Maven Secretary

Diogene 3864

Full Maven setup in 8 turns. This list make Customized Secretary actually work, and better than Self-modifying Code. As usual, this list also run e3 Feedback Implants to make Maven cheaper to use.

Shoutout to Hypescotch for discussing the list with me in details.

Secretary

There is a great many one card of a lot of cards. If you get them early, you have the full suite of breaker outside Maven that could help you poke if you really need it.

The backbone of the deck is Professional Contacts. With the sheer amount of programs (20) and hardware (9), you will usually get 15+ credits from Technical Writer by midgame.

Guru Davinder will allow you to poke trap deck from Jinteki and get City Works Project.

Takobi will let you use your normal breaker to deal more cheaply with certain ices. Once you have a couple of tokens on it, you can use Euler to pass Engram Flush for 2 creds instead of 3 (Maven and e3).

Turntable is really the best shaper console and Stargate should never have fallen out of favor. It saves you a lot of trouble (bye bye Snare! and Obokata Protocol).

Aesop's Pawnshop will let you gain creds from used up Customized Secretary, near completion Daily Casts and much to late in coming Technical Writer or Misdirection, on top of using Harbinger.

Harbinger synergise well to feed Maven and can then be fed to Aesop's Pawnshop after you have enough other programs.

It is fast, for a Maven list. Hayley Kaplan: Universal Scholar will be triggered 90% of the turns, giving you an amazing tempo gain.

Cheers.

8 comments
12 Feb 2021 Baa Ram Wu

Takobi and Maven is a nonbo - takobi doesn’t work on AI

Not sure how secretary and Maven work together here - your award hosted programmes don’t count towards Maven strength yeah?

Probably worth giving a shout out to Giles’s decks which looks like this is based on - netrunnerdb.com

12 Feb 2021 Diogene

@Baa, you are correct. Takobi does not work on AI! I'll modify the text to reflect this. In my test, I used Takobi on the other breaker to break an ice for cheaper than using Maven. Getting token on Takobi is easy once Maven is on the board. And it will still let you deal with surprise Sandburg, provided you ran a few time before.

Customized Secretary work really well actually. Of course the program installed on do not count for Maven. But it does 3 things : 1. It take a bunch of program (you have 20) out of the stack, making the other combo pieces easier to get. 2. It still count as a program for Maven count. 3. Once emptied, it can be fed to Aesop.

If there were less program, it might not be good. But here, Customized Secretary usually get around 3 programs on it. Getting those Hyperdriver, Harbinger and Rezeki become much easier and reliable.

I tried Giles list, which is good. I think there are real benefits to use Customized Secretary and those benefits outclass using SMC. The setup speed is pretty good here, considering the amount of setup required (it is a huge amount, nearly half the deck need to be used to make Maven worth it).

A test could be made using Maven and Datasucker. This could be really powerful, especially if things like Parasite is used with it. Would you take that challenge?

Thank you for your input, it is always valuable. Cheers.

13 Feb 2021 Jtfq99999

Yeah, I see your point here. Nice catch on Customized Secretary! With the amount of Programs in the deck, it saves quite a bit of clicks compared to using Self-modifying Code. If only it can install on the corp turn...

13 Feb 2021 Diogene

@jtfq99999, another card that could be used is Da Vinci, letting you trigger Hayley out of turn for even more speed. But I think Customized Secretary is really better, because there is 20 programs. If there was more spares, Gachapon could be good also.

13 Feb 2021 gilesdavis

Nice list!

I like the Secretary idea, but imo I feel the full suite of reg breakers isn't necessary. The scenarios where Maven isn't feasible are very limited (Sandburg, Helheim Servers, Chiyashi, advanced Hortum, Turing.

I think sticking with a single Engolo is more than sufficient to counter these, possibly keeping the Takobi but I don't feel it's really necessary.

The main weakness I see here is lists that can FA out the last 2 points. If you're playing control the Biotic/Audacity/SanSan finish is too common to not be playing Clot. My suggestion would be to -Euler, -Ika, -Corroder, -Takobi, +Clot, +Engolo, +2c Simulchip.

14 Feb 2021 Diogene

'@gilesdavis', Thanks, it means a lot to me.

While I see your point, less programs would mean a slower setup. Also, Takobi really does make run cheaper but allowing you to use the normal breakers and having to pay 2 creds for the first sub. Econ is not exactly the strong suit of this deck.

Currently it take 8 turns to get Maven working. To prevent rush, without using Clot, it would need to be able to setup in 6 turns in a consistent manner. From the experiment of using Datasucker with Atman, I'm thinking it could work also for Maven.

This does not invalidate your point at all. Engolo is good and Clot can solve the problem every Maven list has in its slow setup. This could be experimented with.

Thanks for your insights. It help push the ideas along.

14 Feb 2021 gilesdavis

Fair points!

Personal experience playing over 60 games with my list, the combo of SMC/Stimhack, and Engolo is often utilised effectively if the corp is obviously rushing super hard. But I usually set up nicely by the time the corp gets to 5-6 points anyway, so you can just Clot and R&D lock from there.

14 Feb 2021 GingercredMan

You might be able to drop the reg breakers and takobi if you replace with multithreaders. You'd be very all in on Maven at that point but could be worth a try.