Dirty Hands 4.0

travisrchance 2261

I have talked ad naseum about this deck for, literally, a couple years almost, so I will spare the preamble. If you want more info, look up the prior incarnations of the deck. Instead, I will quickly go over the new inclusions:

Street Peddler is a welcome addition to this deck, as it adds even MORE potential for in-run shenanigans. After playing about twenty games with three copies of the card, I find it hard to not include a full suite. It is especially amazing at helping to procure that coveted first turn Opus--and at a discount no less.

HOWEVER, with its inclusion comes the necessity of playing a single Same Old Thing in case your Levy gets peddled away. Further, I am somewhat missing the single copy of Mimic, which does increase the program count to make those FCCs juicier on the whole. I have been navigating the Architects and annoying Jinteki ice like Komainu with Faerie and Femme as needed.

Chameleon is another nice answer in a pinch, esp. against decks that are trying to flatline ya. I would rank this as an edge case card, sort of like Atman, which means it won't see much play, but that doesn't make it bad. I have used this as an ersatz Mimic against the aforementioned annoyance: Architect.

Clot helps combat one of the hardest match ups for this deck: NBN/fast advance nonsense. With the deck's ability to muster answers seemingly out of thin air, this is a worthwhile inclusion to punish those who would deem this card a silver bullet in the kitchen drawer.

As far as the counts on other cards, Lady is too ridic to not play two copies as opposed to the one and a single Inti--and Corroder just uses up influence unnecessarily.

I like the second Astrolabe, as it helps to reinforce the draw potential of the deck while helping smooth out the MU--an issue I don't seem to have as much as others, but, hey, why not.

The single copy of Zu over a second Cuber-Cypher is simply for versatility. It is a nice tool against NEXT Bronze and Enigma, and esp. Quandary--though I haven't seen one in some time. Having a 1 cost breaker in the mix also give me more outs, esp. when the corp tries to spread out codegates to make Cypher a liability.

Parasite found its way back in due to NEXT ice. It is particularly good at sniping the annoying taxing buggers like Pop-up and Pup as well.

Part of me wants to up the program count to 21 or more again, but the truth is, it is just overkill. To this end, and with the help of Peddler, I am foreseeing one of the FCCs finding its way to the cutting room floor, as the deck doesn't lean on it as much as it used to. Peddler belongs in this deck--if only Inject was 1 influence...

Hope this helps!

13 comments
14 Jul 2015 x3r0h0ur

Killer, I actually anticipated seeing chameleon in here, at least for testing. Having a 3 str breaker as needed ready to go, that jumps to hand ready to FCC or just stock size seemed too good to not try.

Seeing the program pool shrivel some made me think right away that FCC is less good now, but given the draw, I would have thought 2 lep would be better than +1 astro, just for no dead draws, and thicker program density for better FCCs if you choose to not cut them/1 of them. If FCC isn't necessary any more, maybe theres room for another no influence program (no clue what that would be though).

I was curious to see if you thought hyperdriver would be worth while. Basically I imagine in this deck its "sometime soon I'm going to be able to make 6 extra credits in a turn" or allow you to go nuts on servers everywhere.

The issue that I forsee with Hyperdriver is that you never want to burn a tutor for it, especially since its your most valuable tutor most of the time, SMC and Clone. But if it does land on peddler, it looks really good to ambush the corp with a 7 click turn out of nowhere, for 0 credits. I was quite up in the air after evaluating, I was hoping you had some thoughts.

Looking forward to trying it out.

14 Jul 2015 travisrchance

@x3r0h0ur Chameleon is decent. I feel like it is a stand-in for Mimic most times.

I don't feel like the program pool shriveled--it just has tightened up a lot. You don't need Sharpshooter really any more, as it is just another dead draw at diff points in the game. Yes, I like FCC to be rocking, which it usually is about 75% of the time, but I don't want to jam in silver bullets just to hope to trash them with one card I may not draw in tandem. FCC's main use is in getting programs in the heap, which Peddler does in a more random but very effective way. I may go back up to 1 Mimic, as people insist on playing Architect even though everyone has an answer to it and usually early.

Astrolabe is infinitely better than Leprechaun on all counts. Astro helps to keep pushing cards in key matches like RP and NEH. It increases my MU, which Lep does ostensibly, but not when I am already at 4 MU used--which means now I have to make room, which equates to tempo loss a lot of the time. I don't bother with Lep prob 75% of the time, so having an additional copy seems pretty meh to me. If I draw one, and have MU, I might play it. I would never waste recursion on it, as this would be playing the deck incorrectly in my opinion. You want to be scoring as much as possible, which means when you aren't hitting opus is the play 9/10. Sure, Lep offers longterm options, but not at the expense of tempo. If there is a lull and you can play it, cool. Otherwise, I don't really care if I ever see it.

Hyperdriver? I dunno. Again, if it came up AND I had lep out, cool, but that is a lot of 'ifs.' Otherwise, it is just discard fodder. It may be worth exploring, but I want programs that help me get into servers. This indirectly could, by giving me more clicks for Opus, to install, what-have-you, but it seems a little on the cutesy spectrum in a deck that wants to play lean as much as possible.

Try out Peddler. It is another flash solution in-run most times and it represents a threat to a corp trying to be bold.

14 Jul 2015 Dydra

" [Blacklist] ! " (/en/card/08036)

drops the mic and walks off

14 Jul 2015 travisrchance

@Dydra might wanna pick up that mic and finish your thought, because stating a hoser in a vacuum is not a point. They have to draw it, protect it. I have to not have a Test Run, SMC, or the appropriate breaker. They have to not be losing. There are a lot of factors that would have to make Blacklist a problem for a deck like this deck that can summon up answers from drawing en masse while using the aforementioned tutors.

I assume it was an attempt at humor or more of your patented trolling, but it isn't a very good argument, esp. if you have not played the deck or against it. Cool, you have a silver bullet, now load it into your gun while someone is punching you in the face when the building is on fire and one your eyes is swollen shut.

14 Jul 2015 slakker

Love the update to the build. I wouldn't have thought of Street Peddler for Dirty Hands but can't wait to try it out. Thanks for posting!

15 Jul 2015 Wrecko

Nice build.

Any thoughts on putting Faust in a Exile deck? I haven't played Exile but Faust seems like it has potential. I'd appreciate your opinion as a veteran Exile player.

15 Jul 2015 travisrchance

@Wrecko yeah, he seems on point at a glance, but I think it is just too much of a barrier of entry. Realistically, how many times would someone use this? It would have to be dire to fetch this in a deck that plays so much search and recursion. Yes, it can feed your heap, but FCC and Peddler do this just fine in my opinion--as does over drawing. Def would be tough in a deck that also plays FCC.

15 Jul 2015 Wrecko

I agree that he wouldn't fit in your deck. I was just asking more generally. FCC and Faust achieve the same ends so it doesn't make sense to try to squeeze them both in.

15 Jul 2015 Dydra

@travisrchance patented trolling? More like patented trolling against me lol ... Of course it was a humor note, since many people cried that Blacklist will totally gravedig Exile ... and in all honesty, yeah it can mess up with your deck. Just think about the most common situation where RP has 1 or 2 of those and not only you have to run in whatever ICE they are protecting it with ( cuz obv they will since it's a win condition), but also take whatever non-ETR ice they have on top of their centrals.

Not impossible to play out off, but definitely bothersome.

15 Jul 2015 travisrchance

@Dydra Well, my definition of trolling would be going on to many people's decklists and making what are meant to be humorous criticisms. You commented on two of my decks I posted back to back, the other comment not being as smarmy, but still using hole puncher logic and vacuum speak--despite me saying I have ended the majority of my games with Geist at 30+ credits and that most my cards 0-1 in cost, I still have $ problems somehow. I have seen you do this many times on other lists and indulge in nasty banter, so I can only assume that is your thing.

As far as this hypothetical scenario where I won't have a breaker left that I need to access this hypothetical Blacklist, I would say look at the decklist before just making a blanket assumption: "He has 3 Clone Chips and 3 Test Runs, he is doomed." The deck has a lot of answers in the form of breakers. Let's assume they have a troublesome Lotus Field in front of Blacklist, and I have both my Code Gate breakers in my heap. I still have Femme and Atman--this being a worst case scenario. Having ALL of those cards in the heap is very unrealistic for this deck. And even then, this would also make the assumption I do not have the correct breakers to continue to attack R&D or other remotes.

My point is this game is not so black and white, where a single card means the death of a deck. FA can play around Clot. I have literally not played Plascrete in almost 2 years, because I do not find Scorched Earth to be a match I lose much--or, they overkill me when I do lose, which no single Plascrete would matter. To this end, I do not see how "dropping your mic" does anything more than illuminate how myopic of a statement you made/what you truly know about the game. Therefore, I must assume you are trolling me, because your comment is basically ridiculous.

I am here to share what I work on in this game. As a full time game designer and person who has done well with this game consistently (I recently won an ANRPC qualifier with only a single game loss and with decks that were in no way high variance), that me doing so could be of value to others. It is not a vanity platform. I have nothing to prove. @x3r0h0ur inspired me to take another look at updating this deck, so I made the time to do so. I would hope in the future you could find an intelligent and constructive way to communicate your ideas/criticisms: "How does this deck deal with a secure Blacklist," for example. Otherwise, it is just cliche internet jabber that I am quite certain would never be uttered to a stranger in person.

Am I mad, no? But I concede, I find it damn annoying when anyone takes the time to share and communicate their thoughts that another person can so casually attempt to shit on those intentions in what they deem to be amusing.

If this was not your intention, then perhaps you should consider how it appears to others. I only comment on decks I genuinely want to learn to play or beat.

End tirade.

15 Jul 2015 travisrchance

@Dydra As evidenced in our game today on jinteki, you talk a big game, but it is just talk. I took the time to teach you how to use the interface, and once you were at 0 and I was at 6 , you continued to harp about how a misclick you made was the culprit to your losing game state--and this is after telling me I was wrong on timing windows when in fact I was right. I was perfectly polite to you and you continued to be sarcastic and find ways to excuse your loss--when it didn't matter. Just play, this is how we learn, and get better.

My point here is you do troll people, and you drop in and comment and assume you know more than others. You do not. Perhaps it is pathetic I have taken the time to cross swords here, when ignoring this type of behavior is the usual solution, but I am dog sick of this type of nonsense.

16 Jul 2015 x3r0h0ur

I'd like to see a stream of you playing this, I wonder if I'm doing things very different, as I've only kind of seen this played in person 1 time (plugged in tour in Niles, MI so long ago). Would you ever do a twitch or broadcast of a game session or two?

16 Jul 2015 travisrchance

@x3r0h0ur I don't really stream or anything. I play on Jinteki often enough. You can hit me up there and battle real time.