Apocalypse Theory

Kharn the Betrayer 224

The game plan is pretty straight forward: Dig till you hit an Overmind, install and watch your opponent scratch their head trying to figure your jank out, then while they're spreading out hit them with an apocalypse. If they're wise to it, that's cool too, they'll have to ICE up centrals to hold back the apocalypse and leave you with easy access to remotes (Overmind is a lot better than it looks here, especially when you can reinstall with scavenge and clone chips after it's spent). If you can get an apocalypse through, use the opportunity you've got to Index once or twice and nab stuff or cause disruption while the corp is still recovering. If not, use the rest of your tools to create an efficient disposable rig that you can tear down and rebuild on a whim, the corp probably isn't going to be able to build 3 deep on everything.

The econ cards are a little weird, you're mostly depending on pawnshop to drip you cash off of Cache, memchips or dead peddlers/overminds, the reason being that landing a pawnshop after an apocalypse gives you a huge advantage and the deck is built to support that. Anything that costs 0 or 1 can turn into a once a turn $2 or $3 click (provided you've planned it well), Caches can be a $5 sell and reinstall off a scavenge if you need the cash. If you're really hurting for money you can burn a hyperdriver for cash-clicks as well. You don't really need huge amounts of cash to get into anything as you're running aggressively enough to not worry too much about big clunky ICE and you can make about $7 in a turn without any great difficulty when you need it.

Quality Time (1x) - This is a quick recovery card if you get knocked down by damage or gas if you need to dig, only one because it's not cheap and the times you really need it you can SoT for one.

Memchips/Astrolabe - Makes Overmind better and sell to Aesop for a profit should you need it. Astrolabe is also gas.

NRE - Helps make runs cheaper or + Mimic when necessary.

FtE - Extra point on indexing runs.

CyCy/Mimic - Silver bullets for Turing, Swordsman, Komainu, etc. All the things Overmind can't or shouldn't be blasting through. Also gives you a decent vanilla rig with mimic at 4 via NRE, disposable CyCy and Overminds on barrier duty if you need to play the regular game.

4 comments
10 Aug 2016 HolyMackerel

Don't want to be the guy to point out the elephant in the room, but Out of the Ashes? Seems sweet in an apoc-deck that doesn't need to splash for it.

10 Aug 2016 Kharn the Betrayer

Sounds decent, but I don't know that I can find the slots. Chaos theory has to stay pretty tight and hyperdriver can already do some pretty similar things for me.

11 Aug 2016 mawa

I'm wondering if this deck, more than any Shaper Apocalypse deck, wants Rigged Results. Might be able to save you from even having to run any non-Overmind breakers. Speaking of weird new run events, I'd run Injection Attack over Net-Ready Eyes. Seems a shame to boost a Mimic to deal with Ichi 1.0 and then lose it as well as the two cards to meat damage.

15 Aug 2016 Kharn the Betrayer

The inherent inconsistency of Rigged Results makes it a somewhat frightening prospect to rely on, so I'd be hesitant to abandon alternative breakers. Injection Attack sounds like a great idea though, I've often found myself staring at a NRE I don't want to install. Definitely going to make that swap.