In the third instalment of the Progrunning articles, I’m going to be looking at a Core only Noise deck. I’ve never played Anarch before, and what I’m trying to achieve with this deck is an understanding of how best to manage the fixed-strength icebreakers and how powerful Parasite and Datasucker are. I’ve read about it, I’ve watched videos ranting about it… Now I want to play it to find out.
This deck is currently untested and therefore I don’t have any actual play experiences to relate. That’s intentional, as I want to follow up on this article with a discussion about how I evaluate the play experience, view the cards in the next three packs and how I decide what I cut and what I keep. Essentially using this section of progrunning to also describe the success evaluation criteria and the process for addressing perceived shortfalls.
But first, let’s take a look at the deck I’ve created out of two-Cores for Noise.
The Strategy
Well, this being Noise, I’m aiming to chuck things into the Corp’s bin by playing viruses. And then run that bin with the aim of finding agenda points to score.
Any agendas here?
There’s also a couple of Mediums in there, with the intention of creating a second point of pressure on R&D if the Corp start to defend Archives.
The rest of the deck is built around supporting the breaker suite and providing economy and recursion to the deck. That support is largely in the shape of reducing the strength of ice, so that it falls into the range of the fixed strength Mimic and Yog.0.
I’ll be mulliganing for Djinn and Datasucker tokens, and then hoping that Parasite and some breakers follow that up. A couple of Diesel (there were originally 3, but that damned MWL got in the way!) should help me get to the parts that I need and three Deja Vu let me recycle those ice strength lowering cards to keep it consistent through the whole game.
I am concerned that I don’t have sufficient economy and that a strategic purge of virus counters will be such a tempo hit that it may be difficult to recover. I can have all the cash in the world but a strength 4+ code gate or sentry with any end-the-run will keep me out (so an Archer or a Tollbooth in just the Core).
The Icebreaker Suite
Aaaahhh, core anarch with your breakers of such elegance!
The breaker set is Corroder, Mimic, Yog.0, Datasucker, Parasite, Ice Carver and Crypsis… Okay, okay only four of those are actual breakers, but the point I’m making is that without Datasucker, Parasite (and to a lesser degree Ice Carver) the fixed cost breakers lack a degree of flexibility and therefore utility.
Crypsis was the Diesel replacement, but if I can play it with a Grimoire out it won’t be quite as slow as normal.
So, why didn’t I play Wyrm?
It’s on the cover of the box, but not in many decks…
Frankly there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, can I manage virus tokens effectively? Secondly, can I remember all the triggers?
There’s nothing more to it than that and I’m pretty interested to see whether there’s enough depth to this pretty single-minded strategy of parasite / datasucker etc to be anywhere near competitive.
What the Future Might Hold
What am I excited about for this deck in the first three APs?
Imp looks very interesting; a Virus that helps put stuff in the bin? What’s not to like!
Vamp and Liberated Accounts will need me to understand the economy of the deck before I commit. I know that Vamp has stood the test of time in various builds, but I’m uncertain how it would play here… Am I going to be rich enough? Or more accurately, am I going to be able to operate more effectively on lower cash than the Corp?
Nerve Agent, however, does excite me. I want to include that to see whether it’s as effective as I think it should be.
As ever, comments, feedback, questions welcome here or in the facebook page!