The Art of Intrusion 105: Dreams

HolyMackerel 1495

"Welcome back, students. Truth be told, I can hardly call you students anymore. You are all fully fledged net experts, and if you've been paying any attention during my lessons, you know I haven't been teaching you how to PROTECT corporate servers. No, I've taight you how to thrive on the net, how to be free. To challenge your minds out there, to go where no one has gone before, and to do things everyone thought impossible. This is my final lesson to you: dream. Let nothing stand in the way of those dreams, and watch them unfold into reality."

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Refining a Professor deck is hard work. This is the latest iteration of it, and I'm testing it as we speak.

Artist Colony is really, really busted. I've fallen in love with it more and more since I started playing with the thing, and it synergizes very well with the deck's already cheap install costs. It enables us to run even more aggressivley in the midgame, and is absolutely amazing against FA decks, which is a matchup we really needed to improve anyway. It also allows us to fetch our sorely needed hardware.

Speaking of , our next inclusion is Djinn. I've finally come around on this card. It provides us with even more MU, and lets us fetch the Viruses we need. Datasucker is universally useful, Parasite is amazing against decks with low-strength ICE (Read, Weyland and NBN), Imp for the combo and kill decks, Medium for the deep digs, and Incubator for the REALLY deep digs.

Unfortunately, it's the cut we've had to make is Test Run, which makes our draws slightly more inconsistent. You still need your Opus, or SMC for Opus. Get your cash up and running, and the rest is gravy from there.

Matchup tips can be found in the previous versions. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You will notice that you have no more classes after this one. That is because I feel you have all the fundementals down. From here on out, we will meet in a select place on the SubNet, which will be encoded in your grades. I will meet those of you who break the encryption there, and we will establish a mentoring program. I see potential in all of you, and it is my sicerest wish that all of you surpass me. You've heard my motto, that new technology destroys the old. Soon, I will be too old, and I believe you can be the new technology. Become greater than I ever was, and let the Net set you free."

5 comments
27 Feb 2016 mawa

Oooh, Artist Colony seems like an excellent include for maximising the number of searches in a deck like this. Is there any value playing Fan Site to turn Artist Colony into SMC 4-6 or even better, a hardware tutor? Why no Plascrete? I'd like to point out that there's no link to the previous versions, so we can't see what you've said beforehand.

Otherwise, a fun looking deck. I'll be sure to sleeve this up. Any cards that you're excited for from Mumbad?

27 Feb 2016 HolyMackerel

Fan Site would be amazing, if I found the deckspace. Right now it's faaaar too tight to squeeze them in. If you can find some cuts, that would be awesome.

I haven't found Plascrete Carapace to be that necessary. I can generally rely on Imp recursion to trash meat damage or tagging methods from HQ, and Opus lets you stay ahead of SEA Source.

Right now, I'm mostly interested in Ankusa, though it's a long way away. But a powerful effect like that shouldn't be underestimated, and I can't wait to try it out.

Previous versions are also called "The Art of Intrusion", but I'll find a way to link them once I figure out how this site works....

27 Feb 2016 mawa

OK, so this is a radical thought, but what about getting rid of Personal Workshop? It let's you get stimhack out expensive breakers, but you're only running 1 Stimhack and your only expensive breaker is Femme anyway. It lets you dump everything you draw with Quality Time, Diesel and Personal Contacts, but you aren't running any of those. It's a drip of effectively 1 credit per turn, but you can spend those clicks you would installing and drawing hitting Mopus instead. It reduces the amount of instant speed work you can do from HQ, but that only matters for like clot and parasite. And when you have so many types of breakers, for every one that gets lost in hand you have 2 left in R&D.

Now admittedly I'm not experienced with The Professor so I don't know if there's something I'm missing.

11 Mar 2016 cameronwlucas

I've been fooling around in my head with some Professor ideas before I found your excellent decklists. Granted I have not had the chance to do any real playtesting, what about Aesop's Pawnshop and Technical Writer to install and sell off programs you don't need? Or does Magnum Opus just make those cards unnecessary?

Looking forward to working on making the The Professor: Keeper of Knowledge work...glad you've started this project!

11 Mar 2016 HolyMackerel

@cameronwlucas: welcome to the clan ^^

Aesops isn't very useful in this build, as you have a low density of disposable programs. I like to only install the stuff I need, rather than installing stuff and then selling it.

Technical Writer is a card I haven't tried out yet, mainly because I haven't found the deckspace. I haven't found I need more credits than I get from Opus except against the super-credit-taxing Gagarin decks that have been popping up.

What do you suggest we cut to make space for them?