Loud(Loud(Loud(Loud))) - 24th, etc. at Worlds

Personal Evolution will continue until Dawn.

Welcome to the QtM Remote Visitor’s Facility! Please expect to sustain a humane and thoroughly tested amount of net damage during your stay. Things just haven’t been the same since the good doctor was taken away from us, the focus of our work has been forced to shift appropriately. But, with the onboarding of some new gainful employees the future is looking br--

Oh. Oh dear...

Yes, you seem to have stumbled onto one of our projects.

No, I’m afraid they aren’t normal scorpions. Not to worry, this was not unexpected. Try to relax, your neural responses are being recorded.

Stand by for Personal Evolution.

-neural static-

Let’s cut right to it. Plan A is to score seven points. We can’t waste our time waiting for runners to stumble into their deaths, and we can no longer guarantee a continuous prison lock for the runner to futilely run circles through until expended. Of course, they will manage these things for themselves a non-zero amount of the time but we can account for some write-offs in our experiments. It took some work to arrive at a functioning hybrid, let me explain some background of how I arrived here and what the deck does.

When I played in NZ Nats, I knew it was my last go with trying to make Prana-Keeling prison work, and Fujii was an interesting beast to try and tame. It pushed me into much more aggressive play patterns, there’s a real synergy with Prana Condenser, but it’s certainly more brittle. I found that I was winning by scoring a large percentage of the time, and was convinced that a scoring PE was possible and powerful in the meta, especially with Dreamnet leaving. Fujii, you may not be my Belobokata, but I’m sorry for ever doubting you, you sweet little nest of net damage, we’re going to do beautiful work together.

Hybrid Play:

I started by removing Keeling from the Quiet Zero shell and working from there, the initial thought being that it was very close to a scoring PE already, and that Keeling could be replaced with some combination of other hand pressure to reliably create windows. I reintegrated some elements and philosophy from my old assets PE deck, along with some new tools we had been granted in TAI.

The ultimate result is a multi-headed beast that comfortably pivots between multiple play patterns over the course of a game. The early game will look very different each game depending on what is drawn in the opener and what is being played against. The deck can do a great Prana Prison impression, asset spam, jam a scoring remote with Daniela. With bioroid-driven efficiency, we can set up to pursue multiple strategies at once, giving the runner multiple problems to solve at once. We love to give runners problems to solve, and they love solving them!

Ice placement should similarly be adaptive. Prioritize aggressive and expensive remotes, except against Sable, then you have to prioritize icing centrals more to shut down their value engine. Don’t be afraid to create as many iced remotes as you need, sometimes we go wide, sometimes we go tall.

Rationale for some includes:

Wage Workers: Critically, the deck is not dependent on Wage Workers as an engine piece. It makes everything run smoother, it helps us pivot between play patterns while the runner is busy disassembling the Doomsday Machine. The deck should play to maximum WW value while one is active, but we expect it to eventually get taken down. WW PE was a point of interest within QtM since the card was spoiled. I think what really finally made it click here is not getting too cute and ensuring that lines still make sense without an active one on the board, but that it can provide consistent value when active.

Calvin: Calvin!? Calvin. We love Calvin. Calvin, our silent hero. Calvin, we love you. Are you convinced yet? I can see not. I tried out Federal Fundraising first and we tried Wall to Wall, and they just didn’t perform. Why? Because a competent runner trashes them ASAP. I tried going without the draw assets and going in different directions with the influence entirely. What became clear eventually was that the deck needed both a certain number of FA options and a certain amount of better-than-basic draw. Calvin is both low-investment in game resources and low-investment in influence so that we can fit everything we need in the deck. Leaving Calvin facedown for a turn to bait a run and rezzing on approach presents the runner with a choice that feels awful. Even if they trash him before we get to click, we’ve mostly come out ahead. If we’re going to WW triple install → draw, triple install → Calvin is better and when we’re without WW, Calvin helps us dig to set up our next plan, and actually does it because he has a good chance of sticking on the board for a few turns at least.

Biotic Labor: We do, in fact, have the money to afford it, and it enables some silly things in conjunction with Wage Workers. FA’ing an early House of Knives with an active Prana is tempo-positive and immediately forces the runner into a much more hostile board state, otherwise, it’s generally going to win you the game. More on some other lines here shortly.

Agendas: The agenda suite is a bit more condensed from Quiet Zero, which was slightly more condensed, than pre-TAI PE prisons. I needed clear lines to get to 7 while making room for more cards that actively doing things, while keeping some of the nasty PE one-pointer tricks and having a high enough density to make Moon Pool work. Sting is only good as 3x, so a HoK had to go. Still, the deck makes it easy enough to consistently have one up with a Prana. I tried 2x Blood in the Water first just to see, and as expected it’s good but brittle. Sometimes you want more recursion and sometimes you just need to FA a 3/2 to win. Longevity Serum is a good card, it turns out. Ideally you want to Regenesis out a Fujii every game, but jamming and scoring Fujii’s the hard way is very possible. I even managed to FA a Fujii from hand once on the day, ticking a Prana to 7 counters and prompting a concession by my opponent.

Mental checklists when playing:

Every time Sting is in hand or on board at start of turn:

• Can I murder the runner right now?
  • Will the Sting damage alone kill them?
  • It is possible to both score Sting from the board and pop Prana in the same turn (with Biotic and WW, sting on board), but it can be done with Moon Pool with either sting or pool pre-installed. Do not play Biotic until after scoring Sting to ensure that excess unpreventable damage doesn't hit a Steelskin and put the Runner out of lethal range. This is the mythical Doomsday Combo, I have never pulled this off but it is worth keeping in mind. I like to think about it. I like to think about what it would do to a runner, how it would change their outlook.

Moon Pool:

• Is Regenesis setup possible?
  • Does the runner have the resources currently to dismantle the setup? If not, this should be priority.
• Regenesis is not available, should I install Moon Pool?
  • Is it possible to force a lethal misplay for a runner not accounting for moon pool? Remember, every stage of Moon Pool is optional, so you can use it to dump lethal agendas in archives or thin HQ to a lethal access for runners trying to make value runs.
  • Do you want to FA something by shuffling away only 1 agenda. This is possible by banking moon pool on the board the turn earlier. Good runners will trash the Moon Pools on the board, but only if it doesn't force them too broke.
  • Do you want to NA a well-protected Fujii?
  • Do you need time and want to burn the runner's credits and clicks? There are two Moon Pools and in many games we only want/need one. It's okay to give the runner tasks, they like those.
  • Are any of the above more valuable in the moment and/or non-conflicting with setting up Regenesis combos? If so, you may want to install Moon Pool

Regenesis:

• You cannot score Regenesis and get its trigger in the same turn that you fired Rashida or played an Operation!
  • Did you fire Rashida? Don't score!
  • Do you have extra clicks this turn because you set up with Moon Pool at the end of runner turn like the evil genius you are? Only play ops After you score.

Blood in the Water:

• Can I score this from hand this turn?
  • Stop what you're doing and do that unless it's a Regenesis score.

Longevity Serum:

• Similarly, priority should be considered for scoring Serum if available. The 2-pointers are the biggest liability and are safest in our score area.
  • Don’t try to optimize for recursion targets if the agenda is vulnerable.
    • Regenesis plays still take priority if available.

Wage Worker Lines

The deck transforms into something completely different when WW is online.

• Triple install, lots of basic setup stuff here, plenty of installables.
  • 4th click can often be a draw, even though that is against traditional wisdom of not drawing last click. If Calvin is on board, you should probably click him. You can prevent unwanted accesses in HQ by being PE, having an Anemone on HQ, or having a Moon Pool installed.
• Triple install (moon pool, 3/x Agenda, other). A normal FA play but don't forget to get the WW value before popping Pool and using your last click to advance the agenda. There's only one mavirus here, but you can use WW to install it as well and FA through a clot. That comes up less often here though, because of net damage.
• (Moon Pool at end of runner turn for 2 advancements), probably a regenesis play where you already had an agenda hanging out in archives. Remember you can take 3 other actions before the final advancement, just don't play ops.
• Triple Operation is very unlikely, generally they will be used with the extra clicks.
• Triple Draw can be very good in alternation with triple install turns, just don't blow through it without thinking. Look at what you are drawing and make sure there isn't a better pivot before you take more cards. Might be generally less valuable if Calvin is live.
• Biotic Labor: NA a Fujii!
  • You only need 1 agenda in hand or face down in archives if you start the turn with Fujii and Moon Pool on the board to NA it with active WW. Important to remember that multiple tools may also allow you to FA a Fujii from hand and doing so won’t break the bank if Prana is live as well.
• Reminder you can score an agenda from 3c and still ww click for the credit to rez Prana if you are very tight on money somehow.

FAQ

Snare?? No, get out. We need cards that proactively create threats and directly protect our threats and agendas. In truth, there was 1x Snare in the list early on and it was cute with Federal Fundraising, but ultimately that card didn’t work out and the Snare needed to be Regolith for economic consistency. Again, we’re here to score 7 points with tight play and lethal combos, not to wait for the runner to misplay into damage. There’s still plenty of opportunity for them to do that while we are doing other things.

Is this soft to Hermes? Not as much as you’d expect for a deck with this agenda density. Wage Workers help, being PE helps (Hermes runners are often soft to damage), and it is important to keep in mind that the deck has the potential to score out with just two agenda scores, thanks to Regenesis. Play carefully and to their weaknesses and it will likely be fine.

What about Hush Arissana? Hush can be a minor annoyance if they get it into play, but they tend to be soft to the rest of it, keeping up with the damage and the expensive trash costs at the pace that they need to while also installing the pieces they want to tends to be too much and they fall behind. Shaper matchups tend to be the cleanest.

Calvin though? We love Calvin :)

Okay but have you considered ___? Probably. The deck went through a number of iterations and different values of things. It proved to be a very delicate ecosystem where seemingly minor changes had the deck swinging wildly between feeling very good and very bad. This is the result of including all of the parts we need and really trimming the excess. I hope you like it.

Why is it called Loud? Because it is no longer Quiet.

Shoutouts

Thank you to the OP team and to all of the volunteers who helped put the event together and kept it going through unforeseen circumstances. This was my first Worlds, and it won't be my last, you are all incredible and I am grateful for you.

Very special thanks to QtM for being my emotional support, for putting up with my incessant PE experiments, to those of you who ended up believing in the deck and sleeving it for the big day, and for being very good kissers. Frogs loves you.

-neural static-

Thank you for visiting the QtM Remote Visitor’s Facility! Unintended side-effects vary but should not be cause for alarm. Personal Evolution is to be embraced.