The Masochist

Wall of Text crits for 10 damage!

Here is an archetype I've been playing around with. It was inspired by the new card Clan Vengeance. The basic idea is to damage yourself in order to load it up and then you can trash all of HQ in a single shot.

So there are some obvious support cards that will go with Clan Vengeance: I've Had Worse, Black Orchestra, MKUltra, and Paperclip. All of these cards like to be hit with damage. Giving yourself damage increases their efficiency. So then we use Titanium Ribs as a precision instrument in order to hit the cards we want with the damage we deal.

I tested out a lot of damage cards when building this deck; Amped Up, Tri-maf Contact, Stimhack, etc. I found that the best ones to be Mad Dash, Titanium Ribs, Net-Ready Eyes, and Brain Cage because they give you a solid benefit without costly drawbacks.

In order to fuel this masochism, we will need a hearty replenishing engine. The Wyldside / Adjusted Chronotype combo gives you two free cards each turn (or at worst, Wyldside gives you two cards for a single click every turn). And, of course I've included Levy AR Lab Access because with all the draw and damage, you will go through your deck quickly. This all together gives you enough fodder to soak up damage and use Null's ability if you want.

Speaking of Null: Whistleblower, he increases the efficiency of all of your breakers, not just the fixed-strength breakers. Why pay 3 credits when you can just trash a card? Along with Net-Ready Eyes, Ice Carver, Datasucker, and Parasite you can get some good efficiency out of the breaker suite or just trash ice altogether. The breakers are typical anarch faire with enough variety to play around Ark Lockdown.

Hacktivist Meeting and Maw help you keep control of HQ after you knock out a bunch of cards with Clan Vengeance. Hacktivist Meeting forces the corporation to trash a card in HQ to rez a non-ice card. This means they can't rez unless they trash (it's not implemented on Jinteki.net, so you will have to enforce that rule yourself). And, Maw is just a good way to keep the cards steadily pouring out of HQ. Couple that with Enhanced Vision to get a good idea when to run archives or trigger the next Clan Vengeance.

The one thing I'm still not convinced with is the economy. The rig can be prohibitively expensive with cards like Maw costing 6, Yog.0 costing 5, Paperclip costing 4, and Adjusted Chronotype / Wyldside costing 6 cumulatively. This all adds up to quite a lot. I reluctantly included Day Job to give a healthy amount of credits, but I wish there were a more efficient way to make money in this archetype. Sure Gamble and Daily Casts are staples. They are just good, but not long lasting economy. There is definitely room for improvement in this area.

So the style of play is pretty typical outside of the masochism. There's nothing that you really need to keep a secret. It may be difficult to get to your breakers quickly, but getting the draw engine should help that. Check HQ, maybe put down a Medium, and check remotes while you build your rig. Use Maw and Hacktivist Meeting to chip away at HQ if you get them early. Once you've got a couple Clan Vengeance on the table, start dishing out damage to yourself. It can be difficult to hold on to all of the damage cards if they come early. You may have to Brain Cage prematurely. Money-up and install the rest of the pieces as they come. A nice play would be to run archives with a loaded Clan Vengeance and dump all of the cards in HQ just before you access. Jackson Howard is a real concern in that case, and Rumor Mill is excellent in this deck for that reason, but I wanted to build for the future. This deck will be legal even when the new MWL drops. It also doesn't use any cards from the first two cycles.

If you want to drop in some tech cards, Enhanced Vision and Parasite would be good cards to cut in order to free up influence. And, Ice Carver is a little redundant. Political Operative could be really nice against something like Sandburg. And there's no comfortable way to deal with tags, so you may want to slot a Film Critic or Aaron Marrón. Archives Interface or Salsette Slums might be a good include as well.

Good luck, and have fun!

Let me know if you see room for improvement (especially the economy)!!