo it before the event.

There's a ton of draw because you want to get all your pieces as quickly as possible. As stated above, getting to match point on your first run is definitely doable. The faster you get there, the less time the Corp has to defend R&D.

Best case scenario, you have enough money and rig (and/or SMCs) in play to get into R&D, have Top Hat and Comet on the board, and are holding Insight, Freedom From Equality and Mad Dash. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't (the 40-card deck is why we're in CT not Ayla, though converting it to Ayla would be a reasonable option). Clicks 1 & 2, play Insight. If there's an agenda in the top 4 cards, make sure to note which it is and use your Comet trigger to play FfE (the deck requires a lot of drawing; it's okay but not great to play this ahead of time to avoid discarding it). Click 3, Mad Dash R&D and choose to access whichever card is the agenda. Use Click 4 for whatever (i.e., clearing a Data Raven tag, just taking credits, or running again if you happened to see 2 agendas with Insight and can afford it).

It isn't necessary to wait for Comet to run, of course. It just ensures you have a click left over afterward (and, of course, provides an often-crucial 6th MU). Other turns are spent moneying up and redrawing as necessary. The breaker suite has been reworked a bit to give more outs (i.e., hitting HQ) in case of of late game Insight misses.

Glacier builds that spend enormous amounts of time making impenetrable servers are mostly wasting their time. You don't care how much money the Corp has or how deep its scoring server is. Scarcity of Resources is a mild annoyance, at worst. If you even suspect the Corp has a kill package, keep an IHW in hand; it doubles as draw and damage protection in a pinch. Since you'll be drawing a lot, a breaker you can throw in the bin and only pay for if you need it (saving MU for SMC) is worth the influence, hence Paperclip. The Femme is primarily for Mirāju or other such debilitating ICE.

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