Prepaid Crusade 1.1

Kharn the Betrayer 224

Game Plan

Chaos Theory gives you a slim deck, and you've got nothing but gas to dig into. Draw as aggressively as possible into burst economy from Lucky Find and Sure Gamble backed by Voice Pads, and drop your non-femme breakers when you find them. Get chronotype and Starlight Crusade Funding up asap (preferably in that order) and watch your sluggish doubles-based turns explode, giving you 9 single click events every time through the deck that can gain you 7 to 11 credits a piece, then do them again with Same Old Thing. Leverage all that money into grossly efficient breaking and pressure scoring remotes or smash everything in sight.

You have no safety net for damage, so always keep a Same Old Thing on stand by in case you lose your LARLAs, and run cautiously against Flatline strategies.

Card Choices

Comet - Comet is insane with (not)doubles and it should hit the table as soon as you see it. It can end up giving you single click actions that can double up on gaining big credits and/or drawing stupid amounts of cards off of Game Day and Quality Time, or making laundry even more stupidly profitable. Dump your hand for cash one turn, then drop one more money card and draw 5 for one click the next, seems good.

Infiltration - This is your only defense against filthy traps. Even at a one of, you'll see it eventually with 24 cards worth of draw (not considering LARLA and Game Day) and 40 in the deck, and Same Old Thing can do it again if you really need it. Suddenly Mushin No Shin on anything seems like a terrible play.

Power Nap - Seems bad at face value, but when you play them deep into your stack they can become even more efficient than lucky find, if you see them early you can always just toss them to overdraw. Same goes for Game Day when you don't need it. Fill up that heap with doubles for even more gas. Worst case scenario, it's a 2 for 1 click with SCF active.

SMC - Only one because you draw hard enough to not really need the tutor, and space is tight at 40 cards. It's there more to threaten remotes with instant breaker fetching and to shore up gaps in your rig while you're still setting up. If you see it any later than that it's discard fodder or a damage buffer.

Mulligan

Look for a hand of money events and draw, bonus points for Pads or early Crusadotype pieces. If you can't at least be looking at 14-15 credits by the end of turn 2 with a full grip you probably shouldn't keep it

1.1 Edits

Dropped Femme Fatale, Mimic and SMC for Paintbrush, Mongoose and indexing. Indexing gives you a way to multiaccess (sort of), several times off of SOTs if you need it. Paintbrush and Mongoose are just a better breaker suite. Unless the corp can get up three or four sentries on one server they won't be able to shut down your access. Paintbrush also has some added synergy with Battering Ram, letting you barrierize deep ice and possibly get cheaper accesses.

2 comments
2 Apr 2016 gammanet

personally id recommend some sort of more permanent multi-access(like 2 rnd interfaces over indexing and a same old thing), or because they synergize with prepaid, multiple copies of makers eye(Winning on single access sucks)(over indexing, a same old thing and maybe the infiltration meta dependent.) how vital is the second levy?

4 Apr 2016 Kharn the Betrayer

I considered R&D Interfaces, but they're more of a liability against Jinteki, putting you back on square one. Indexing lets you selectively access out of the top five, which is really powerful against access traps and the foreknowledge gives you a little breathing room to sit back and earn while the corp durdles. Infiltration could probably be dropped depending on meta decisions, but I've always found it useful. It's really your only saving grace against high risk bluffs.

The Same Old Things definitely need to be a three of, while you're building up they can double down on Quality Time to get you the cards you need, they enable your crucial indexing runs and at the end of your deck you can spend 4 clicks for 20 credits just before you shuffle up. Having one on standby to recur a lost LARLA can also really save your ass.

2 LARLA is pretty important, you really want to cycle through a third time. The first run through you'll burn a lot of cash setting up and digging, the rest of the game you're just pumping out money. It also matters a lot against net and meat heavy corps, you have a thin deck and you're through it pretty quick, so you don't want to get into a situation where you have limited life remaining. Having a program get trashed by ICE late in the game with no way to get it back can also ruin your day.