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Valencia Estevez - The Angel of Cayambe

This is my take on a simple GoodStuff-Valencia. It basically contains three approaches of pressuring the Corp:

• The first way is Blackmail-Spam with Kitty-Support.

• The second is the old Anarch way, Pre-MWL 1.1, with Faust, Wyldcakes and slinging the occasional stone.

• The last one is with a regular breaker zuite, which is just mediocrely efficient, but fueled with money and supported by the other two threats also does some work.

The rest of the deck is mostly draw and economy, with some Hate-Tech thrown in. And, of course, Rebirth.

Card Choices

Blackmail: The number one reason to play Val. Almost single-handedly dismantles Glaciers (almost), pressures Rush-Decks, bypassing their Gearchecks and gets recurred a lot.

Déjà Vu: This card is very flexible. It can be more Blackmails, more Rumor Mills, it can bring back destroyed resources and breakers and it can be a safety net for the singleton Levy AR Lab Access.

I've Had Worse: Damage Protection and draw in a single package? This card is an Anarch staple for good reason.

Inject: Once Wyldside hits the table, this card oftentimes is overkill, flooding you with too many cards. But before that it is really good at sifting through your deck for cheap to find the Wyldside. And even when that one is out, sometimes an Inject really helps when you need another Blackmail as quickly as possible.

Levy AR Lab Access: I use it in approximately 30% of my matches, but when I do, I am really happy about it. Since this deck's resources tend to run out relatively quickly - all the economy is depletable (no Kati Jones or Underworld Contact or the like) and Wyldside gets you through your cards relatively fast - it is very nice to have the reset button. Just be aware of Chronos Project and Ark Lockdown, before dumping this into your Heap.

Making an Entrance: Extremely good card, getting you stuff you need, when you need it - and trashing the rest.

Networking: Really good against Controlling the Message and Hard-Hitting News.

Rebirth: The two main choices for this card are an FFG-employee and the one-armed (handed?) bandit, because most Corp Decks either play lots of assets and the occasional upgrade or lots of operations. Figure out which one is more threatening at the moment and choose accordingly. But the old Kung Fu-master is also not a bad choice at all, especially in combination with Medium. His mere existence oftentimes forces the Corp to pre-emptively ice up Archives, which makes your job all the easier. It is a win-win-situation for you. Either they do not protect Archives, then change to Omar and go wild, or they do and waste precious ICE, while you just turn into someone else. Sometimes even Quetzal: Free Spirit might do some work, or The Master of the Dance might help the ladies. Anyway, this card is bonkers and there is absolutely no reason not to play it with Val (or Andromeda or The Professor, for that matter).

Rumor Mill: Jackson Howard? Caprice Nisei? Marcus Batty? Bwahahaha.

Sure Gamble: All-around solid money card.

Plascrete Carapace: Meat damage protection. People might argue against two of these, but I think that you should play two, since you need these quickly in the Match-Ups where they are important. Also you have got Making an Entrance and Faust to get rid of superfluous copies.

Turntable: Another MU to build your rig and the really good swap effect. Very helpful against Exchange of Information-decks, either grabbing the Global Foods right back or stealing the Breaking News to prevent the 24/7-News Cycle.

Adjusted Chronotype: Without this card, Wyldside would not be half as good.

Daily Casts: A little clunkier than Sure Gamble, but cheaper and with more profit. Another solid economy card.

Liberated Account: With 6 Credits a little on the expensive side, but is also a lot of money. Just be careful about tags, you do not want your Accounts Closed or an All-Seeing I on you when playing this.

Same Old Thing: What's worth doing once, is worth doing twice (or thrice, or twenty-one times). The primary use is of course Blackmail, secondary for Rumor Mill and Levy AR Lab Access, sometimes even for Déjà Vu or Inject. Another neat trick: Use it to get Networking back into your hand.

Wyldside: Great, clickless card draw. When I see this in my starting hand, I almost never Mulligan. With the immense card draw provided, other good things will follow.

Faust: At first I did not even want to include this card, but then I had some spare influence and Wyldside already in the deck, so why not? It is a great aggressive card, allowing you to pressure the Corp early on.

Femme Fatale: Pretty expensive to play, but the bypass will save that money in the long run. Also pretty bad at breaking strong Sentries (Strength 4+), but you have got D4v1d and Faust for those.

Paperclip: Corroder is a fantastic card. This card is almost strictly better. It breaks all barriers for the same money or less. It can not be (permanently) destroyed. And it is less clunky. With Corroder, you have two options. Either run into a barrier, bounce, install the Corroder, run again - wasting two clicks in comparison to just getting the Clip out of your heap. Or install the Corroder pre-emptively, making yourself vulnerable to program destruction and potentially preventing your opponent from wasting money on things like rezzing a Wraparound. Paperclip is much easier. Just dump it into your heap and install it when necessary. Be careful about the aforementioned Ark Lockdown and Chronos Project, though. If the risk of one of the two is too big, you may as well directly install it from your Grip. The only reason for me to play Corroder over this beauty is the lower influence cost. And since Valencia is an Anarch, this is negligible.

ZU.13 Key Master: The one breaker I am not really happy with, see "Changes I am thinking about" below.

D4v1d: Another card that seemed necessary on paper, but in reality rarely gets used.

Medium: My finisher, should the remote camp not be enough to win the game.

Changes I am thinking about:

• Cutting D4v1d(s): They seemed to fill the weaknesses of Faust and Femme Fatale really well, but I rarely encounter high-strength ICE, thanks to Blackmail. I could save some influence and deckspace by cutting the two of them.
• Another Networking would be great, since there are a lot of tags around at the moment, and getting the Networking early on makes games against these decks just so much easier.
• Two Salsette Slums would also be nice to destroy CtM-Assets with impunity. And even against other decks it does some work, removing possible Jackson-targets from the game.
• Another thing I would like to do is replacing the ZU.13 Key Master with a Gordian Blade. The higher install cost is manageable most of the time, but the higher strength and especially the Strength-retain-effect of the Blade are really nice. Stacked Code Gates are normally a weak point of this deck, if my opponent manages to rez them, and the Blade would help with that.
• Also the Medium might be enough as a one-of. Sometimes you win games, by simply Medium-digging an iceless opponent until you win, but that happens infrequently. Much more frequently I find myself discarding a Medium since R&D is iced up and I do not have enough Blackmails to make it worthwile to attack it and still retain enough remote pressure. So I might go down to one.

So the changes could be like this: -2 D4v1d, -1 Medium, -1 ZU.13 Key Master, +2 Salsette Slums, +1 Networking, +1 Gordian Blade.

I am unsure about the Medium. I definitely do not want to add a 51st card, 50 is already too much for my taste. But okay, that's the strain you have to take to reliably Blackmail people. What would you do? Kick the second Medium? Remove something else? Maybe add just one Slum?