Vamped Up (Starlight Doubles MaxX)

DrunkenGineer 854

Here's the game plan for Starlight Doubles MaxX:

  1. Prod early, draw cards, and build up your board state.
  2. Once you've found Adjusted Chronotype and Starlight Crusade Funding, install them. This should happen around turn 4 if you're not unlucky.
  3. Explode in credits thanks to Lucky Find, Queen's Gambit, and Power Nap, each of which nets you 6 credits for a single click.
  4. ???

Yeah...once you're set up with your giant stacks of cash, what do you do? You make the corp's life miserable.

Nothing goes better with giant, oppressive stacks of cash than Vamp. When you're ready, fire off a Vamp and drain the corp of all its money; ideally, you have an Amped Up ready, so you can Keyhole 4 times (with the corp unable to rez anything) and end in a 5-card-access Medium run.

After all, the corp can't protect Crisium Grid on R&D if he's broke, right?

Notable Cards

Starlight Crusade Funding: In conjunction with Adjusted Chronotype, you can supercharge your doubles after a little bit of setup.

Amped Up: Brain damage is nothing to be afraid of. Maximize your power turn by using this, ideally after the Vamp drops.

Feint: This deck's hard counter is Crisium Grid on HQ. Use Feint (in conjunction with Knight if the server is 3 ice deep) to wipe out Crisium and hit the Vamp.

Chop Bot 3000: Once you've popped off, your Chronotype is at risk of being blown up if you don't remove the Vamp tag. Chop Bot lets you clear the tag and wipe Starlight in one go, so you can't be locked in to only 3 clicks per turn.

Symmetrical Visage: Even MaxX needs to draw to set up, so you might as well gain a credit for the likely single draw per turn you'll make early on. Great if you find it early, still decent if it comes later, and not really worth crying over if you mill it.

Options

Kati Jones is probably very useful if the game goes late, but you want to win quick. Including her would be more of a backup plan than anything.

Levy AR Lab Access is really not an option here. This deck rolls over and dies if it can't get the Vamp off, so the last 3 influence needs to be spent on Feint to counter Crisium Grid. And you're ideally going to win before you deck yourself, anyway.

Hades Shard would be a nice include (if there was influence for it), but you don't want to be trashing agendas with Keyhole. You want to trash operations and ice to increase R&D's agenda density, and win with Medium.

8 comments
15 Apr 2015 aenimator

How do you wipe out Crisium on HQ when you cannot access any cards using Feint?

15 Apr 2015 SlayerCNV

eater medium is not a good move lol

15 Apr 2015 DrunkenGineer

@aenimator Feint says "If the run is successful, you cannot access any cards." Crisium says "Successful runs against this server are not considered to be successful or unsuccessful for the purposes of card abilities." Ergo, Feinting into an HQ protected by a Crisium works like a super Inside Job, bypassing two pieces of ice with no penalty.

@SlayerCNV If the corp can't afford to rez any of their ice, then it's not a problem, is it? You don't really want to run R&D until right after you've Vamped.

15 Apr 2015 aenimator

I see, so if Crisium's rezzed it obviously works that way. I was just wondering what to do if Crisium isn't rezzed. I guess you'll have to threat vamp first, then run again with feint, then vamp again.

15 Apr 2015 DrunkenGineer

@aenimator Indeed. I could slot in a Wanton Destruction or another Vamp to increase the HQ threat, but the number of games where Crisium on HQ happens probably won't be worth it.

15 Apr 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Trope might be a nice stand-in for Levy AR Lab Access when it comes out. Not sure it's worth the though.

16 Apr 2015 DrunkenGineer

@FarCryFromHuman True, but the issue I have with Trope in MaxX is that you're going to be trashing 2/3rds of the cards you pull back, unless you start drawing a lot later in the game (which you normally don't want to do).

16 Apr 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Very true, it is way less efficient than LARLA. I think I just need to get over my fear of MaxX in general.