The Big Three Icebreakers [Thematic Version]

lucaxiom 11

The idea for this deck came from the trio of Ice that have a one credit cost for both boosting strength and breaking one subroutine; Torch, Garrote and Corroder. These three ice make calculating run costs nice and simple, if hefty both on the install cost and the run cost.

Fortunately, with the exception of Magnum Opus, these are the only programs you need, lending to a surprisingly heavy event and resource deck and a much smaller delay before your rig comes online than most ponderous Shaper decks.

To capitalize on the potential of this, I picked: Chaos Theory for the small deck (and convenient MU with her and her console, Dinosaurus), the Test Run/Eureka! combo for cheap, rapid installs, the Power Nap/Lucky Find (plus Eureka!) combo for burst economy and Diesel/Rabbit Hole for even faster install/deck size reduction).

Everything else is optional, but supports both the theme that this is a Chaos Theory deck (Exploratory Romp plus many cards already listed) and the idea for a trio of monster ice-breakers (by boosting strength with The Personal Touch/Helpful AI). Finally, Sacrificial Construct to offset the obvious weakness of so few programs.

7 comments
17 Jun 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Test Run + Scavenge is straight up better than Test Run + Eureka!, even considering Power Nap. The math there is pretty straightforward. The only disadvantage is that you spend 2 to get the target installed on the first turn, not 1 first turn and 2 the turn after. I don't think deferring that cost is worthwhile compared to what you are losing.

Why run Rabbit Hole and not Underworld Contact, or cloud breakers, or anything benefiting from lots of ? 3x Rabbit Hole is basically like paying 4 and 2 to remove 2 cards from your deck, potentially helping you if you are going up against a corp running a lot of traces.

I'd strongly consider taking a third Diesel. As your only source of draw you are going to be clicking for cards often, which takes it toll on your momentum even with a 40 card deck. Going up to 41 is even worthwhile, as Diesel replaces itself with 3 cards, and net 2 of draw.

Dinosaurus is only better than The Toolbox if you have Garrote installed on it, and its a little cheaper (two Magnum Opus 's). Otherwise it's more flexible and the +2 is the exact same as +2 strength to a single breaker, except you get to pick which breaker gets it, and can also use the creds to break subroutines.

Torch is nice, but in decks with enough money, I like Study Guide better. Not sure it fits here but I'd consider it, and it might hamper your aggression less (you are less dependant on a card combo to install it).

The Helpful AI is a cool card but he doesn't see much play, especially in big rig decks, because he's just not necessary, and is actually a tempo loss. You pay 2 and 2 (one for draw, one for install) for +2 strength when you can just spend 2 on any of your breakers to get the same effect. If you use the same breaker more than once that turn you get more value, but I think you'll see that doesn't happen often in this deck. In his place, I'd recommed Professional Contacts or Symmetrical Visage.

I've probably got more to say, but I'll leave it here for now. Hopefully this helps!

17 Jun 2015 Cliquil

If you wanted to stay "on theme" you could always take Gordian Blade instead of Torch and give you something that does install cheap. For added joy it would mean all three breakers were the same strength!

17 Jun 2015 Thomas Haas

I've been thinking about Power Nap recently... I think you should find deck space for Game Day when that comes out, as well as perhaps running 1x Queen's Gambit (Find influence by taking out extra corroders.)

Eureka is questionable, especially considering your 3x corroders (which cost less than the event to play!) Test Run/Eureka-ing a Garrote is barely cheaper than using SMC to just slam it on the board (Which is MUCH more click efficient and versatile) - I love Eureka, but it might not be worth it here. :( If you do switch to Scavenge, consider Femme.

17 Jun 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Game Day is kind of junk without extra hand size. This deck could run Box-E if it had more consistent draw but I don't think that's worthwhile. If you want even more , Borrowed Satellite does the trick as well, but all this to justify Game Day seems like a waste.

Queen's Gambit, on the other hand, makes good sense in a Power Nap deck.

@Thomas Haas: Game Day is already out. It got released in the Breaker Bay data pack, alongside Hayley Kaplan: Universal Scholar and all the other university-themed cards.

17 Jun 2015 Pinkwarrior

@lucaxiom I've seen something simular in my local game group. This however dose seem to be missing a fair few things. your running event Heavy deck but then are doing nothing to capitalize on that fact no Oracle May, Prepaid VoicePAD or Comet the only thing you have got going for events is Same Old Thing.

Comet i fell is the big one as this can easily turn all those double's into regular events essentially. I also don't feel the Dinosaurus is justified all your breakers are efficient once their down so theirs really no point in the Dino if their was a Femme Fatale or a Mimic then fine.

as @FarCryFromHuman points out Scavenge and Test Run is better but i personally would run both in a deck like this to help speed up the chances of it happening. Which leads me to Corroder it seems like a massive waste of Influence when you can get Snowball / Battering Ram which are better in some situations don't cost influence and since you can cheat them out means their higher cost is irrelevant. The last thing i feel is missing is multi access the more cards you access the more chance you have of winning, after breakers and econ that should be the next thing on your hit list a couple of The Maker's Eye's would do.

17 Jun 2015 FarCryFromHuman

@Pinkwarrior Good call on Snowball. He's already running The Personal Touch, so it's extremely good here. He has enough problems though, I wouldn't recommend Battering Ram. I do agree that Corroder needs to go, but I didn't mention it because it was sort of the theme of the deck. Technically Snowball fits this as well.

Off-topic, but intriguing:

Upon consideration, all the in the deck inspires an interesting idea. A defensive runner deck is coming into focus for me now that we have access to both Feedback Filter and Clot with Sunny Lebeau and Film Critic on the horizon. With cloud breakers, Underworld Contacts and Data Folding something glacial but effective could happen. You'd be essentially immune to all the scary kill cards in the game, as well as walking through most Tracer ICE without the need for breakers.

18 Jun 2015 lucaxiom

Hi guys; first of all, thank you all for the feedback and advice; I never would have expected this much constructive criticism for my first published deck! I am extremely honored. With that, I will address every point made, in order;

@FarCryFromHuman; I can't believe I missed the Test Run/Scavenge combo, though it means that I will probably have to replace the Power Nap and Double Events burst economy with something else. Also, it means that I won't have all of Chaos Theory: Wünderkind thematic cards in one deck, which was what endeared me to some of the card choices.

Rabbit Hole is probably my favorite card in the game, due to the security and strategy acceleration it gives, so I know all about the Underworld Contact and Cloud ICE-breakers synergy. However, even alone, I feel Rabbit Hole is value enough and this deck has stronger ICE-breakers already (though I could replace some Double Events with Underworld Contact, as a substitute economy strategy.

The last card I chose to add to the deck was a toss-up between a third Diesel or a third The Personal Touch. I chose the latter because Diesel has some anti-synergy with the Test Run/Eureka! combo, as drawing the ICE-breakers into hand nullifies the combo. However, with the deck revisions mentioned above, it should no longer be a problem and there is plenty of space for a third Diesel.

Regarding Dinosaurus vs. The Toolbox; bear in mind that the 2 credits from The Toolbox recur every turn, while the +2 strength from Dinosaurus recurs for every ICE encountered, so I think Dinosaurus has more value. As for versatility, The Personal Touch included should provide enough versatility, allowing for the ICE-breaker that is most used to get extra strength for cheaper runs.

Study Guide does look very nice for a Decoder, but I think it relies on a more stable economy deck, rather that the half burst, half stable one I had in mind. Also, notice that this deck uses cards up to Double Time. Yeah, I'm a poor scrub who will eventually buy all the packs, but it will take a while yet.

The Helpful AI was an unusual decision, as it was included more for thematic reasons than for strategy, but I would prefer to include cards with more synergy with this deck in particular rather than the generic deck filler that is Professional Contacts.

@Cliquil; I didn't realize that Gordian Blade was thematic with Chaos Theory: Wünderkind, but part of the idea of this deck was to include some high cost ICE-breakers which would be installed on the cheap with the Test Run/Eureka! combo (or the Test Run/Scavenge combo that @FarCryFromHuman recommended), so I still think Torch is the better option. Plus, Dinosaurus and The Personal Touch are there to give the Big Three equal strength! :-D

@Thomas Haas Game Day was considered as it is the only Shaper Double Event not yet included in this deck, but, as mentioned above, I'm behind on getting all the packs. Queen's Gambit was also considered, if for the hilarious (but inefficient) Queen's Gambit/Exploratory Romp combo.

The three Test Run/Eureka! combos (or the Test Run/Scavenge combos) are really for Torch, Garrote and Magnum Opus, plus for any Ice-breaker that might be trashed unexpectedly. Three Corroders in a 40 card deck with draw acceleration means you're bound to get one early enough without any assistance. But perhaps I should change the "Big Three" of this deck to the most outrageously expensive ICE-breakers that exist (Femme Fatale, Morning Star, Leviathan, Torch, Garrote, Alpha and Omega) to justify the Test Run/Eureka! combo.

@Pinkwarrior; I feel like Oracle May works better with Motivation, as this combo means you reliably get Oracle May's bonus every turn, rather than just three times with Test Run. Prepaid VoicePAD was considered, but dropped when I noticed that half of this deck's event cards are cost 0 or 1. And Comet is a card I don't have yet, unfortunately.

Corroder is considered one of the best ICE-breakers, but I recognize that it is too cheap to warrant a draw-out-of-stack combo and will probably replace it with something else (like Snowball as recommended).


P.S. I think I will edit the name of this deck to include [Thematic Version] and then publish a new deck with most of the recommendations with a similar title but [Competitive Version] instead. Outside of that, I really like bouncing deck ideas of you guys, so if you want to see more, just keep commenting and watch this space! Peace.