Cerebral Blast

As someone who has dabbled with Cerebral Imaginer, few questions:

• Have you considered Panic button (1-2) to enable the big dig for the reuse, scorched kill?

• Why 3 archived and 3 reclamation? Parasite protection?

• With only 12 ice (and associated variability in early game # of ice), do you find vulnerability to the (mildly popular :) Account Siphon which is huge blow to CI early.

• Given no assets (personally, I'd miss Jackson fixing things, but hard to give up re-use) and only 12 ice do you ever put up remotes? I'm guessing not but could be missing something.

• Given the scoring path to victory (that I can see) are -- Efficiency Commitee then using Tokens + San-Sans to score 5 more points (although you need first efficiency -- is this something you find dependent on 2 biotic in hand, which can be pretty deep in the deck (and 12 credits to score the agenda out).

• What's the ice protection setup usually be mid-late game? A 7-8 ice on centrals situation (where depends on runner).

• On average, what turn do you win with?

• Which runners give you trouble and which are easier.

Sorry, lots of questions, but curious.

No problem! Wall of text incoming:

1)

I have a friend who's used Panic Button, but I haven't myself. I think it's better in a more combo oriented deck.

2)

The 3 Archived Memories and Reclamation Order are for redundancy, though not usually of ice. I sometimes use Order for whatever economy card I've drawn the most that game. Order I also use for Biotic Labors, and Shipment from SanSan very often.

Archived Memories I use most as an extra 2 Scorched Earth, though sometimes for Order or econ cards.

3)

With all the econ cards I use, Account Siphon isn't usually too much of a problem. Usually, if someone is spamming it they keep the tags which enables a Scorched Earth win.

If I think my opponent is going to have Siphon early (read any Criminal, or Chaos Theory) I never rez my lone HQ ice on a regular run, as a lot of runners won't use Siphon if they're not sure it's going to hit. Once I have a second layer, I'll rez one piece of ice until they actually try to Siphon.

I did play against a Siphon spam recently and was lucky enough to have an early Wall of Static. I'm thinking of putting a few more cheap ETR ice in there.

The card this deck is really scared of is Vamp.

4)

Nope. Who needs remotes when you can score from hand?

5)

The first step to winning with this deck is usually Fast Advancing out an Efficiency Committee using 2 Biotic Labors and 12 s. Sometimes I'll use a shipment in there to save 2 s.

To win with Agenda Points the most common route is Reclaiming or Archived Memories the Biotics to score out a second Efficiency Committee. Use all the tokens and Shipments to score out a 3 pointer for the win.

Typing this out makes it sound like it only happens in Magical ANR Christmasland; but I can assure you it happens a lot.

6)

Mid game I usually have 2 ice on each server, prolly just 1 on Archives.

Late game I'll add a 3rd ice to the server the runner wants to get into the most.

7)

I haven't actually counted turns. It can take a while, but no where near as long as a Jinteki: Replicating Perfection deck. Lots of turns are spent drawing 2 cards and then playing an econ card.

8)

The easiest runners have been Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist, and Nasir Meidan: Cyber Explorer. The former is often waiting for you to score first, while there isn't enough ice to fund the latter's rig.

There isn't really a hard runner as the ID abilities don't really hinder the deck. However there are hard runner cards. These are Imp, HQ Interface, and Legwork. I imagine Edward Kim: Humanity's Hammer is going to be a tough matchup when O&C hits, since he'll be discarding a needed op every turn or so.

Thanks for the interest! Any other questions/comments?

Considering all the cards you mentioned as possible threats, would Crisium Grid help out on HQ?

@hypno_beam I hadn't though of using Crisium Grid before. I could try it in place of Reuse, but it enables you to surprise people when they thought they were safe. I'll probably give it a shot for a couple of games to see which I like more.

Thanks for the answers, think I'll dust off my CI build and give it another go with some tweaks along the lines of your deck. I do fear any good stealth builds though as they'll be able to run every turn (or 2/3) fairly easily due to the efficient rig. It'll take time to setup but CI takes time to setup as well, so might be looking at a 2-3 card/run R&D lock before able to get combo pieces. Have you faced any Kate or Andy (or Kit) stealth builds?