Schadenfreude Valencia

DoomRat 2414

Do you want to inflict misery on your opponent? Does a jinteki.net rage-quit make your day? Do you enjoy the knowledge that after your game, your opponent took all of his cards and burned them? If so, this is the deck for you!

Seriously though, this deck will make your opponent hate you. Don't play it against new players or at casual game nights unless you want to open up more table space. That said, it's quite strong. I've played a lot of games with it over the last week or two, and only dropped two games (admittedly jinteki.net skill levels and deck viability vary wildly, so take this with a grain of salt).

Game Plan

Get wyldcakes and Faust up and running as quickly as possible. Poke HQ to see whats there, but don't run anywhere else except with Blackmail. You can blackmail a lot of times, so don't be afraid to use it to deny econ assets. Then get rich. Between Liberated Account, Kati Jones, Daily Casts and Sure Gamble, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Then Vamp and Account Siphon them to zero. Repeatedly. MAKE SURE YOU CLEAR TAGS. If you want, at this point you can try and win the game with Medium or by running the remote (which is pretty easy when they don't have money to rez ice), or you can just keep them clicking for credits until they deck out, rage-quit or have an aneurysm (I believe the next FAQ will include text indicating that this is a victory for you).

Counter Play

Oddly, people don't want to be miserable while you laugh, so good players will probably attempt one of the following strategies:

Rush Agendas and Hope you Don't Have Blackmail:

You can blackmail a lot, and you have quite a bit of draw to go find one when you need to. Laugh in their face as you take their lunch money and their agendas. (Note: You will probably have less time to enjoy their pain due to scoring out).

Upgrade in the Remote:

This is the most common counter strategy to blackmail, but caprice and ash require that the corp actually have credits, so vamp them to zero, trash their upgrades and take their agendas.

Upgrade on HQ

We've arrived at the first counter strategy that can be an actual problem. If there is an HQ upgrade, you need to go get it. If you have Faust out, run HQ and trash the upgrade if its Crisium Grid, or at least make them rez it if its caprice nisei. Remember that if they want to defend a remote with caprice, they'll need to trash the HQ one, so just wait for them to try and do stuff and blackmail the remote. Something will open up.

NBN Fast Advance

This is your worst match-up that you'll see regularly, but its still not bad. You'll need to be more aggressive here, allowing ice to be rezzed in places that aren't HQ. Still, turn table helps a lot. It's not quite as good as vamping them to zero, but trading 15 minutes for a loaded astroscript pilot program is still awesome. Note: DO NOT START A MEDIUM DIG WITHOUT A PLAN FOR ARCHANGEL.

Bootcamp Glacier

I haven't seen anyone playing this in months, but if they're playing it, you lose. Not only does the blue sun ID make vamping them ineffective, but it also has a whole bunch of cards that are very good against you that no one else really places, including Oversight AI, Executive Bootcamp and Elizabeth Mills. Your only real shot here is to get both mediums down and blackmail into R&D repeatedly and hope you get lucky.

Other

Just some general notes:

  • Inject isn't actually very good here, but it smoothes out games where you can't find wyldside. This is faust fodder unless you haven't found it yet or you need a blackmail right now.

  • When your getting ready to Levy, many times you'll have several blackmails leftover. Use these for a cheep and easy medium dig before you reshuffle. You'll get a lot of free points this way.

  • Your only way to deal with HQ turing right right now is to parasite it. That means if you vamp and they rez turing, you'll have to click it or be denied. I think the right play against foodcoats is to go ahead and click it and vamp them anyway. If they cred twice and trash wyldside you get to medium dig them next turn or get the agenda they were trying to score.

1 comments
24 Jan 2016 pandaman64

It causes me physical harm to not see a third same old thing in a deck with blackmail and account siphon.