It's (Investigative) Media

Gerrark 198

The title is what you say to your opponent when they angrily throw down their cards or give you you a snide comment on Jinteki. This deck is mean. Really mean. I mean, all Valencia decks are, but this one takes it to a new level.

Get out your Prepaid VoicePADS immediately. A hand with one of them or a Wyldside is a keeper. Use your Injects and I've Had Worse to set up that hardware fast. Don't worry about trashing events to get set up. You have 3x Same Old Things and 3x Déjà Vus, and one Levy. You'll be able to get what you need back easy.

Once you've got 1 to 2 PADs set up the fun begins. Many of your events become incredibly cheap, or free. With 11 econ events you'll be swimming in cash. Then you attack.

Blackmail in. En Passant after. Do this as many times as you need to tear their servers apart. Slam into R&D with two mediums or make sure they just plain don't have a scoring server. Or both. Blackmailing into a two iced server and using En Passant twice after is hilarious and monstrously oppressive. The same combo can be done with Run Amok and En Passant, and you will find yourself using it, but be careful. You might actually encounter ice this way, and certain ones will be troublesome. Against Jinteki especially I'd suggest having Eater installed before using Run Amok.

Rebirth is amazing. You'll become Whizzard or Omar in most cases, either annihilating their horizontal board state or having free access to any central server you want. Edward Kim is an amazing choice too, especially if you're against CTM or Sync.

Your match ups against most corps are an almost auto win. Glacier decks, especially Haas, absolutely cannot deal with you. Even if they fire off an ABT just install Crescentus and watch their jaw drop. Kill decks are a joke too. 2x Plascrete, 3x I've Had Worse, and 3x Déjà Vus mean you can survive several BOOM!s easily, unless they do that power shut down combo on you. And if it looks like they might, Hacktivist Meeting or Rumor Mill should put a stop to that bs. Tag punishment decks (CTM pretty much exclusively) are this deck's biggest issue. You've got the flexibility in the form of hardware to bounce back from a Closed Accounts or Hard-Hitting News, but they can still hurt your tempo bad. Your best bet is to install a Medium or two as fast as you can and slam into R&D relentlessly, unless you get Rebirth and some money early, and then screw it, it's asset kill time. Play it by ear; matches against yellow are slightly more touch and go, but you can still win pretty consistently.

This deck is strong. I don't think I've lost with it since I made it, except against CTM, where it's a bit more 60/40 in their favor. Once Misdirection comes out, I'm expecting that ratio to swing in Val's favor big time. If you want an incredibly oppressive, incredibly mean deck where you pretty much never interact with ice while waltzing into every server unopposed, then play this. When your opponent puts their head in their hands, choking back tears of anguish, just remember: it's media.

5 comments
12 Nov 2016 byjarke

Have you considered Salsette Slums as a silver bullet for yellow? Also, why no DDoS? Seems really good in this deck!

13 Nov 2016 Gerrark

@byjarke Without including three of them Salsette Slums tends to show up too late to help, and it is absolutely not worth the deckslots. Plus it's a resource and sometimes this deck needs to go tag me, usually against yellow (of course). Medium and an out of control amount of cash that the corp absolutely cannot match usually works well enough. Hacktivist Meeting is a recent include and does wonders against them also, especially CTM.

DDOS is a great card, but it just doesn't work here. It's not an event, so it's always three creds, and while that's not a problem once the money train is rolling, before that it can be a huge tempo hit. Plus it doesn't have the recursion capabilities that my events do, plus it can be destroyed after being tagged (and let me tell you, that thing is a huge target if it sits out for even a single turn). Maybe it can be made to work, but to be perfectly honest it is not needed at all. Run Amok, Blackmail, and En Passant make every single server porous, period.

23 Nov 2016 BizTheDad

Yeah, this is the beginnings of a good Val/En Passant that I've been looking for. Thanks so much for sharing.

2 Dec 2016 mohaymen

This looks amazing. Do you have trouble finding eater or an early medium?

6 Dec 2016 Gerrark

@mohaymen Eater only exists to back up Crescentus, which is only there on the off chance they fire off an ABT or some such. So I hardly ever need it, and if I did, it's easy to just apply pressure to a different server to keep them distracted until you get it. As for medium, more or less the same answer. It's not a necessity since your remote locking ability is so good (and don't doubt the power of single accesses either), so you usually have it by the time you'd actually need it.