[startup] MM Vlads

Satoshi 450

This is a startup desk attempting to use Vladisibirsk City Grid from Borealis out of Mirror Morph effectively. I have seen some success on jinteki.net with this.

Strategy:

  • Having a deck of 2 pointers is good in current meta with Khusyuk and Deep Dive
  • Except for Weyland right now with Azef Protocol, you can't make viable a deck entirely of 3/2's and 3/1s
  • Fast advancing 4/2's from hand is very good, there are some very powerful 4/2s, and not that many runners have clot
  • HB Mirror Morph has the ice and the money to try to protect the Vlads.
  • Even though the runners can usually get through the scoring remote (especially since we don't have void) you can make it quite taxing for them to do so, and their prize at the end is only a Vlads and not an agenda. So you can exhaust the runner this way.
  • Light the Fire does not impact this deck that much, we do run one Manegarm Skunkworks but it usually goes on R&D or HQ actually. It's not all that devastating if they trash Vlads, we have two more and three spin doctors.

Card choice commentary:

  • When playing mirror morph, it is very important to have a good number of operations, so that you can make effective use of your identity.
  • Subliminal Messaging is a key card because it lets you get a credit from your identity while also installing twice on your turn. A decent turn 1 is like: Gain credit, install ice, subliminal messaging, id gain credit, install second ice.
  • Subliminal Messaging also enables IAA of Vlads for free: Install Vlads, advance, subliminal messaging, id gain credit, advance again. This is the same as what BTL gets when they IAA Vlads.
  • Red level clearance is a good card in mirror morph because it similarly lets you install two ice in the turn. It would be nice to have more copies.
  • Seamless Launch is probably not strictly necessary, but it is gives you another way to score if you can't find Vlads, and it can also be used to reload the Vlads.

I considered running Hakarl, the main thing I would want to do with it is de-rez a magnet so that you can have the opportunity to trigger the magnet a second time. However, I think the runner could often play around this threat pretty easily, and Hakarl doesn't give you that much bang for your buck otherwise. I'm also not sold that de-rezzing and re-rezzing Nico Campaign is all that good in practice.

Architect Deployment Test is still an experiment, it is fairly hit or miss in terms of how much value you actually get from it. It feels good because it is accelerating you in terms of clicks as well as credits, even though it is less consistent of a payoff than Offworld Office. Not sure.

Honorable mentions:

  • I should probably run one copy of Scapenet in here I think. Scapenet can sometimes help you break out of clot lock. If clot is on the board, you can purge it. If you already scored cyberdex sandbox then this is not even that bad of a tempo hit. If clot is in the trash, but there is Simulchip on the board, then they still resurrect it during your fast advance. Scapenet is a way for you to kill the Simulchip before that happens. I think one copy is enough, and you can get it back with spin doctor if needed. If you draw scapenet early, Ice Carver and Trickster Taka are other decent targets for it. Even if you can't break clot lock you may still be able to score out the old fashioned way with Seamless -- if your remote is taxing enough they won't want to run never advanced installs.
0 comments