Non-Interactive Shaper Nonsense

DoomRat 2370

I've found that I basically build two types of runners. The first type of deck is generic good stuff. Money, breakers and multi-access, as efficient as possible. The second type of deck is completely non-interactive combo nonsense, of which this is a prime example.

The Combo

Our goal here is to play Apoc and all three Encores in one turn, then use the Encore turns to install Conduit and Equivocation to run 10 times. This gets you 20+ accesses usually, which should probably win. To make that happen, we need to get the following things into place.

  1. Our hand is 3x Encore, Apoc, Conduit and Equivocation.
  2. Rezeki, Simulchip and T400 Memory Diamond are installed.
  3. Clippy, MK, Euler and at least 3 OOTA (more is better, as this gives you spare runs to absorb stuff like Border Control or Crisium Grid) are in the heap.
  4. We have enough credits.

Once we have this, we use OOTA to make the run each central at start of turn (our breakers all install from archives, the simulchip is there to get Euler), then play the combo.

Setting Up

Almost the entire rest of the deck is the money and draw you need to set up the combo and get through your deck. Notably, if you go as fast as you can, drawing through most of your economy, you'll probably be too poor most of the time. Similarly if you maximize credits, playing all of your econ, you'll probably be too slow most of the time. The game is going to be in recognizing how much money you need vs. how quickly the corp can score out and speeding up or slowing down accordingly.

Our target timeline should be turn 7 for a very fast execution (i.e. we start the combo with around 20 credits) or turn 10 for a very slow execution (i.e. we need 50+ credits). It won't hit that every game, but keep that in the back of your mind when you deciding whether to play Creative Commission or VRcation with your last click.

The Bad Cards

This deck contains two cards that are pretty widely agreed to be Bad CardsTM. The first of which is T400 Memory Diamond. I 100% agree this is a bad card. However, you may have noticed that this deck requires us to hold 6 cards in hand. There just isn't any other way to accomplish this in the card pool right now. Further more, we have two of them because drawing our 6 combo pieces before we draw T400 is a loss condition. Having two dramatically lowers the odds of this happening.

The second Bad Card in the deck is also our sole tech card, Guru Davinder. We can't afford to take any sort of meat or net damage on or before the combo turn (lest we lose our pieces), so guru gets the slot here as the only way to repeatedly prevent meat damage. Without it, we'd lose to, among other things, Prisec, Clearinghouse, Urban Renewal, Bio-Ethics Association and probably a half dozen more things I haven't thought of. So it earns it's extremely expensive place in the deck.

Matchups

This list does a lot better when its a surprise, but this is how I think matchups will shake out once people know what it does:

Favorable

BOOM CtM and NWE Gags are both positive matchups for this deck. Their agenda spread can be awkward to rush out and the ice isn't prohibitively taxing, though you should be aware that you'll probably need to break a Hydra vs CtM. Additionally, Guru needs to come down in both of these matchups, to avoid prisecs vs. CtM or to hold off Urban Renewal/Clearinghouse vs. Gags.

Unfavorable

Grindy Pālanā is awful for us. Even if we manage to protect our combo pieces from Kakugo with guru, we'll probably die to snare while accessing. I don't have a good solution to fix this matchup.

Unassessed/Other

I think PD is going to be tough, but I haven't tested it extensively. Their good at racing, and winning on turn 7 isn't out of the question for them. Plus Anoetic Void and Crisium Grid are good at holding us off. Acme is surprisingly not awful. Just go a little slower and make sure you have like 60 credits before you try to land the combo and you can probably stick it. Similar to NWE gags, their agenda suite makes it really hard to rush out on you.

The other common tech card that causes us problems is Ark Lockdown. If you suspect your opponent has it, pre install your breakers and try to trigger the combo before you've binned all the OOTAs.

Wrap Up

That's all I have to say really. Enjoy making your opponents miserable.

9 comments
5 Dec 2021 Wentagon

Eater?

5 Dec 2021 DoomRat

@Wentagon If not for Crisium Grid I think this would be a great idea.

5 Dec 2021 vreely
6 Dec 2021 Wentagon

Councilman kind of needs to come down on the combo turn to land consistently -- and then it's a 7 card combo. 1x cybertrooper is maybe worth considering though; 2 strength on each breaker on the combo turn potentially saves tons of money.

6 Dec 2021 DoomRat

@Wentagon Cybertrooper seems like a good idea. It's probably worth more than 5 credits on the combo turn, so it could replace a casts maybe.

11 Dec 2021 5N00P1

What about Akshara Sareen? It's some more clicks.

15 Dec 2021 DoomRat

@5N00P1 If I had an easy way to hold it until after the combo I'd be all for it, but it eats a hand slot and those are at a premium here.

16 Dec 2021 5N00P1

yeah I was afraid of that.... Bookmark would be a nice piece....

9 Jan 2022 Council

Is Supercorridor worth considering?