AmpX (v. 1.5)

This latest version is based on my experiences at the Chaos, Games, and More store tournament in Pueblo, CO. (I played essentially the above, with -1 Utopia Shard, -1 Eater, -1 Kraken, +1 Lawyer Up, +2 Stim Dealer for card availability reasons.) I didn't do as well as I think I could have, but the deck ran as it was meant to; two losses came in large part due to inexperience (it was my first live tournament, ever) and bad luck, but the games it won were more or less blowouts. I think this deck is the real deal, and with some tweaking can be a monster.

For those who haven't been following the deck's evolution (from the lowly days of Duggar's and Starlight Campaign Funding), the game plan is as follows:

• 1) Drill through your deck, using Inject, I've Had Worse, and MaxX herself, until you've put most of your doubles in your heap and tailored your hand. Click to draw if you have to. A hand without an Inject or an I've Had Wore had better be really nice to not warrant a mulligan.
• 2) Use Sure Gamble, Lucky Find, and (occasionally) Queen's Gambit to finance your activities in (1).
• 3) Move your tools to the board - icebreakers, Keyhole, shards, and SOTs - though not so quickly as to provoke a corp icing frenzy.
• 4) Once your heap is full of doubles, play several Power Naps to push your credit count into the 30s+.
• 5) Use Vamp and Eater to drain all the corp's credits (and disable all that R&D ice).
• 6) Keyhole your way to victory, supplemented with Amped Up to maintain tempo as much as possible.

But the above makes playing the deck seem more methodical than it is. In reality, you will not infrequently have to respond to the corporation's board, tuning the above plan to better suit the obstacle in your path and the nature of the opponent's strategy. Sometimes, such as against Fast Advance, I just put my head down and charge through the above as directly as possible (I've won several games with the deck with my opponent on six points, from turning their attention to just pounding out agendas.) Other times, however, you'll need to play more methodically - testing remotes to root out Jackson Howards, playing the Singularity-Eater guessing game, or just picking the right time to plow into HQ to try to get a tempo boost off Utopia Shard or an early Vamp. (Anyone who says "combo decks are uninteractive and boring" hasn't seen some of the mutual mind games this deck can create.)

But regardless of the intervening steps, your end goal is the same - get enough credits and clicks to get as many Keyholes as possible, while holding back enough money (after the installation costs and Vamp) to try to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat if the corp manages to restart their economy and/or steal NAPD Contracts. Sometimes, that means you'll have a completely empty deck and just be pounding Keyhole over and over while they spend several turns clicking for credits to restart their ice in time.

The changes in this version represent a fine-tuning of the deck's strategy. Stim Dealer did well in one game, but I recognized that it usually isn't any better (and can sometimes be much worse) than Deja Vuing back an Amped Up. Plus the fact you can't put it on the board early to sit on it like you can with Joshua B. is a real liability. In general, however, I felt that the deck after Vamp doesn't really need more click producers than the Amped Ups - usually what ends up happening is after Vamp, you're still left with 15 or so credits, and even if you can't win the turn you Vamp, you will likely have no trouble Keyholing four times the next turn, using your remaining cash to break through whatever small ice the corp could now afford to rez. You don't really need to win in a single turn, even though you potentially can, and while winning faster improves your chances (say, against Jackson), your pace doesn't need to be substantially increased beyond Amped Up. Hence, click storage isn't worth it on balance. I also decided the Lawyer Up, while cute, didn't substantially add to the consistency of the heap-filling plan enough to justify the slot. (Ironically for a card that draws cards, it's the one double I could never imagine using. All the rest have roles to play even in very niche situations, like Frame Job against Shi.Kyu.)

I also came to recognize the importance of being able to hit the corp's hand in those instances where they were clogged with cards but I couldn't reach them due to the sparsity of the icebreaker suite. Hence, Utopia Shard is a must - not just for getting an extra agenda in a pinch, but also for potentially disrupting the corp's plans at a critical moment, much as Vamp does. The third Eater facilitates that addition, and also reflects the fact that many corps now know that MaxX is an Eater-based runner. The element of surprise is gone, so there's less of a reason to not just put it out onto the board when you can and save the need to Retrieval Run it.

The 45th card, in the flex slot, is Kraken. It's an experiment, primarily as a concession to how horrible it can be to deal with the constellation ice (i.e. Asteroid Belt) if you already need your Femme Fatale for something else. (I lost a game at the tournament in part because the corp got Archer and Asteroid Belt up on the same server, and that crushed my credit pool enough for him to draw the Jackson Howard to stabilize.) This slot in the deck has been at least a dozen different cards over the lifespan of the deck, however, so you could really make it whatever you feel you most need.

Other possibilities include Earthrise Hotel (great if you draw it early, easy to throw away if you draw it late); Quest Completed (gives the deck an extra bit of reach, on top of Utopia Shard); Wanton Destruction (if you're that person); Joshua B. (click safety blanket); Day Job (credit safety blanket); Knifed (a more tailored version of the Kraken plan); Knight (another versatile breaker, though one that the deck might not have the memory to afford).

And for those of you who have looked at the spoilers, I'm also keeping an eye on Trope, Street Peddler, Paige Piper (at least, if she costs 0 credits), and Immolation Script. Also, depending on what comes down the pipe in SanSan (in addition to Game Day), I think there might be a viable version of this deck out of Chaos Theory - right now, it's missing either a fourth Shaper double or a Shaper breaker that can do what Eater does.