Freelance Burst Professor V1 (Paid in Cache)

Been playing this Professor deck for about a month and a half. It's incredibly fun, and can hold its own better than it has a right to.

Uses 36 Influence. Yes, it's greedy. That's the point of The Professor.

Based largely on the Big Girls Play With Monolith sort of shell, but gone a very different way. (Specifically, based on a version I playing against featuring Savoir-faire.)

The thing about The Professor is that you don't want to try a suite like Stealth breakers, or fixed strength breakers which require a lot of synergy and specific different pieces to be in place. Instead of aiming to have programs that combine well, get consistent options by making as much of the deck about programs as possible. No real final rig to aim to assemble: grab everything that could be useful at the time. Use burst card draw, aim not to lose tempo, just constantly throw powerful programs at them and rewrite your plan as much as possible.

Have individually powerful programs that will be useful and can be used on their own (Parasite, Nerve Agent, Medium, Sneakdoor Beta, Keyhole). Have a few corner-case programs that are incredibly over-powered in specific circumstances (Deus X, Copycat, arguably also Keyhole). Have a variety of programs to break ICE (see below). The rest of the deck's set up to draw you programs, make money with programs, provide memory for programs, recur programs, and get programs into play.

Economy: The economy's reasonably solid, and operates on multiple angles. The deck is very much optimised to make the six-draw events and three FCCs very good. (24/45 cards are programs. You want to be recurring your heap a couple of times, so you've got up to nine Sure Gamble! Of course, the more hardware and Aesop you install, the more efficient your FCCs will be on the second run through.)

Schezerade is definitely worth installing, it makes your SMC's, Savoir-Faire and Faerie net gains to install. Sahasrara too, at a push. If you have any two of Sahasrara, Aesop's and Scheherazade in play, you will be making plenty of money. Particularly with Cache. At a push, you have a Magnum Opus: in an emergency, installing this and spending turns clicking it will be very effective.

Playstyle: challenging, with lots and lots of different lines which are complicated to work out, but very versatile.

Do not be afraid of burning through your stack very quickly at first, using all your Clone Chip and playing your first Levy, potentially in the mid-game. This is one of the best situations to be in, but frequently you just have to give up on setting anything up and apply early pressure. Which is very easy to do.

Basically: run like an Anarch. (You have all their big guns, anyway.)

(Against Jinteki/Tag 'n' Bag, caution is required, and helpfully allows one to set up to some degree. By moving a large portion of your heap to your stack, running with a Clone Chip or two out becomes a potent threat. Particularly if there's a SMC in play/stack. Plus, you're the Professor, so could be running everything, and you probably are.

S-F is also very useful to have out, because with this many programs and burst draws, a major issue you will have is shortage of clicks to install programs. S-F lets you install up to two extra programs a turn for a mere 2 creds each, run more flexibly and is wonderfully cheap for Aesop's/Schezeserade. Installing Medium/Nerve Agent just before accessing is a good feeling. Getting programs out without having to use clicks is great, especially at the end of the Corp's turn.)

Lines of attack: We have Imp, Nerve Agent, Medium, Keyhole and Sneakdoor. If there's an un-iced central hit it while trying to draw to a SMC/[appropriate pressure program].

Failing that, attempt to pressure all central servers: there will almost certainly be some weak one. If you happen to have an appropriate NA/M/Kh in hand, pressure the other server to try and force the corp into spending resources there. On the off-chance the corp does manage to secure everywhere against you, there's a very good chance that they will have unwittingly turned on your Copycat. (Copycat is great to have access to, and very very rarely played around.)

A nice trick is to install a Sneakdoor at the end of an opponent's turn with a Nerve Agent {sitting around from earlier/also installed end of turn/installed mid-run}, which almost certainly gets you to see all of HQ in a turn. Installing both at the end/beginning of turn costs 7/9/11 (depending on if you're using 0,1 or 2 SMC/S-F installs). Your next turn is Sneakdoor four times, seeing one, then two, then three, then four cards from HQ. More or less forcing archives ice on the corp's next turn.

Also: draw. A lot. You want to put your stack in your heap: it is cheaper to use Clone Chip than SMC. You have one copy of everything, and are getting around this by drawing everything. If you've not got to single figures of cards left in your deck by the time you're on six AP, you or your opponent aren't playing hard enough.

Hardware: We have three Clone Chips, two mem chips and a Toolbox.

Clone Chips are amazing. (Chronos Project is probably death.)

Gone for Akamatsu Chips because they're cheap, and net profitable with Aesops. May try one CyberSolutions, one AMC, because this deck is lacking in one-ofs.

A single Toolbox is something you're likely to see eventually, because you're burning all the way through your deck with FCC, QT and Diesel. For the same reason, you're likely to be able to afford it, eventually. Memory is great, Link can be lifesaving, and the recurring credits are very useful.

Icebreakers: This is probably entirely flexible and can be adjusted as much as desired. Except that you're crazy if you don't play Faerie. Cheap, gets recurred a lot, and can make money. What's not to love? Corroder is the best fracter, and so we're playing it. D4v1d is incredibly useful for a while, then we sell it or trash it and recycle it if needed. Grappling Hook is also useful for running into something very big. Gordian over Yog because of Datasucker issues (see below), Lotus Field, and tendencies to encourage Glacier building. Plus, unlike Yog, can use Toolbox credits. Femme is expensive and has no ways to be cheated out, but lets you bypass things. That's a powerful effect. Over Mimic for Datasucker issues, and the ability to just get past things. Deus X may occasionally break things. I forget this too much. Parasite eats ICE.

Datasucker/virus issues: Datasucker is terrible in this deck. Firstly, it never seems to be a priority to install when you could save it for FCC. Secondly, there's a big issue with virus.

You're going to end up with Nerve Agents and Mediums with counters sitting on them, Imps, and maybe Parasites out. Against this deck, purging virus counters is frequently a good idea. Play around this at times, force this at times. When altering this deck, be aware that

Potential changes:Used to run Crescentus, realised I never played it. Then a week later hit a situation when it would've been perfect. (TMI. Anything you Faerie could be good with it, esp illicit.) Magnum is marginal, not as much as Datasucker. Grappling Hook and D4v1d aren't as great as they could be, the former more than latter. (Could almost see this deck wanting more than 45 cards, but the density of Diesel/QT/FCC is the most important thing.)

To test: Lamprey and Hemmorhage -- the latter seems maybe too click intensive, or prone to virus purge. Am curious about Box-E: hand size would be great, but the link and the recurring credits are nice. Will test. May try a Cloak, almost certainly never stealth breakers (because they require other cards to work). Sharpshooter may be worthwhile in your meta. I keep wanting to try Expert Schedule Analyzer (it gives a Nerve Agent counter! It gets around Enhanced Login Protocols! This is not good justification) but that a sign I am mad. Chakana could be good if you've got real FA issues.

It pains me so, so much that the Professor can't run two Origami. So, so much.

Scavenge could be great, but it'd hinder the Program/Draw/FCC density.

The breakers, especially Femme could easily be changed. (But not Faerie. Faerie is amazing.) 2MU breakers are probably a bad idea because MU is tight. Really interested in trying out the Cerebus breakers: they seem to fit the burst theme of this deck.

There is a card called Plascrete that some people like to play to avoid dying. We've moved a bit past that. (If you don't want to die to Scorched too much, you might want to play it. This is unfortunate.)

Influence: I'm spending my influence on Cache. Major options played in the Professor are a second Datasucker, Stimhack, and occasionally Femme.

As said above, Datasucker is not great in this build. (This could be a horrible mistake on my part.) Stimhack's brain damage is a real downside for this build: aside from FCC being generally more challenging with a four-card limit, frequently there's a Toolbox or Levy sitting in your grip for a long time, waiting for it to be ready. Losing them could be inconvenient. (Or all of the other one-ofs.) Simultaneously, we tend not to want to make really big-spending runs. We don't have a Workshop to unload, and being forced to install programs (via SMC/CC/S-F) or waste credits isn't a dream situation.

Cache is great in conjunction with Freelance Coding Contracts, and, at a push, if you're really short of cash at the end of your opponent's turn, you can clone chip it out onto Schezerade and sell it with Aesop's. Particularly useful to do just before you fire off a Levy. (You do tend to not want to use Cache a FCC card, but there's turns where you will have overdrawn to the point where you're FCC-ing last click, and might need those credits. Generally most likely to happen if you Diesel into Diesel then third click draw in desperation to find FCC. That line's not recommended unless you've got at least 50-60% chance of hitting with your draw, or you really have nothing else to do with your turn. But can happen.)

As a program it boosts your econ event. Isn't that cool?

And Cache is much better than Stimhack to get you up to 5 credits to play Sure Gamble. (Or, I suppose, Magnum, though I'm not sure when that would be a sequence you want.)

It could be wrong. But I like it, and I like having 24/45 cards be programs. (I'm reasonably sure Datasucker is not correct for influence. Quite often I end up not installing it. Stimhack is possible. It's also possible I don't want to spend the influence at all. There's no rule saying you have to. Box-E is to be tested, maybe Rachel or Cyberfeeder? Box-E could reduce the risk of Quality Time into Diesel into Diesel into discarding due to no FCC. This is a sad event that happens every three games or so. It's still possible to win, but is definitely suboptimal.)

Thoughts: It's taken a while of getting used to, but I do really like this deck. Such a toolbox (no pun intended).

I've not played too much tag 'n' bag, which is possibly a problem. Then again, an excuse to build up funds and wait is not an issue. We're deliberately resource-lite.

It's complicated and testing, but let's be honest: no-one ever decided to play the Professor to be the best deck or to have an easy time. You're playing it because you want to play with ALL of the programs, you want to impress your opponent and test yourself. It'll test you, you have to think long and hard at various points. Playing this will make you think hard about your sequences and is good for identifying misplays.

I don't know if this is good, but it's fun, and it is very, very hard to say that this deck would just be better as a Kate deck. Your core programs are Imp, Faerie, Keyhole, Medium, Sneakdoor, Nerve Agent and Parasite for a total of 19 influence. I'd also never cut Corroder or Copycat, for a further 3, S-F actually ends up being rather crucial to the deck, for 25 total, and Scheherazade is surprisingly an all-star. And you've got a lot more room to manuever, fitting in any program you want. This is a professor deck that couldn't work with any other runner. As more programs come out, it'll only get better.

Enjoy! Let me know what you think!