My Last Best Shot at Apex

#endgame 130

I have once again been grinding Apex. This is the best I can do, and I want to see if anyone can do any better before he rotates.

Deck:

  • Wasteland/Reaver is only practical if you max out ways to use it on the Corp's turn.
  • Bankroll helps this a lot: by midgame you often have a single Wasteland and Reaver out, and cracking even a small Bankroll on the Corp's turn is still moderately profitable and moves you through the deck. With DreamNet and Bankroll, poking undefended servers for a card and 2+ credits is actually pretty good value.
  • Consume is way better than I expected, and is worth getting down even against some non-asset spam decks. It charges off Prey and trashing cards out of centrals, which is very nice.
  • Hunting Grounds is not trashable until you know where your Assimilators are (ideally, one is safely installed) so unless you need its "prevent a 'when encountered'" effect, install them face-down, pay for things you can use, and assimilate them later.
  • Synthgland can be cheated out with Assimilator or Heartbeat, but the 5th click is so useful that if I see it first, I often eat the damage. Exceptions: playing against Thule or Jinteki.
  • Mayfly can get you a self-trash if you don't have any other option. You can also feed it to Prey since it's probably going away anyway.

Other matchup-specific tips:

  • Against Jinteki, beware running out of cards. You probably can't afford to crack every Gachapon and Hunting Grounds, and still steal Obokata. You probably can't even avoid to Prey on any ICE of nontrivial strength.
  • Against Weyland, use Prey on Border Control, especially against Ob to deny them the pull from R&D.
  • Against HB, Heartbeat laughs at Nightmare Archive.
  • Against NBN, good luck. Hunting Grounds helps against some of their most obnoxious ICE, but screw NBN. A big Bankroll can help against Economic Warfare, I guess?
3 comments
23 Jul 2023 chordgang

Love this! Not sure if it was you or someone else but this deck absolutely obliterated me on Jnet earlier today (I was playing Thule...)

23 Jul 2023 #endgame

Yep, pretty sure that was me. It's disgustingly efficient once it's set up, and Heartbeat makes Thule very unhappy.

26 Jul 2023 #endgame

I think we probably want 1×Docklands Pass, and it's probably worth giving up 1×Gachapon for.