Quick draw McCaffrey

sruman 132

I found that I chronically do not include enough draw cards in my decks. So, I decided to experiment with a deck with a major amount of draw cards -- 37 draws from cards which combined with the opening 5 mean that I would only click-draw 4 times to empty the deck (if draw cards aren't at the bottom of course). Given so much draw power, I thought that it would be worth trying something combo-dependent and settled on the old test-run + scavenge trick for low-cost acquisition of big breakers. Some notes on the card choices so far:

Day Job -- Definitely an unwelcome tempo hit and influence usage, but who doesn't like a 9-10 credit boost with some voicepads out? In a more glacier heavy world I've found the credits to be useful (especially when I just can't find the tr-scavenge combo and actually have to pay for femme/torch).

3 Earthrise but 2 Quality Time -- I've always disliked QT's tendency to over-draw and lead to pitching cards. Plus I found that I have enough events I wanted to play that depleting the voice pads and then hitting a set of money events I wanted to play was anti-synergistic. Earthrise is expensive though and wondering if 2 symmetric visions be a better choice (although really cut into the overall draw power probably).

Same Old Thing -- Even with the draw power was still finding the test-run scavenge combo slow to get going especially since want to do it twice. Therefore adding Same Old Thing to help if only have part of the puzzle.

Femme -- Definitely a great card but definitely can be a liability as your only killer. I've gone back and forth with Garotte but the 3 influence costing me a legwork is painful to overall ability to pressure. Still undecided though.

Dinosaurus -- In the non-garotte versions I include this as a 1-of so that I can scavenge the femme onto it later and fix most of the issue with 2-cost pump.

2 Interfaces, 1 makers -- Didn't want to go all maker's because of crisium grid and found that RDI's help me to keep the overall pressure up over single-shot maker's. Using both in the late game for a 5-card dig is pretty devastating.

Atman -- With a Torch and alot of recursion for the Cerebus ( 3 test runs, 3 scavenge and levy) it is not as important as usual in shaper decks but can deal with a high strength sentry efficient with dino-femme not online. Plus, I have dropped it at strengths above 7 early in game to deal with Heimdall 2.0, Wormhole, and Curtain Wall in a more efficient manner but the up-front cost is daunting.

Kati Jones -- I've been chronos'd to hell and back in the last month or so, so every non-magnum deck gets Kati now. If the chronos hits and I have no long term economy options it is just devastating to a prepaid deck.

Parasite and Deus X with no clone chips -- definitely less useful than in a typical shaper deck so questionable choices but I have found reason to test run parasites onto 0-strength ice (cheap with pre-paids out) and in the PE matchup, I'll gladly test-run it back and then install to keep on table.

Results so far are mixed. When the breakers come out in reasonable time and I find some multi-acess + econ it can have a corp playing throwing up their hands in surrender. But it is often too slow to get the breakers you need out against a balanced deck. HB rush/fa is often a 4-pts by the time I can really turn up the pressure. With the efficient breakers I can hit them pretty hard but coming back from 4-0 is tough. Plus, it seems now-a-days that no matter how efficient your breakers are the ice suite of many corp decks still can out-tax you in the late game (and this deck can make money as well as any deck). Better ice destruction than this deck has might be needed. I'm going to keep trying to tune it because I love big rigs but not sure if it can make it as my regionals choice.

0 comments