[Startup] CableCarnage's Prickly Prāna PE 1st at Ysengrin's

Oddball 1243

This was the Corp deck I took to the February 2022 Startup tournament. It's a PE deck designed by CableCarnage, that blew my mind when I happened to see it in action. I’ve had a lot of fun playing it casually and in the GLC startup league. This month we had six participants and played four rounds of single-sided swiss. PE went 2-0 against Ken and Tao.

The goal of the deck is to flatline the runner with Prāna Condenser, but in one of the games I scored out in my Prāna remote!

Use House of Knives triggers, Snare! and agenda scores/steals to build up your Prana. Archer and Gold Farmer surprise and tax the runner that eventually tries to clear the Prāna once you’re in flatline range. We also have tools like False Lead, or Anoetic Void to make sure you can land the kill.

Prāna refunds all of our agendas scores. Special shout out to Sting! which has two separate triggers to double charge the Prāna (and might still do a little damage).

Thanks again Ysengrin for bringing back these monthly events. I had a blast!

9 comments
21 Feb 2022 bowlsley

I'm glad to see this monster of a deck finally get published, it's absolutely terrifying the first time you run into it, but a lot of fun once you understand it. Congratulations on your result!

21 Feb 2022 AceEmpress

Congrats on the win! Also, as the Ken player in that tournament, I can confirm the Archer was an extremely unpleasant surprise (took out my fracter and made getting off any kind of Hail Mary or dealing with the Prana Condensor behind it way harder.)

21 Feb 2022 Oddball

Thanks @bowlsleyand @AceEmpress!

It was great to play you Ace. I also was very fortunate that you stole only one pointers, for maximum damage and Prāna counters. If you had found Longevity Serum or one of my Project Yagi-Udas it would have been a very different game.

23 Feb 2022 jan tuno

love to see my pet card doing some work <3 thanks!~

24 Feb 2022 pouchsurfer

Congrats on winning Ysengrin's tournament! I ran into this list full steam yesterday and got flatlined on turn 3 from a 5 counter Prāna charged up after a HoK score and Sting! steal. Rough!

25 Feb 2022 Satoshi

I have had so much fun playing this deck, thank you for posting it!

I have been playing with some small tweaks:

  • -1 Diviner
  • -1 Gold Farmer
  • +2 Sprint

The rationale is, the deck really needs to Prana Condenser to work, if agendas are being stolen and you aren't getting Prana counters then you are falling behind. Sprint helps you find the condenser faster. Sprint also helps you find ice faster if you need it, and bury the Project Yagi Uda's.

Thanks again!

26 Feb 2022 Oddball

@guiot yes! Prana is such a fun card.

@pouchsurfer Thank you. And ouch... ya when you first run into this deck, it forces you to really slow down and have to deal with the Prāna. Run too fast especially with a scored House of Knives and you're in trouble!

@render787glad you are enjoying it. All credit to CableCarnage and our Prāna-parents before them. I like your suggestions. Every game I struggled with was when I did not find Prāna early was a game I likely lost.

However, this is PE deck that needs some ice to usually build the remote to house the Prāna Condenser! Once you go below 14 ice, you probably are going to start running into issues making sure you have something relevant to protect it. You might need to substitute something else other than ice?

26 Feb 2022 Satoshi

I guess the way I was thinking about it was like, if I draw sprint instead of ice and I need ice, I still can play the sprint and try to find more ice.

If I'm in this situation on turn 1 it means I have 6 cards in hand and none of them are ice, so I still have 43 cards in the deck and 12 are ice. If I play the sprint my chance to find ice is about 1 - (1- 12/43)^3 = 63%

(That's actually a bit worse than I guessed intuitively)

I guess I haven't felt like it's critical to find ice on turn 1 because a lot of runners will spend the first few turns trying to set up their rig. If they run PE they might hit an agenda and lose an important card. Maybe I'm weakening the deck too much by going down to 12 ice though. Will think about it. Thanks for your thoughts.

1 Mar 2022 Lttlefoot

Cut 1 gold farmer to free up the influence and 1 anoetic void if you want to put the sprints in