Bargain Hunter v1.1

Card draw simulator
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syntaxbad 619

Bargain Hunter becomes the Bargain Hunted!

Hi all, this is my first time actually publishing a deck, but I have really been enjoying playing this (I've been proxying the Fausts).

The Overall Gameplan: Draw ALL THE CARDS. Break ALL THE SUBROUTINES. The core strategy is to to install Faust and then draw a continuous stream of cards to feed your demonic bargain ("This deal's getting worse all the time!"). You can gradually install Str boosts in the form of Net-Ready Eyes and The Personal Touch to reduce the number of ICE that require a pump from Faust while also deploying hand size and multi access boosts. When you run low, fire off Levy AR Lab Access and have another go! Because the main currency for your breaker is cards, Nasir's downside is mitigated and you can dump the early rez-flood of credits into dropping your various hand size and access boosts. I originally had Mac as the ID but @drmastodon rightly pointed out that Nasir was a better fit.

Card Choices: Diesel, Game Day, I've Had Worse, Earthrise Hotel, John Masanori, Professional Contacts - This deck runs on massive card draw and these are your fire hose. Draw early, draw often. Faust makes successful runs easy, which turns your sketchy pal John Masanori into a pretty reliable 1 Card per turn engine. And in this deck, a Card is basically worth 2 credits. Levy AR Lab Access is both a draw 5 event and lets you recycle the whole deck, since you burn through your stack quite quickly. The best part is that your deck is more econ and draw dense the second and third time through, and you can pick up any hardware or resources you missed or had to trash the first time through. I am considering Quality Time once I figure out the perfect econ mix, since it is more efficient than Diesel, if harder to fire off.

Box-E, Public Sympathy - Hand size 1) allows you to hold more ammo for Faust, 2) acts as extra HP to shield you from flatlining strategies, and 3) makes Game Day hilariously effective.

e3 Feedback Implants, Net-Ready Eyes, The Personal Touch - These are your support suite for Faust. Pumping its strength reduces the times when you will need to pitch cards to pump and e3 Feedback Implants further reduce the card burn when facing multi sub ice. You draw a lot of cards in this deck, but you don't draw infinite cards, and spending 2 credits instead of 2 more cards can really help you make more runs. Plus they look cool. another fun trick is waiting until you have only have I've Had Worse and some other card in hand when you install your "Special Eyes". You get to trigger the trash draw immediately and end up with 3 fresh cards.

Sure Gamble, Dirty Laundry, Kati Jones, Professional Contacts - Just because you don't use money (mostly) to break subs doesn't mean you don't need money at all. This is the part of the deck that could probably use the most tweaking. This deck was originally a Mac deck, so it is possible that I want to change the econ mix now that I have Nasir's ability as a source of income. But there are several medium priced resources and hardware that we want to install along the way, so having money does matter. Since successful runs are pretty easy to make, Dirty Laundry is a pretty effective boost, with the same click efficiency as Sure Gamble (and lower pre-req). It also works especially well for Nasir, since you get the payout after you are past all the ice and no longer at risk of zeroing your bank account from Nasir's ability.

Faust, Mimic, Self-modifying Code - Faust is of course the core of the deck. Self-modifying Code gives us 5 effective copies of the card, and with the amount of raw card draw in the deck, finding your copy in the first few turns is almost never an issue. SMC is also great with Nasir since you can pull the standard trick of digging up your copy mid-run, before you lose your credits to a rezzed piece of ice. The lone Mimic is a concession to Swordsman.

R&D Interface - This gives the deck a fallback plan when the game goes long. I find that it is good to have at least one avenue where you can apply extreme pressure, so that the corp has to warp its defenses. With something like Faust you can almost always get in, even through a giant server, if you spend a turn drawing a bazillion cards. A good way to finish things up if they have made remotes problematic, or simply are on the fast advance plan.

Anyway, I really enjoy this deck, even though it doesn't play at all like my old, more traditional, Nasir deck. I would love any thoughts or (constructive) feedback.

13 comments
7 Jul 2015 M1ke

You should always dump excess money in Nasir's favorite place, since he is known to spend fortunes in online ads.

7 Jul 2015 syntaxbad

In a normal Nasir deck, absolutely. That's what my other Nasir build does. But this is a Faust deck that happens to use Nasir, rather than a Nasir deck that uses Faust. The question for me is whether I have enough hardware to justify a workshop. I will only ever need to install a single copy of Faust, and many of my installs are resources. So it would really just be the hardware that I'm putting on the workshop and I only have 13 pieces. Still, it might be worth considering as a replacement for some of the other econ. I will try it out.

Oh and does anyone know how I am supposed to put card links in my main description? I did the whole thing with Markdown, the way it works in comments and now that I published it, it doesn't seem to be working, and instead is causing weird bolding.

7 Jul 2015 skydivingninja

Any room for Inti against Wraparound?

7 Jul 2015 drmastodon

@skydivingninja I played an NBN deck against this one that used Wraparound. It was a tax, but given this deck's card draw, it didn't slow @syntaxbad down at all once he had Net-Ready Eyes or a Personal Touch or two out on Faust.

7 Jul 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Alsciende added some JavaScript that pops up all cards matching a substring when you hit the # key and start typing card names. You can click or use the arrow keys to choose the card you want and then hit Enter to inject the HTML that will display the description. The preview window below will show you in realtime if it works or is broken somehow. You can also use $ to inject symbols and @ to inject user names present in the conversation. The only markdown I've found that works in the card descriptions is bolding and italicizing, and I just use HTML for that anyway.

7 Jul 2015 syntaxbad

Thanks, though this javascript only seems to work when you are editing a comment and NOT when you are editing the main description for a published deck. I ended up having to paste my entire deck description into a comment editing box, and manually use the javascript menus to redo every single card link and then RE paste into the deck description. Seems like it would make sense to have this same functionality just built into the editor for deck descriptions. :(

7 Jul 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Ah, yeah, it works in the editor (under comments tab) but not after you have already published the deck. I'd forgotten about that, I always comment my decks before I save them.

7 Jul 2015 syntaxbad

Ahh! That makes sense. So I need to do my descriptions in the Notes tab before publishing, since the pop-up when you hit Publish doesn't have the same functionality. That solves my problem; thanks so much @FarCryFromHuman!

7 Jul 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Sure thing! The one upside to this functionality is that it encourages people to publish decks with descriptions (descriptionless decks being one of my biggest pet peeves).

9 Jul 2015 BobAloVskI

Nice deck, @syntaxbad.

The problem with Nasir Meidan: Cyber Explorer decks in the past has been having less money than the corp so you cannot avoid tags and then meat damage. However, with the increased deck size, this should be less of an issue. I would never have thought of Faust in Nasir Meidan: Cyber Explorer but it sounds like it could.

10 Jul 2015 gromgrom

I'd think a Parasite would be useful for annoying ice like Komainu which are still pretty taxing on Nasir regardless. I'm also thinking Clone Chip, and a 1x Faust, with 3 SMC. But i could be wrong! How has 2x been in testing on finding it early?

I also find the Sure Gambles interesting with Nasir, but if it works for you in testing, by all means! It seems you dont run Order of Sol or Personal Workshop so that may be the reason haha. I'm on the fence about them in this build myself given there aren't many targets, but the engine itself could make all that hardware uber cheap to play, and gives you a money dump. Excess copies are easily dumped for Faust :) As another user mentioned, a singleton Gordian Blade to deal with Turing might be useful.

John Macaroni is a good include here. Keeps the engine rolling. Overall, it's super solid. I think what I like the most about this brew is how it gets around his biggest issue, which is money. Money to pump breakers, steal Fetal/NAPD/Future Perfect, money to trash assets like Caprice and SanSan, money to avoid Sea Scource/Midseasons, etc. That's why I was originally excited for Film Critic. This build though, has a big enough hand size to avoid cheesy kills, and breaks through servers cheaply enough to still trash assets and steal agendas. I'm gonna give it a go.

10 Jul 2015 syntaxbad

@gromgrom: I do love parasite quite a bit, and used it in my old, more traditional Nasir deck to insta-kill troublesome ice using workshop. But I am pinched on inf here, and I think parasite is better used when you have recursion and a more copies/datasuckers. I actually started my list with a clone chip, but realized that faust was basically the only thing to get back and since that was the case, why not just have more copies/SMC, since that give you redundancy AND ups your odds of finding faust quickly each game. I've been finding that 3 SMC and 2 Faust is fine, and I even had a game where I foolishly got faust trashed off an Ichi and was able to get it back pretty soon with another SMC, so I like the "5" copies so far.

Regarding Sure Gamble and the other econ cards vs. a more traditional Nasir package (Order of Sol, Personal Workshop), this is the area of the deck that I am currently toying with. I think you may very well be right that sticking to his usual econ makes more sense here. I don't have a HUGE amount of hardware, but probably enough to justify workshop. The main thing about Sure Gamble is that it is SO good in the starting hand. This is a deck that does spend its credits on building up hardware and resources, so I haven't found the downside of being stuck with "too much money" (as can happen with Nasir when you're afraid of some low cost ice) comes up that often. But I will certainly try a version with the workshop package and see how it plays vs. what I have.

Regarding Gordian Blade, I think this might end up being a good idea. Honestly, I don't play in big tournaments, so I don't have a sense for what I'm likely to hit in "popular" archetypes, but I assume Turing sees a lot of play, since it just seems like a strong piece of ice.

John Masanori has been great for me every time I've dropped him. And getting the card after the run is nice, since it not only re-fuels for future runs, but puts in a little padding against flatlines. If you run late in your turn, you can often end up with a small hand if you don't have the clicks to fire off another draw event before the turn is over.

Thanks for the feedback and let me know how you like the deck if you give it a try!

10 Jul 2015 gromgrom

@syntaxbad It does help, but PW has anti-synergy with SMC. Also, like you and I said, there ARE targets, but not always. Not sure if Sure Gamble is the answer... but it is nice :) We need some way to deal with trashing assets and stealing agendas still.

I think Modded would be pretty nice. It has 7 major targets: Box-E, Faust, and RDI, making each cost 0-1 to install, which is right where Nasir likes it. Worst case you can burn it on a Personal touch if you're broke. In addition, Net Celebrity or Paricia may be ideal for trashing assets, and in Net's case, breaking subs and countering opposing Currents like Cerebral Static which hinder us.

John is alright, but he really only shines when you're getting setup. Without Turn 1 sure gamble or non-taxing corp ice, he sits in my hand, or is a liability. I'm not having issues at all with drawing cards lol.

I'm still tinkering with it! This is an amazing brew man! Keep us up to date!