[Ashes Startup] Nyctalope's Master Plan

Deck originally created in July 2021, during the Ashes Startup Meta.

Az deck about clickless, discounted installs of hardware, to generate free card draw, with economy focused on recycling these hardware 'trinkets'. Heavily inspired by Sneaky Boys Don’t Gamble.

Essential combo pieces (in priority order):

• Masterwork (v37)
• Aesop's Pawnshop
• Prognostic Q-Loop
• Mantle

Together these usually provide 1 hardware install and 1 card draw on each player's turn. See an example below:

On the Runner's turn:

• Trash a less-useful hardware with Aesop's Pawnshop for 3.
• : Run any server.
• Install hardware clicklessly with Masterwork.
  • extra 1 cost paid for by our ID
  • get a card draw thanks to Masterwork
  • possibly a choice of 2 thanks to The Class Act
• Now, peek ahead with Prognostic Q-Loop.
  • this is important to examine for the upcoming corp turn...
  • we want hardware on top. it may be worth drawing to ensure this

On the Corp's turn:

• 1 : Install hardware/program from top of Stack using PQL.
  • 1 cost paid for by Mantle
  • install cost discounted by our ID, if we install hardware
  • get a card draw thanks to Masterwork, if we install hardware
  • possibly a choice of 2 thanks to The Class Act

This is the econ/card-draw engine that the deck is built around. With half of the cards in the deck being Hardware (usually more than 50% thanks to Boomerang and The Back recursion) we can fire these fairly consistently, with the trickiest part being lining up a piece of hardware on the top of the Stack for the Corp's turn.

Some other observations:

• Aesop's Pawnshop can be used to squeeze extra value out of many cards:
  • trash Daily Casts early and for a profit of 1
  • trash Penumbral Toolkit on the last credit if Stealth credits are not a premium
  • trash useful unique hardware cards if we are going to install a second copy
  • trash Boomerang if the target is somehow removed
• The Back allows for a simple recursion of many useful cards:
  • Flip Switch x3
  • Boomerang x3 (if necessary)
  • "Baklan" Bochkin x1
  • Abagnale x2?
• Flip Switch is mostly Aesop fodder, but can allow us to facecheck fearlessly and also remove the tag from Baklan.
• The Class Act gives us filtered draw on the free draws with Masterwork.
• Mantle and Penumbral Toolkit provide Stealth credits for Afterimage and Mu Safecracker, though this is more of a secondary effect.
• Any card topped with Buffer Drive's RFG effect can be clicklessly installed using PQL
• Remember that Masterwork (v37) triggers itself! But only if it’s the first hardware installed on a turn.

Additional Notes after further play:

• This deck originally ran Prepaid VoicePAD - simply because we want cheap hardware, it can be pawned to aesops, and we are running Bravado… but it takes away from other, more useful, hardwares. In the end, I replaced it with a single T400 Memory Diamond for the extra
• Masterwork is here 3x because of how central it is to our game plan, but the extra copies can feel somewhat like dead draw after the first. I think it's worth the dead draw for consistency, but not sure. Trashing the old ones with Aesop's Pawnshop is possible, but may cause us to run out of at a critical time.
• The Back and "Baklan" Bochkin both are low-tempo card ideal in the late game. Not what we want early on, and might honestly be better replaced.
• Buffer Drive is a backup get-out-of-jail card which also can be used in our regular Masterworks, but it sucks to draw it when you don't need it.
• Wow, Flip Switch is amazing versus tagstorm nbn! It’s a silver bullet that I didn’t expect to ever use.