[STARTUP] why bother breaking ices?

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Diogene 4248

Never ever break any subs. Ice strenght is meaningless anyways.

Why bother?

Mulligan plan : you need one card that give you credits.

Game plan : run around a bunch, getting access without caring much for ices.

This deck will force the corp to double ice EVERYTHING. Otherwise, you can make your runs. And since there are more agendas in startup corp decks than standard corp deck, the corp will have to race you in putting ices on every servers.

You have a LOT of bypass tools. With Inside Job, Backstitching and Femme Fatale, you should be able to run a lot. Otherwise you can use Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga.

Hush is the tech card against Mestnichestvo and Tollbooth, if you need to use Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga on those ices.

Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter allow us to get back the needed cards to bypass again later on. Note that in standard, I made a similar deck.

Running with this deck is a lot of fun and completely change how the game is played for the corp. Enjoy!

6 comments
11 Feb 2023 PowerlessCube

I like your style! How is the card draw in this deck? I just got into startup and was trying out a Steve as an ID. I never felt like I got the best out of him, but I really like the theory of this deck.

11 Feb 2023 PowerlessCube

Just tried it, the flaw I found in Jinteki.net was that bypass is considered the first layer of ice.

So, if you Bypass the first card of a server with like a femme, it counts as the first ice encountered. The choice is between Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga and Femme Fatale.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like I thought it would.

12 Feb 2023 Diogene

@PowerlessCube you are correct, I changed the write-up to reflect this. I'm glad you tested the deck. Outside of the fact that Inside Job and Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga do not interact at all, how did your test with the deck go?

Thanks for sharing!

14 Feb 2023 Mancini

I'm glad my meme deck idea has made it into both standard and startup! Consider -1x Backstitching and +1x PAN-Weave for the sweet, sweet value.

25 Apr 2023 lejeune

I have played a few games with this deck now. I feel it is a fun idea, but is quite slow and has problems if the Corp is actually able to double ice their servers. Maybe it is just a bad matchup against Ob but my Femme Fatale was useless and I got no value out of the Virtuoso.

30 Apr 2023 Diogene

@lejeune Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel. can mess up the uses of Femme Fatale. You still have Inside Job and Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga to pass ices, but those will work only on the first ice. On centrals, Backstitching can help a bit with that.

If you find the deck too slow, you could replace the Security Testing by Verbal Plasticity to have a bit more draw.

To go faster, you could get rid of Hush and Fermenter in favor of a third Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga.

With the free slot, you could add PAN-Weave to tax the corp a bit more, especially while using Sneakdoor Beta. Note that Prepaid VoicePAD could give a good bit of economy also.

The point of Virtuoso is to get more accesses. Since corp have generally more agendas in Startup than in Standard, it will let you get to those agendas faster.

I'm glad that you enjoyed the deck. It is a fun concept that break the math of the corp a bit. It is funny that corp with more small ices have an advantage against this concept.

Thanks for your comments. Cheers!