Four Star MaxX

Card draw simulator
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Evilpyro24 142

No, you're not

No, MaxX. You're four stars at best. **** you too, mother****er.

The Plan

Tag yourself to high hell using God of War, Jarogniew Mercs, and anything the Corp fancies hitting you with. Drop Mars for Martians, Counter Surveillance, Dean Lister, and slam R&D (or HQ if against CI) for a 15-20 card access, theoretically winning you the game in a single run.

In Practice

That doesn't work as well as one might think. Use Obelus and Counter Surveillance, aggressive draw through MaxX, and pressure of remotes and centrals to keep the Corp on their toes, while racking up as many tags as possible for a 10-12 card dig after you drop your first Levy.

Once you're ready to start tagging yourself, it is basically essential that you have Jarogniew Mercs and Dummy Box down, so you don't get blown up by unhappy Corps.

Card Choices

Let's talk influence and restricted choices. First up, Levy. Sort of essential to the functioning of the deck, as you'll want to be making quite a few runs, and that requires several copies of Dean Lister and Counter Surveillance. Clan Vengeance as well, versus PE/PU. From time to time, RNGesus will **** you by throwing all your Levies and Same Old Things into the bin. Shout at your ID for a bit, shrug, and accept that when you're throwing upwards of half your deck into the bin, shit happens.

Next up, Dummy Box. This is a bit of an odd choice in some respects, but it a) keeps you almost unkillable through the Corp trying to trash Jarogniew Mercs, b) allows you to tank "Trash a program" subroutines by throwing your Paperclip/Black Orchestra/Femme Fatale into the bin, rather than your powered up God of War, where they can be Retrieved at a later date. Also c) it keeps your Obelus alive, which can sometimes be a problem.

2x Femme Fatale because sometimes there's ice that's super annoying to break (looking at you, Resistor).

1x GS Shrike M2 because **** Tour Guide, Komainu, and Brainstorm.

And finally 1x Rebirth, because after the first Levy, we usually want to slow down the MaxX mill. Good targets that I've found are Null, for help with God of War, Omar to nab any agendas that might be behind a well iced-up HQ later on in the game, and Quetzal (seriously, **** Resistor).

Matchups

So I took this to a GNK and came 5th, winning a single game out of three. Bit unfortunate, that. My corp deck was Who or What is Hedge Fund?, which is an amazing deck that I had a lot of fun with.

Game 1: MaxX vs Seidr Labs Standard glacier HB is one of the easier matchups for this deck, but I was thrown a few curveballs by the presence of Troll and Surveillance Sweep. By running last click, I was able to dodge the nasty combo with Heinlein Grid, and the winning run for about 15 or so cards off R&D netted me the points I needed to win. Very close, though. I had exactly the amount of credits required to get through the Troll trace, and still land my Counter Surveillance run.

Game 2: MaxX vs BABW Right, this game was interesting. After getting to 6 points pretty quickly off an open R&D, I made a few critical mistakes. Number 1: not contesting an Atlas in a remote, which allowed @kikai to score it with two counters on. Number 2: seeing the SEA Source and not thinking about what tag punishment he could follow up with. I'd assumed it was SEA Source -> Closed Accounts -> HNN into BOOM! next turn. Oh boy was I wrong. Number 3: Seeing an Exchange of Information off the top of R&D and not realising that my out was Rebirth into Eddie Kim and running again to get rid of it. In hindsight, on seeing the SEA Source, I should have played as if I was against an NBN deck. Sat back for ages, before doing one big run to prevent EoI shenanigans. Instead, we laughed about how it wasn't really necessary, and then I lost like four turns later.

Game 3: MaxX vs PE Ugh. MaxX mills and PE pings, coupled with a slightly mistimed Obokata steal threw all of my Levies and Same Old Things into the bin, locking me out of the win. Unfortunate.

In general, this has a surprisingly good matchup against NBN decks. If the corp scores out an AR Enhanced Security, you're basically laughing all the way to the bank, as you control their assets in return for more R&D multiaccess. Just be a bit careful about QPM and Franchise City, and you'll be fine! Also, respect the Closed Accounts and Psychographics. With the likes of Vamp and Siphon gone, you can inadvertently hand the win to the Corp.

CI matchups are really variable. You're a little bit Rewiring resistant, due to eventual massive handsize and Jarogniew/Dummy Box. Asset Spam CI can be a tough beast, especially with Blackmail out. Typically, Counter Surveillancing their hand can grind out a win, but don't expect it to be easy. Asset spam matchups make the Hacktivist Meeting absolutely essential. Some can fight the current war, some can't.

AgInfusion, I have no comment on. I haven't played against it enough. God of War should allow you to get through the AI that they love, but considering that you're reliant on a big run on R&D, you might have trouble overcoming their ability.

PU/PE, install your copies of Clan Vengeance, and cross your fingers that all your recursion doesn't get binned.

With thanks to @saintis for the deck name!

6 comments
13 Dec 2017 Syntax

You need paparazzi. If you never run, the corp will stokpile money and try to trash 3x turn. 6c is affordable for a corp that think it will die if they does nothing.

To me, Clan vengeance have no meaning in this deck. With 2 Larla and 3 SOT, Rebirth too.

13 Dec 2017 Syntax

And what is the real benefit of Shrike compared to MKUltra ? You can put a third Levy instead of Rebirth there.

14 Dec 2017 Evilpyro24

@Syntax, do you mean Wireless Net Pavilion? Paparazzi doesn't really help in this situation. If the Corp is trying to trash 3x a turn, that's a huge tempo hit for them, which you can mitigate strongly with Dummy Box.

Clan Vengeance is in there, as it's useful in the PE and PU matchups. Otherwise, it's a resource that can be binned with Dummy Box to prevent resource trashes down the line.

Rebirth helps slow down the MaxX mill later on in the game. A third Levy isn't really necessary. I've only ever used the second one twice across 30+ games. Shrike is there to counter Komainu, Tour Guide, and Brainstorm, which MK Ultra can end up being very expensive to break, and you need to conserve credits for the Counter Surveillance access.

14 Dec 2017 Evilpyro24

@Syntax, do you mean Wireless Net Pavilion rather than Paparazzi? If the corp is committing entire turns to resource trashing, that's an entire turn where they're not advancing their win condition, and Dummy Box can mitigate the effects of trashing.

Clan Vengeance is there for Jinteki matchups, primarily. It gives another answer to HQ multiaccess in the late game.

Shrike is cheaper to break Tour Guide and Komainu, both of which can be extremely difficult to deal with after a purge on God of War.

19 Dec 2017 Syntax

But I don't understand : you say you need to slow down with Rebirth, but also that you don't need a third Levy.

So you don't need to slow down.

Then speed up ?

21 Dec 2017 Evilpyro24

@Syntax, I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make. The Rebirth is there to prevent your win conditions going into the bin, which could be helped by including a third Levy, but practically, games don't go on long enough to play two Levy, let alone a third.

In terms of speeding up, the deck could use additional draw, in the form of Inject and I've Had Worse. I've been making a few modifications to the deck since publishing it, so I'll try including another Levy, rather than Rebirth, and see how it functions. Thanks for the advice!