Drinking From The Firehose: 79-Card MaxX

This deck becomes illegal tomorrow, but it's too beautiful not to share. See the end for a post-MWL2 edit.

Why get quality draws when you can get quantity draws? This deck does one thing well, and that's to vomit cards all over the place. It's positively disgusting, and works far better than you might think. (See this very brief stream of an SSCI2 endgame.)

There are two primary piloting challenges: (1) setting up the firehose, and (2) keeping it under control once you do.

(1) Get some economy going, apply early pressure with Imp and Scrubber, and draw draw draw like a maniac to find your Wyldside, even if it means throwing away cards you like. If you see it early, don't install until you have money going and/or other cards installed; one of the fastest (and saddest) ways to lose is clicking for credits while you're on 3 and burning five cards every turn.

(2) Once Wyldside is going, start Fausting like crazy; you have no shortage of pitchable cards (particularly draw cards). Keep your money up; eventually Faust alone won't be enough, and you'll need money for Déjà Vus, Parasites, D4v1d, or your real breakers. And if you need a particular answer, just dig it out of the trash!

Card Choices:

Exclusive Party: My favorite card in the deck, which pulls its weight for a whopping 6 influence. Between MaxX and Faust, they get playable very quickly. Late-game, your 3-5 parties will be vital for answering a remote threat, or quickly bouncing into range of Liberated, Gamble or Casts.

Making an Entrance: This card is amazing for setup: never put anything in the trash directly; instead, plan a turn or two ahead and let MaxX throw away parties and dead draws, leaving only good stuff. (Or, set up your ideal Peddler / Inject.) If you've got Wyldside, remember to plan ahead on which effect to trigger first. (Kudos to mathandlove on seeing the MaxX/Entrance synergy.)

Levy AR Lab Access: With 79 cards, one is plenty; you can easily end up seeing more cards than a 2-Levy deck. It can be wise to fire Levy when there are still 20+ cards in your stack, to hedge against Chronos, and prevent the Corp from finding a score/kill window when you start to run thin. I've never run out of gas due to Levying too early.

Matchups/Changes

One of the best things about this deck is how easy it is to add cards! If you add more than a couple, also add money and draw to compensate. Avoid going too event-heavy; as is, the odds of a dead Peddler are ~5%, and ~0.5% for trapping your only Levy (it's never happened to me, but it could).

If your meta is Jinteki-heavy, a 3rd Mimic is probably correct, and cutting a Parasite for a Pol-Op isn't the worst idea. But it's not necessary; MaxX can usually play around Caprice by burning down remote ICE, or focusing on big-dig Medium.

Salsette Slums and Archives Interface may not be necessary with Museum being weaker. One of the two is probably good enough; the latter is nice to get rid of CVS for sucker-farming. Cutting both is also probably fine.

In the new trace/CTM meta, I might go for 2-3x Sports Hopper.

The deck's toughest matchup is SYNC; bouncing back from 24/7 + All-Seeing I is doable but tough.

Post-MWL2

This deck can survive the 8-influence penalty of MWL2, but just barely. Exclusive Party is right out, so managing money will be even more important when piloting.

I haven't tested it yet, but my first draft would be:

• -6 Exclusive Party
• +2-3 Infiltration
• +2-3 Armitage Codebusting
• +1-2 Queen's Gambit

Without parties, we need more ways to bounce back from low credits. Infiltration's actual effect will be clutch when it's needed, and Faust-food when it's not.

• -3 Turntable
• +3 Grimoire

With AstroTrain gone, Turntable is still good for dealing with Atlas and Nisei, but Grimoire is probably better: Imps become super-Imps, Medium digs for two on the first run, Parasite insta-kills Komainu.

• -2 D4v1d
• +1 Datasucker
• +1-2 Ice Carver

You could cut 1-2 Parasites or Career Fairs instead to keep D4v1d, but I think doubling down on ICE destruction is better. You'll have so many cards, you can afford to Faust through most big ICE anyway, and ideally kill them with cutlery.