Designer Pursebiter

Blocken 23

Your deck and your hand are two separate things? How gauche.

Concept: It's a Bagbiter deck!

Strategy: You definitely want a Theophilius Bagbiter in your starting hand. It helps to have some 0-cost money cards like Easy Mark or Fall Guy to recover from the Bagbiter install, but it's not the end of the world if you don't. Your goal is simply to have as big of a maximum hand size as you can. If that ends up not being very big, just trash Exclusive Party. A typical first turn looks something like this:

  • Click 1: Install something to avoid wasting credits (Armitage Codebusting and Public Sympathy are the best choices with Ekomind being a somewhat distant third)
  • Click 2: Install Bagbiter
  • Clicks 3 and 4: Recover credits

Examples:

  • Install Armitage -> Install Bagbiter ->Take 2 from Armitage -> Dirty Laundry = 5 credits, 5 max hand size
  • Install Fall Guy -> Install Public Sympathy -> Install Bagbiter -> Trash Fall Guy -> Dirty Laundry = 5 credits, 7 max hand size
  • Easy Mark -> Install Temujin on vulnerable server -> Install Bagbiter -> Run = 4 credits, 4 max hand size
  • Install Bagbiter -> Easy Mark -> Easy Mark -> Sure Gamble = 10 credits, 10 maximum hand size
  • etc.

After Bagbiter's installed, you should be getting credits and digging for Game Day, which happens fairly quickly. After your first Game Day, you'll almost definitely have your rig pieces, which I think are pretty self-explanatory.

If possible, wait until your money resources are trashed and all of the Sports Hoppers are installed before using Levy AR Lab Access. Once you do, you're basically set. Remember to keep track of your MU, though, and conserve your cards until you know how big the ICE is; it's possible to get locked out if you're careless. Corps playing advanceable ICE can be a big threat for that reason.

Substitutions: Femme Fatale is never fun to install. Basically, you have to decide if you want to be able to skip a really inconvenient sentry or more efficiently break any sentry with something like Mongooses (cut an Overmind and a e3 Feedback Implants if you want to put more of them out) or Garrote. Keep your MU in mind if messing with the program suite, though - each MU used weakens Sage a bit. It's usually not too significant, but it's not entirely insignificant either, especially in longer games where you feel more pressure to use your cards.

It probably wouldn't be terrible to swap Faust in for Sage, but that's, like, a totally different concept. You should probably drop Ekomind and Overmind and just build around Faust if that's something you want to do.

Closing thoughts: Can there be an NAPD's Least Wanted List? There is no reason why Ekomind should cost three influence.

5 comments
7 Oct 2016 Madden

WOW, it's sage without dino! And its working!

7 Oct 2016 sruman

I think you want to find room for Kati Jones here as it can be the perfect way to trecover from Bagbiter. Kati up for a few turns, drop bagbiter unload Kati have a hand size of 9+.

7 Oct 2016 Blocken

I'm a bit ambivalent when it comes to Kati in this deck; on one hand, it'd be really nice to have a savings account so you can make big runs later in the game without having to spend cards (and thus MU) or risk taking a hit to hand size, but on the other, she doesn't really help accomplish the goal of getting Bagbiter out first turn, which I think is important. Bagbiter tends to get more and more likely to mess something up the longer you take to pull him out, and with this deck especially, there's not a lot you can do without him except draw or get money that would be more useful to you when he's out.

The deck would definitely benefit from cutting an e3 and adding a Kati; I just wouldn't use her for Bagbiter recovery.

8 Oct 2016 Pinkwarrior

@Blocken The issue i have with the deck is you only have 1 Ekomind and no way to search for it. so your gonna need to be lucky to find it to set-up, as if it's near the bottom of your deck your going to have to draw basically your whole deck to get it.

8 Oct 2016 Blocken

@pinkwarrior That's by design. You draw 1/5th of your deck on turn 1 and the rest of your deck when you play a Game Day. I have never once not hand it in hand when I needed it.