Beyond Earth v1.1

paddosan 3401

Weyland Consortium has always been my favorite mega-corp. A financial behemoth with a shadowy background, that does not shy away from the use of brute force to resolve problems. My kind of corporation, feels like Cyberpunk 2020.

“The real mission? We’re going to save the human race.” – Jack Weyland

In other words, (per aspera) sic itur ad astra: (through hardships) to the stars!

Concept

Gagarin Deep Space is quite a nice new Identity for Weyland. Still somehow linked to the concept of economy, but more in a taxing kind of way. One extra credit just to access any and each card installed in remote servers can become quite the expense.

It also probably means that, given the additional cost, the runner can refrain from stealing an agenda, but that could probably work to avoid getting Midseasoned or accessing a trap, it shouldn't be a problem otherwise.

This is an initial draft of a taxing Weyland deck, bug I decided to use ice strength as a way to deplete the runner's credit pool, instead of going for the usual Caduceus / Eli 1.0 and so on.

Ice Selection

Asteroid Belt, Nebula and Wormhole all have quite a decent strength value, but they also have just one subroutine, so they will be perfect targets for Femme Fatale, Knight or D4v1d.

At least Femme is quite expensive and is otherwise a quite expensive Killer, when it comes to raising her strength; Knight can only go against strength 7 or lower, so IT Department can effectively make it useless; D4v1d costs 4 influence and as such can't be everywhere, plus it has a limited number of uses.

The first possible solution to a deck using plenty of the above mentioned programs is Tyrant which works the other way around and with a limitless number of subroutines can become exceptionally expensive. It only has strength four, however, so it might be a prime target for another annoying program: Parasite. Moreover, it needs to be rezzed before you can advance it, so you might need to rez it on your own with Executive Boot Camp or you'll be unable to move advancement tokens on it with Constellation Protocol.

Hadrian's Wall and Ice Wall can be other good targets for those mid-to-late game advancement tokens exchanges and are otherwise needed so you can benefit from that little jewel that is Builder even after you rezzed or advanced all those Wormholes and such.

Lastly, Orion is a true beast and the way it's discounted also means you won't have to fear Crescentus or Emergency Shutdown (just like for the other 3 with the same mechanic). You do have much to fear from it being a rainbow, however, cause anyone between Forked, Spooned or Knifed can trash it for good. So beware of those who handle cutlery / silverware.

I removed the single Lotus Field from this version, because as El-ad pointed out on Twitter, RSVP is too good an option to miss, for Gagarin Deep Space. So I added two copies of that one instead, by removing an Ice Wall as well.

Assets & Upgrades

  • Constellation Protocol goes without saying, and it's quite expensive to trash, while it doesn't cost anything to you and also makes you save money. You won't need that many, though, cause there might also be moments when there are no advancement tokens that need moving, so 2 copies should be fine.
  • Executive Boot Camp is mostly here to help out with Tyrant and you can rez it & move advancement tokens (with CP) before you even spend your first click of the turn! It can also help a lot in fetching some economy assets or that damn Executive that never shows up at the right time.
  • GRNDL Refinery can provide a lot of economy (it served me very well in my Sly Fox deck. It is also necessary, in my opinion, to have some other card that can be advanced, other than the agenda. Otherwise the runner will always know exactly when you're going to score, but a bit of confusion is always advised.
  • IT Department will make your Nebula (or Orion) much more fearsome, and can save from an early death by Parasite + Datasucker, since its effect lasts the whole turn.
  • Jackson Howard? Never go out without, in these troubled times of bloody milling with all the Noise Clones that go around.
  • PAD Campaign takes the place of Marked Accounts, in this version. Needed the influence to add RSVP. Still, less clicks involved and only costs one less credit for the runner to trash.
  • Red Herrings was such an annoying card, back when there was just the core set (man, I can't believe it's already been 2 years). Now it will make NAPD Contract a freaking monster to steal, since they will have to pay 10 credits (plus 2 if they also want to trash the little herrings). It also costs very little to the corp, and it's been a lot of time since I last played it, so I wanted to try it out again.

Conclusions

As I mentioned, this is just a first draft, and I decided to go almost without any Operations mostly to screw with the racist Edward Kim, but some more options like Power Shutdown or Snatch and Grab could be interesting additions.

There's also Firmware Updates that needs testing. I'm not 100% sure about it yet, and a third copy of Gila Hands Arcology and Project Atlas could be a better option.

High-Risk Investment could also be swapped out in favor of Government Contracts, that provides a more lasting benefit... but again I want to try some of the new stuff to see just how good it is exactly.

Other than that, the ice selection and the asset selection might get some changes but they seem fairly ok for a first version.

1 comments
29 Nov 2014 paddosan

Basically, to sum up changes:

-3 Marked Accounts / -1 Lotus Field / -1 Ice Wall

+3 PAD Campaign / +2 RSVP