Tenure v.PostDoc

Looks a lot like the Prof deck I'm working on. In my deck, Hemorrhage and Imp do a lot of work, because as you said, most of the deck is reflexive and its hard to have a cohesive strategy coming into the game. Hemorrhage and Imp are useful no matter what server(s) you are focusing on.

Have you experimented with paintbrush at all? Or even just tinkerings might be enough to help you trick into a remote when you only have one of your big breakers out.

Overmind might make good scavenge fodder, as well as provide some stability to your early game. Similarly, Escher would not only give you a little stability in your strategy, but might provide that HQ threat you otherwise are lacking.

Just thoughts, would like to hear what you have to say on the subject. I'm not sure Prof is quite there, but I keep a keen eye on the ID because he is so close to being dangerous, and when he's there nobody's gonna see it coming.

falseidol: I've been messing around with a few different things and Escher is on that list. Escher hurts me (as the corp) so badly when it goes off, especially if I'm already fairly iced up. Suddenly all my planning goes down the drain. With Inazuma and glacier decks on the rise, I definitely think it has a place.

I had Imp in the deck in a previous version, and I took it out only because of a personal lack of ability to play it effectively. It isn't a card I've used a lot and I never really got a great idea of what to do with it, so it often sat in my hand. But once I get a handle on Imp it will find it's way back in. I haven't given any thought to hemorrhage, but now you have me thinking. I'm not sure if I run enough to make it worth while. But again, it's a card I haven't used too much so I don't have much basis to judge without testing it a fair amount.

Paintbrush, Tinkering, and Overmind are good cards, but they tend to give me blinders about what the game is giving me. I tend to try and force them to be useful rather than letting them have their place. So again, it's mostly due to my own personal play style and ability, but it makes it tougher for me to let the game come to me when I play those cards. I think if any made it in the list soon, Tinkering would be the one. That and Morning Star together makes for one very sad corp player. It also contains an element of surprise that Paintbrush lacks.

I agree the Prof isn't quite there, but every new program that comes out only makes him stronger. His ability is one that can only get better over time, never worse (unless they errata him). He's got no where to go but up, and from what I've seen playing him, he's pretty decent as it stands right now. Only a matter of time.

Out of curiosity, how is the economy in your build? I think that is one of the weaker areas in my deck. I just simply don't have room for Magnum Opus when I have my rig set up. Too much MU.

I agree about MO, although you are so hard up on deck spots that fitting in the MU for MO might make more sense than playing burst or limited econ. I would play LARLA's to be honest, you have so many powerful events, and you can even slot in codebusting/DC/Aesops to go with it. Add in that half your breakers are weenie early game breakers that you can pawn when you draw into the big daddy verson, I think you will be in a much better position.

That's a good point. Especially given the weenie breakers and the addition of Escher (I've come to the conclusion that Escher has to go in.) LARLA would give the deck so much more punch in the late game and recycle the econ for me. Aesop's is an interesting thought too.

I have to ask the inevitable Professor question: "Why not Kate?" If you streamline your breaker suite to Torch-Corroder-Garrote you free up 5 influence. If you ditch two utility programs you free up another 5 influence. Then you can have one more link, plus a sizeable savings on installs, plus you've solved the problem of "they know I can't Siphon".

I'm sure there are good reasons to keep things the way they are, not the least of which is sweaters.

Anyway, fun looking deck! Just had to ask.

While you're not wrong, your question sort of answers itself. You play prof to get ALL of those things. Is that enough? Perhaps not, but he can already do things other runners cannot, and he'll be well poised to gain favor when account siphon falls out of favor

@dudeoftheday: Sweaters is a huge reason. Shaper gives me such a good skeleton for the program based deck, that I don't really need anything out of faction. Indexing and Maker's Eye give me R&D threats and Escher makes for a nice HQ threat, though in a round about way. I have card draw, money, tutoring, sweaters... Everything really.

He also lets you experiment with cards you wouldn't normally get to. A one of Hemorrhage is nothing to the professor, but it's almost a third of Kate's influence. It's not a bad card, and it can be useful, but it isn't good for Kate. The professor is about having all the options you want, not just the few you are restricted to. Even in my very watered down deck I have 5 different program options totaling to 13 influence. That's not even counting the breaker suite, for which I'm allowed to use the best card instead of being forced into a crappy, in-faction breaker (read: corroder instead of inti or anything instead of pipeline.)

That being said, if the influence falls fairly close to 15, it's probably time to retool that influence and throw in Kate. She's just too good not to.

I think when we get the Cerberus breakers out of Lunar Cycle, those plus the big efficient breakers (or maybe the stealth breakers if he can get away with it) might be the kick in the pants prof needs. And any strong utility programs will of course also be welcome

Yeah, those Cerberus breakers are going to a nice early game for the professor, especially with scavenge and Aesop's. (I can see Aesop's making a strong comeback in the near future) The stealth idea might be more tricky, since the professor could only take in faction cards that give recurring stealth credits.

Yeah I'm not hopeful, but 3 cloaks and 3 of that neutral resource might limp along till you get the big boys. Because I think in a perfect world there will be corner cases where you want those breakers over the fatties. As t the very least, you could keep cloak and dagger over garrotte

The stealth breakers are just so good. If I could find a way to make it work I would. I just don't think the cards to do that will exist for a very long time. Even if they do, Garrote is one deck slot, Cloak + Dagger is at least 4.

With a couple of viruses in your deck, I'd be tempted to include Djinn in there. Gives an extra 2 MU to play with (which can be used to host the Magnum Opus you discarded, or any of the multitude of other programs) as well as acting as a tutor for the other viruses in your deck.

Djinn has a huge upside, I agree. What scares me about Djinn is that it because a liability when you think about program trashing. It can be easily power shutdown'd or ichi'd and suddenly I'm losing the Djinn and Opus and whatever else I had on there. I agree that it could be killer though. Tutoring the viruses, plus extra MU. It's tough to say no to.

I've found that with the amount of search you're already running, djinn winds up being an extraordinary tempo hit. You have to draw it, play it, use it, then play the virus you wanted. It's a good card, but by how infrequently I was using it in a NOISE deck, that I just couldn't possibly be using it to good effect with the Professor