FAIG (GNK 1st)

FAIG went 2-1 in a small GNK tonight. Opponents were Whizzard (Loss, although Jake was pretty lucky and got 6 points on 3 R&D single accesses in one turn), Dyper Kate (Win), and Chaos Theory (Win). Thanks to Jake, Malcolm, and Jack for some great games!

Strategy

If you're not familiar, Political Dealings is a fast advance card that turns your draws into clickless agenda installs. The deck basically needs 3 things to score:

1. Money (Turtlebacks, PAD, CBG, NASX)
2. Draw (Sensie, Agroplex)
3. Political Dealings

Everything else in the deck either helps to set up your board, protect your servers, or control archives.

Card Choices

• Boot Camp is another Tech Startup that also helps defend against DDoS/False Echo and Blackmail.
• Cyberdex Virus Suite is obviously for Clot, but also counters a lightly-defended R&D from Medium digs.
• Preemptive Action is like a Museum that requires less influence and less shuffling.
• Bio-Ethics is just there as a must-trash distraction. You'll rarely kill anyone with this deck. I usually just rez them whenever I rez a Sensie to force them to spend extra clicks trashing it.
• Pālanā Agroplex is just there if they're not letting your sensies fire. It's tutorable, so 1 is sufficient. I won't use it until mid-game so as to not help them set up.
• Reuse is fantastic. Helps you out if they've just run archives and you need face-downs, or if they've just drained your creds. Works great with Preemptive.
• Excalibur goes on archives and totally sucks the wind out of players without AI breakers or parasite.
• CBG could be dropped for Sundew if I needed to free up influence.

Neat Plays

Sometimes we'll get to the late game without any Medical Breakthroughs being stolen, so scoring them becomes difficult. I'll usually feed them the first MB by advancing it once at this point.

Reuse into Preemptive is a great turn that sculpts your archives and R&D, protects your assets, and gives you money. Nice!

If they're not checking all my assets, I'll sometimes install the 1st Medical Breakthrough I see and leave it. If they steal a MB later on, I can just score out the one left on the board the very next turn.

Weaknesses

Because of the "normal" agenda suite, Medium and Keyhole win games. The ice is quite powerful, so repeated runs through the ice is difficult. Therefore, ParaSifr with R&D pressure beats this, as it does pretty much everything. If I felt that I needed Sifr protection, swapping out a Crick and Chiyashi for two Lotus Fields would probably help.

If they stay on top of the assets, you can end up being pretty poor. Fortunately, if you're able to keep about 2+ econ assets on the board you'll be fine.

Employee Strike and Hacktivist Meeting are a bear. Clones is pretty much the only way to get rid of it if they trash your Political Dealings.

Thanks for coming down to the Genomics Division today! Don't forget your gift bag on the way out, and remember our slogan:

"FAIG - It's More Fun than Prison!"