Accelerated Shipment from Hand v2

Update: A New Version posted with a few updates.

Up Front -- this is a cheese deck, and although not completely competitive, it can win enough. If this has been done before, I apologize for not giving credit where credit is due. The idea here is to win outright from your hand with a multiple variations of an 8-12 card combo and 4-13 credits.

Edits from v1: Removed Panic Button, added a 3rd Biotic Labor and 3 more ICE.

First up, I want to highlight what PeekaySK has pointed out already in the excellent writeup in his Cerebral Giraffes deck--that is that Blue Level Clearance ramps up the Cererbral Imaging identity greatly.

Its pretty basic on strategy, massive draw potential, and the X-level clearances help keep your credit pool about where it needs to be. You're driving at a core set of cards in hand:

• Power Shutdown
• Accelerated Diagnostics
• 3 Agendas (one being a 5/3)

Supplemented to this, although not explicitly required is:

• Biotic Labor
• Archived Memories
• Shipment from Kaguya

There are so many win combinations, is it mind boggling. It will take 8-12 cards, and 3-13 credits for the bulk of the win conditions. The trick is figuring it out.

Backing up:
You want to draw -- draw as much as you can. Use the X-level clearances, the Anonymous Tips, and even Jackson Howard, although NEVER remove him from the game. You don't even need the Hedge Fund so much, so just hold them to recover from Siphon.

The trickiest part of this is that you actually WANT to discard some of the cards (Shipment from SanSan priarily, others conditionally). To do this, you want to be careful about keeping hand and credits about the same.

ICE selection is just meant to be a spread, and cheap to rez. They don't really stop for long, just slow down hopefully. Pick whatever you like, but keep it cheap.

Combo up: Now solve the puzzle. When can you win outright from your hand? You'll need minimum of 8 cards in many combinations. The only card you absolutely need is Power Shutdown, and it sure helps to have Jackson Howard and Accelerated Diagnostics. The next thing you're looking for is one of each agenda. You can make it work with as little as one, but its trickier.

First an example:

1. Power Shutdown
2. Biotic Labor
3. Install Jackson Howard (burn him to seed the Accelerated Diagnostics)
4. Accelerated Diagnostics - Shipment from MirrorMorph (1 of each agenda), Shipment from SanSan x2 (Score Efficiency Committee +3 clicks)
5. Archived Memories (Jackson Howard)
6. Install Jackson Howard (burn to seed Accelerated Diagnostics)
7. Accelerated Diagnostics - Shipment from SanSan x3
8. Shipment from Kaguya

Count 'em: 10 cards from hand, 8 credits.

If you are scoring through an Efficiency Committee you need to fire off 6 of the advancing shipments, with at least 1 being a Shipment from Kaguya. This gets you 12 advancment tokens to spread on 3 agendas. The reason one needs to be a Shipment from Kaguya is because you need to finish off the odd numbered agendas.

There are MANY ways to win--the challenge is in figuring out the puzzle. Total number of clicks is 15: 12 (advances), 3 (installs). So the puzzle is in getting those extra 12 clicks to get up to 15, and there are many ways. Primarily, the Accelerated Diagnostics gains +5 clicks if you use it with 3 double cards. However, it cost a click for Power shutdown, and a click to install Jackson Howard so the first Accelerated Diagnostics will net you at most +3 clicks. Being as Power Shutdown only needs to fire once, the 2nd Accelerated Diagnostics can gain you 4 more. Shipment from Mirrormorph gains you 2 clicks, Efficiency Committee gains 3 more, and Shipment from Kaguya gains 1 click.

• Accelerated Diagnostics x2 (7 clicks)
• Efficiency Committee (3 clicks)
• Shipment from MirrorMorph (2 clicks)
• Shipment from Kaguya (1 click)

Total: 16 (adding the 3 normal clicks)

Easy right? There is even a spare click there to Archived Memories up something we need. Well -- not so easy. 2 reasons:

1. You do not always have all the cards you need, and so you have to make concessions from the optimal path, which is using all Shipment from SanSan with your Accelerated Diagnostics.
2. When the clicks are used is extremely important. You don't get an advance up-front on them all, and you have to generate as you go.

Once you have the base math in your head, you can begin to recognize when its go-time. If you don't have a card you need in hand, then add a click to sub a wild card (Archived Memories). Compensate with Biotic Labor for each of these needed. If you have a 2nd Vitrivius in place of an Efficiency Committee you can either A. add a click (i.e. one less advance needed), or B. add a click (over-advance and one less Archived Memories to play). Not using Efficiency Committee then only loses you 2 clicks, which can be purchased for 8 credits with Biotic Labor x2.

• +1 click if your opponent leaves a Jackson Howard on the table for you.
• +4 clicks if you go through a 3rd Accelerated Diagnostics. Although typically you only do this in trickier combos.
• -1 clicks when you play a non-double with Accelerated Diagnostics.
• -1 click to "find" a card in archives with Archived Memories or Interns.

Scenario: In your hand is a Power Shutdown, Jackson Howard, Accelerated Diagnostics x2, 1 of each agenda, and Archived Memories x2. Doing the base math that is +7 for the 2 Accelerated Diagnostics and +3 for the Efficiency Committee. If we burn one of our Archived Memories for a third Accelerated Diagnostics then we'll get another +3. Total of 13, so it looks good. Its at least worth thinking about now, but the first hurdle is making sure you can score your Efficiency Committee with a click to spare to harvest the clicks. It would go something like this:

• Power Shutdown
• Install Jackson Howard

Pausing here for a moment. We need a Shipment from MirrorMorph to save clicks before we can get the Efficiency Committee scored so we're going to need to use 1 of the Accelerated Diagnostics slots on Shipment from MirrorMorph to install the Efficiency Committee. If we were to Shipment from SanSan x2 for the next 2 Accelerated Diagnostics slots to score an Efficiency Committee then we don't have a click left to harvest our Efficiency Committee clicks. So we're going to need to aim at our 2nd Accelerated Diagnostics to score the Efficiency Committee. We'll need to gain a couple more clicks with Biotic to get there, so add that to the Accelerated Diagnostics mix. Finally, we need to get another Jackson Howard out anyway, so lets use the last Accelerated Diagnostics slot for an Interns. We will fit in Shipment from SanSan x5 into the next 2 Accelerated Diagnostics, but first lets get that Efficiency Committee scored.

• Accelerated Diagnostics - Shipment from MirrorMorph (3 Agendas), Interns (Jackson Howard), Biotic Labor

Next click we'll use the Accelerated Diagnostics to score the Efficiency Committee, and Interns for Jackson Howard to setup for the 3rd Accelerated Diagnostics that is not yet in hand.

• Accelerated Diagnostics - Shipment from SanSan x2, Interns (Jackson Howard) (Score Efficiency Committee)

Whew, click relief now with that Efficiency Committee, we're well on our way. Utilize those 2 wild cards (Archives Memories) to dig a Shipment from Kaguya and an Accelerated Diagnostics from archives and finish it off.

• Archived Memories - Accelerated Diagnostics
• Archived Memories - Shipment from Kaguya
• Accelerated Diagnostics - Shipment from SanSan x3
• Shipment from Kaguya

Checking our math, 8 full clicks used. +3 for Efficiency Committee, +2 for Biotic, +3 starting.

Count 'em: 9 cards from hand, 9 credits used.

This is just one scenario, and its more complicated than you know to figure it out in the middle of a game where your opponent is not going to let you take 10 minutes to puzzle it out. It can work with only 2 agendas in hand. It can work with zero Jackson Howards in hand (or table). It can work without using Efficiency Committee. You just need to solve the puzzle :)

Looking Ahead:

• Quandry in place of NEXT Bronze to save a credit.
• No Panic Button on purpose. Not because of money, but because it takes a click to install and also its a trashable card for the runner to help dig R&D.
• Reclamation Orders on first glance seems good, but there are surprisingly few combos that would benefit from it.

The primary thing here is that the deck draws so darned fast, that it does not actually take you that long to setup. The primary hurt is the Anarch suite: Medium, Nerve Agent, Imp, and Vamp. I can usually soak one Siphon, but most Siphon decks are geared to do more than one and then it hurts.

This is not as competitive as PeeKaySK's version, but it sure is fun to potentially be at a winning state from nothing in any given turn after the 4th or 5th (usually 9 or 10).