Ars Sculpturica: an Essay on Shaper

So, I don't claim that this is anything other than a fairly similar Cachemeleon build to what has been floating around for a few months now, so I'll focus my notes on a few things that I chose to include and how I play the deck. As always, credit for the original idea goes to @x3r0h0ur. It's a combo deck, but not in the sense where the entire thing is built to set up one contraption to break the game, like Hyperpoopshagger, Things Big Girls Play With or whatever baffling Accelerated Diagnostics deck claims to be unbeatable this week. Rather, it's the platonic ideal of what Shaper means to me: assembling multiple pieces that I can literally Shape into whatever configuration solves the puzzle of the current turn.

Influence cards:

Cache/Harbinger - Of course these are ready cash for Aesop but with Harbinger you have to be cautious about the order in which you trigger effects, lest it waste Haley's ability. Generally you will either use the 1.1 timing window to pay something off of Personal Workshop so you can install something else from hand. Or, during your 1.2 start of turn triggers, if something is ready to come out of the oven, you can remove its last counter, do your install from grip, then Aesop Harbinger last of all. But this still reduces your mid-turn flexibility, so I only have one remaining in the list.

Dorm Computer - quite nice in a meta where Data Ravens and Snares are seeing play as general Anarch hate. (the rant about Faust/Wyldcakes/D4v1d can be taken as read at this point.) It's amazing in the SYNC Matchup if you haven't found your Artist Colony. It gets around ELP for the RP matchup, and even if it has no applicability it's a cheap bonus install for Aesop to sell.

D4v1d - Some decks omit this, but I find it's hugely important to get around ice that's too strong for Chameleons that aren't fully powered up yet. Atman also helps fill this niche.

Scheherazade - always good in Cachemeleon, but the way I play the deck is that I very often spend my first SMC on this to drop Cache or another SMC from grip. If the corp sees that you only have one SMC out and tries to rush an agenda behind gear-check ice having done the math, the one credit difference can prove them wrong. If this deck is a machine with many moving parts, then Scheherazade is the grease that keeps everything turning at speed: get it early.

Other choices:

Personal Workshop - this is the card that makes this work and is one of the canonical Shaper cards for a particular slice of their color pie that doesn't see a lot of commentary. Everyone knows Shapers like robust hardware and programs, and they are popular with novices that don't have the experience to cope with the skill demands of Anarch or Criminal because What You See Is What You Get. But I think their high-skill return on opportunity cost comes on their ability of Work Compression.

The click you take to install a card on Personal Workshop is a click that is saved for a future turn. Professional Contacts takes a single click to do two clicks' work. Haley herself does the same. Diesel turns a Card+Click into three cards. SMC isn't just a tutor, it's an investment of its install click to pay off later. All-Nighter doesn't see play because it adds little value, but you can see how it takes its click to install to redeem later.

Likewise Personal Workshop doesn't just add economic value by putting cards on layaway, it's banking time. Essentially, if I put three things on Personal Workshop, then a turn or two later I can take what amounts to a seven-click turn. At a minimum, just being able to compress two clicks into one is hugely powerful: the least value you'll ever get is to take a click to host Chameleon click one, run click two and then redeem your first click mid-run to deal with whatever ice you encounter, which is still better than baseline. That you get back its install cost on Scheherazade and Technical Writer is almost unnecessary. (Almost. Having to always pay $2 and a click to use a breaker is terribad without the additional tools to offset the investment.)

So by leveraging this work compression, you actually turn a seemingly-lengthy setup time into a huge amount of acceleration on a single turn that your opponent has to respond to. I think the downfall of many shaper decks (read: my decks) is that they focus too much on WYSIWYG green cards and fail to apply early pressure, which this deck can do. Speaking of which...

Hyperdriver - This is just a Diesel for clicks, pure and simple. For all that I've carried on about the wonders of work compression, it's inescapable that you'll need to invest that time up front. Hyperdriver accelerates your early game by providing clicks you can turn into drawn cards or store on Personal Workshop, or mid-to-late game it can provide an explosive turn that gets you points. It plays very well with Chameleons as they are constantly refunding their MU use. Park this on a Personal Workshop for as long as you need, then pay it off at the end of the corp's turn (bonus install!), immediately trigger it when your turn begins, and the MU cost isn't even a factor. Having one parked on Personal Workshop is a loaded gun pointed at the corp's head.

So, that's the deck. If the deck has one downfall is that it can be somewhat slow. Not in and of itself, though it has a lot of moving parts and triggers to remember. Your turns can become dizzying Rube Goldberg machines that often require you to take a moment to plan your entire turn in your head before you start the ball rolling or you'll come to your third click and realized "nuts, I fudged up." Frankly I think that kind of play is fun on toast and it's why I'll run this deck as long as it's viable. A little practice and you'll start to memorize certain macros.

No, the real problem is that having all these options looming over them makes corps (rightly) paranoid about what the hell you have up your sleeve, and they'll take forever to do their thing. They'll be (justifiably) suspicious of every apparent scoring window because they'll have no idea what crazy five step combo you'll put together on the fly. Because that is how a Shaper do.

This deck went 3-1 at my last SC, but unfortunately three rounds went to time. I did the math and I would have been in the top 4 with the extra points but I can tell you that I was not playing slow.

Edit: a later iteration of this did win me an SC, with Wasteland in the Dorm Computer slot. More practice=faster play. Also played my corp deck more aggressively.