From drops, the flood.

Jashay 716

This started as a Kim deck... :S

When making a new deck, I like to pick a concept (say, 'how can I trash the most cards'), and then try to go all-out for that concept. So I was playing my Retired researcher deck, raking in a tasty 6 at the start of the turn, and I started thinking 'How many clickless credits can I generate?'

The initial deck was more-or-less a huge pile of all the cards that could give me free credits in Criminal, but didn't actually reliably generate much more than the Iain deck. I moved over to Anarch, and tried the Adjusted Chronotype/Hard at Work combo along with Data Folding and Underworld Contact, which I really liked. But you have to really include 3 of both for Anarch, and then you might as well put in the Gene Conditioning Shoppe too, and maybe Wyldside.

Anyway, after a few test runs and tweaks I found myself looking at the deck and realising that the vast majority of it wasn't Anarch. The combo, sure, along with Corroder, I've Had Worse, Medium and a single Force of Nature. So I switched the I've Had Worses for Diesel, and simply made it a Kate deck. I tweaked the breaker suite, and here we are!

The Plan

The first few turns, unless a particularly good opportunity presents itself, will be setting up. The early aim is to get 3 or more per turn, which you can usually do in the first 2-3 turns. Thereafter, if you have The Supplier out, nothing you install from it can cost you more than your income. Likewise, with Kate's discount, almost all of your programs will cost this or less.

From there, try and put some sort of econ card on The Supplier each turn, and make runs at soft targets. As your econ improves, get a full breaker suite out and wreak havoc. Once you hit 6+ credits a turn, you start to seriously out-econ the corps without even really trying.

The Breakers

When I get Breaker Bay, Study Guide will get a run out, but until then we have ZU.13 Key Master. Mimic can deal with the smaller sentries, and Creeper can deal with most of the bigger ones. Snowball could be Cerberus "Lady" H1, but I don't have any recursion, so I am leery of putting it in. Atman is there so that once I've scoped a lot of the ICE, I can set it to whatever value is the most beneficial.

The cloud breakers have some small synergy with the drip econ, but not so much that I couldn't consider changing them.

The Events

A small amount of burst econ, which is helpful to get the ball rolling, and some card draw. Levy AR Lab Access in case you get through the whole deck; you do move pretty slowly, and will draw a lot of cards.

The Econ

The Supplier does so much work. In theory, he can save you 48. This is unlikely to ever happen, but hey. He works with 2/3 of the cards in the deck, and that adds up.

Data Folding, Daily Casts and Underworld Contact are the backbone of the drip econ, with Dyson Mem Chip enabling two of them.

Hard at Work is a bad card on its own, but gets better with Adjusted Chronotype. That alone wouldn't justify the inclusion, but since I was also running Symmetrical Visage it made more sense to run Gene Conditioning Shoppe. This all nicely tied into my love of Qianju PT as a defensive mechanism.

That tranche of 8 cards can seriously pull weight in this setup, and sections of it are useful throughout the different stages of the game. Symmetrical Visage is a great play in the early turns when you're digging, and Gene Conditioning Shoppe doubles down on that. Hard at Work is less painful to play early if you know that you can remove the disadvantage in the future, and the Adjusted Chronotype can deal with both this and the Qianju PT when you move into a more aggressive mode.

Other stuff

R&D Interface for offence, Feedback Filter for defence, Earthrise Hotel for a bit more card draw. Qianju PT is my preferred choice for scorch defence over Plascrete Carapace, as it can be used offensively if needed, but it works particularly well here due to the synergy with Adjusted Chronotype.

Issues

It doesn't have a lot of tricks; it just has so much more money than most corps in the mid-late game that you grind out a victory. I'm expecting the lack of subtlety to work against it in some circumstances, but I haven't played with this deck much yet.

The slow setup could be a serious issue against, say, NEH or other rush decks. Without any tutoring, it's difficult to apply early pressure. On the other hand, you will be consistently drawing in the early turns, and it's very rare for no breakers to turn up.

Whilst a solid econ and double Qianju PT should keep you safe from tags, if they do land one you could be in trouble, given that half the deck is trashable.

Tl;dr: This is a deck that uses massed drip economy to overwhelm the corp. It sacrifices early pressure for a more overwhelming late game.

I've only given this a couple of goes, but it seemed solid. However, I'm sure I've missed some obvious point, so, as ever, comments, critiques and suggestions are welcome!

2 comments
24 Apr 2015 sruman

Qianju PT seems very card-combo/click intensive way to avoid tags and won't stop mid-seasons which is increasing popular as a tag mechanism. Decoy would make more sense but it's influence (which makes me think this is more an andromeda deck to speed setup and use the 6 inf. from supplier on breakers you want). The quanju can be 1 plascrete and something else (another earthrise?). If you get hit with many mid-seasons tags then Quanju wouldn't have helped you, if it's just 1 then having the corp spend 3 clicks and 6 credits to trash your resources isn't really that bad (unless it's a supplier with 3+ things on it, but you can just avoid loading it up so high) given the cost to corp to do that. Given 22 resources, the loss of 3 isn't going to do much to the deck in the end and the corp has slowed down a turn or two playing right into your hands.

24 Apr 2015 Jashay

Midseason Replacements is a bugger: nothing stops it. Probably why it's so popular. Even with New Angeles City Hall you're better off using the money to boost your trace.

I don't see how Decoy is a better option, though; sure, it's more reflexive, but it can only stop one tag ever. Qianju PT can stop one per turn, and can do so perpetually. And I really do prefer it to Plascrete Carapace, because it's more flexible.

It does work as an Andy deck, in a way, but because of the breaker influence costs you have to drop the Hard at Work/Adjusted Chronotype, and then there's not much point in Gene Conditioning Shoppe, which makes Symmetrical Visage worse... there's basically a chain of effects that leads to a very different deck. The reason I went with Shaper is that their breakers are pretty efficient, and Atman covers a multitude of issues. That leaves me with enough influence to play an admittedly expensive combo.

I see what you mean about the resources; I never thought of it like that. I'm always loathe to let cards be trashed.

Thanks for the suggestions! I might give the Andy deck another spin.