Advanced Investments

Shulmey 44

This is my first shot at an advanceable ice deck. I am still VERY early in testing it. A few notes:

I think this Agenda spread is fantastic with Titan. The extra agenda counters on Project Atlas are fantastic, and Mark Yale turns all of those counters on everything into great economy.

I debated with myself over Satellite Grid and Constellation Protocol, but I think they will pay off with 12/16 ice being advanceable. I should have plenty of Advancement tokens to play with, with Firmware Updates, Shipment from Kaguya, and Builder helping out a ton in that department.

For scoring, Trick of Light seemed like an obvious choice.

For Ice, I went with the advanceable stuff. I added in Neural Katana and Data Raven because not only are they great cards (Data Raven in particular has always been a favorite of mine in Weyland), but they also synergize incredibly well with the Wormhole subroutine. A data raven token is one of the scariest things a runner can see against weyland and having to break a strength 7 code gate to avoid it... It's one of those card combos that is amazing when it fires, but the cards are still good even without the other.

Things I've been contemplating and trying to figure out:

  • Space Camp would be nice, but I don't know if it's worth the deck slots.
  • Orion is pretty situational. It just takes a ton of advancement tokens to make it affordable, and then it can be broken by whatever the runner's most efficient breaker is.
  • I'm still up in the air on my Upgrades. I haven't drawn Will or Crisium yet in a game, so I can't say much about them. One game I played Satellite Grid and it was absolutely game winning. The next game it was just ok.
  • I can't tell if I need more ice or just need to play differently. Currently, my playstyle involves a scoring remote, and a single piece of ice over one or two more remotes for Mark Yale and Constellation protection.

Let me know what you guys think!

5 comments
30 Jan 2015 Pyjam

I don't think Space Camp is worth its deck slot. When I tried it, it triggered once or never in a game then it was trashed and that's all.

Do you raise enough money for SEA Source + Scorched Earth ?

With my own deck, I'm alwys very low on credits (but it's not a problem) and I see that you play even less econ cards than me.

30 Jan 2015 Shulmey

@Pyjam I tried Space Camp out today, it was pretty lackluster and really kind of overkill. I didn't need the advancement tokens that it generated.

I usually have between 10-15 credits. I've played 6 matches with this today. I won 5, none with scorch. I'm thinking I might take the scorches and Sea Source out, and replace it with a SanSan City Grid and more ice or econ.

Basically in playing today, the deck ran WAY faster than I expected it to. Not as fast as NEH, but a lot faster than Blue Sun. And the space ice performed even better than I had hoped it would, creating tons of trick of light tokens in the process. My only concern with SanSan is that it's incompatible in a server with Satellite Grid.

30 Jan 2015 Pyjam

There's no synergy between SanSan City Grid and the space stuff. You might add Archived Memories to replay the Trick of Light instead.

Have you played against Leela? It's a difficult match up.

31 Jan 2015 Shulmey

@Pyjam I just posted my newest version. I decided to add Reclamation Order over SanSan or Archived Memories.

I played 2 games against Leela. The first was tough, but the second was much easier. Her ability only really hurts if she uses it on an advanced unrezzed piece of ice. The second game I played against her, I focused on using Trick of Light on tokens that were on unrezzed ice, so that she couldn't make me lose the tokens. I also didn't score Hostile Takeover immediately like I would against other ID's. I would try to score at a time when I could do so without having her bounce important things back to my hand. I would also play them one turn and score them the next rather than out of hand so that I would have the click afterwards to reinstall any ice that she bounced.

My only loss with this so far is actually to a Hivemind forced purge deck, where I left the Hivemind with 4 virus counters on it. The runner played 2 Mediums as click one and two (With a Grimoire out), so they ran R&D and got to access 9 cards. That's what I get for not purging every other turn I guess???

31 Jan 2015 Pyjam

Thanks for the report.

I play Hostile Takeover early against Leela only on turn 1 when there are no piece of ice installed. :0)

I've published an article on my deck on BGG : www.boardgamegeek.com

... where I explain why I prefer Archived Memories over Reclamation Order.