My University Sweetheart's First Date

GPWK 142

I feel like I know what I'm trying to do here, but I can't seem to get it into words. I feel like the variance is going to be too high, even with Quality Time and Game Day.

Feedback is appreciated!

1 comments
4 Feb 2015 EnderA

You have a few different things you're trying to do. You're partly going for Replicator shenanigans, which is fun, plus throwing in a couple stealth breakers. That's what I went for in my version, which you can see here. Overall, this deck reminds me of an earlier version of my deck.

You're also going + Underworld Contact, which can be cute, using Borrowed Satellite and Dyson Mem Chip, with a side benefit of memory-free ZU.13 Key Master/Creeper.

And then you're going for massive card draw, with 9 slots dedicated to drawing a full hand. This somewhat compensates for the little deck-search (only 2 Self-modifying Codes and nothing else.)

The problem, as I realized when building my own deck, is it's not focused. How do you plan on winning?

Do you want to set up a strong board state (lots of interactive economy + card draw,) then break everything? Well, you have some very cheap breakers, and not much fuel for your stealth breakers.

Do you want to break everything fast and efficiently with cheap/stealth breakers? Well, you don't have any early economy, and don't have the support for the stealth.

Do you want to adapt to whatever the Corp does? Well, you only have 2 searching cards, the SMC's. Everything else must be hand-drawn.

Do you want to draw and play loads of cards? Well, half your deck costs 3+, which isn't cheap, especially the Hardware, which 11/16 costs 3+.

Do you want to really combo with Replicator? The core hardware desperately needs to be cheaper, and you need to have a full 3 Replicators.

You need to choose. Personally, I don't think going for link is worth it. Underworld Contact takes 3-4 turns just to break even: costs 2, costs a click to play, takes the slot of a card in hand, and you have to wait till your next turn to get anything. ZU.13 Key Master and Creeper aren't terrible, but they also aren't amazing, and the link only ends up saving 1 each. Would you play them if/when they did cost memory? Borrowed Satellite is neat, but many times barely useful, are the 1 + 1 hand size really worth 3 credits and a slot? Imagine if you don't draw your link cards and Underworld Contact together, would you still be ok with the hand? Why not run more traditional economy for guaranteed income?

I also don't think stealth is worth going unless you really commit. That means you need some stealth hardware, which handily combos with Replicator, plus you already have Ghost Runners.

I also think the Diesel is the best card-draw card in Shaper. Compare it to Quality Time: 0 credit and a card to draw 3, or 3 credits and a card to draw 5. If it takes you 2 clicks to get 3 credits, then you could just get a Quality time by going Diesel, Draw, Draw. instead of Click, Click, Quality Time. Always run Diesel over Quality Time.

But then, you should probably always run Quality Time over Game Day, unless you're really committing to the Hand Size combo. With Quality Time, you can play it regardless of how many cards you have in hand, and Game Day only saves a maximum of 1 credit without hand size greater than 5.

Lastly, rarely do you need to run a full 3 Levy AR Lab Accesses. 5 credits for 5 cards? Unless you're really taking advantage of the heap-shuffle (perhaps by using Replicator often recursively,) 3 of them is massive overkill. At 5 credits, you can always just click-draw 5 cards, and you're running plenty of other draw.