Doucheteki / Personal Evolution

Yertle4 1

Nothing really groundbreaking here - just a Personal Evolution deck improved by Honor and Profit cards (specifically agendas and Psychic Field). Not a flatline deck as much as being annoying and making runners sweat. It also requires you to be pretty good at bluffing and generally doing irrational YOLO-type plays.

The primary mode of winning for this deck is advancing agendas put down the previous turn. Alternatively a runner could flatline himself early on by facechecking ICE and running into a snare/shock/agenda.

The strength of the deck is information control. The runner won't want to be running on low cards because of the identity ability, Snares and Shocks... but they also don't want to hit a Psychic Field with 5+ cards in their hand either. Sweet sweet douchery.

AGENDAS - Most of the agendas in here are 1 or 2pt agendas, as this maxes the benefit of the ID. The only 4/2 agenda is Medical Breakthrough, as it reduces its cost when scored (thus I don't mind so much when it is stolen early) and you can fast advance the last one. Gila Hands Archology is also decent economy, which the deck needs quite a lot. I have won a few games by scoring a Philotic Entanglement against a runner with 5 agendas in his pool. You can't rely on it in any way, but is super douchy/rewarding when it happens.

ASSETS - Most of the assets are non-advanceable traps (Psych Field, Shock, Snare) with 2 non-trap assets: Isabel McGuire (used to return failed traps to hand, forcing people to spend money to trash shocks and Psychic Fields) and Zaibatsu Loyalty (to help against expose effects). Both have respectable thrash costs so I don't mind losing them too much.

ICE - Most of the ICE is quite porous and is really only useful early game to deal as much damage as possible in that timeframe (Archer is the exception). Ideally you want a Komainu on HQ and R&D, and the other ICE can go anywhere depending on your opponent - it is rare to go deep on any server. You can switch the ICE around at will, but essentially you want Komainus and Data Mines, a few big "surprise" damaging ICE like Archer or Janus 1.0, and then some cheap taxing ICE.

OPERATIONS - Most operations are low-level money cards since most times the deck is pretty low on money from advancing and paying for traps. Shipments from Mirrormorph give good click economy if they show up (usually use them to install an agenda and 2 traps). I thought about Celebrity Gift for a while, but given the deck's reliance on obscuring information, I found I didn't want to expose my hand most of the time.

The best opening hand is one or two pieces of ICE (preferably a Komainu/Katana), a trap or two, an agenda and an operation of some form.

Good counters against it include Net Shield or Feedback Filter + heaps of cash generation, Levy AR, Deus Ex + Clone Chips, or tons of expose. It is a really fun deck to play if you're into being a total douche and making your opponent suffer, although it gets shut down pretty hard by a few cards which prevent net damage and deck attrition.

Changes would probably revolve around modifying the ICE around a bit to suit your preferences, and possibly changing the agenda composition a bit. I have considered an alternate, slightly douchier slant on this deck that runs Profiteering and generates tons of bad pub and money in the mid game to rez surprise monster ICE (ie.Susanoo, Janus,) that cost lots to break + another Snare.

0 comments