Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 01:20:05 -0600 Reply-To: Netrunner Discussion List Sender: Netrunner Discussion List From: Skip Pickle Subject: Corp Deck: Planning Consult Corp Deck: Planning Consultants [Long post warning] Here's our Planning Consultants deck, along with some description of how we made these structural decisions. [My original plan was to build a deck of 60 cards using 10 Planning Consultants. When i found i had only 8, i figured it was time to build my first 45-card corp deck. [Stop laughing.] As a manipulation engine, Planning Consultants works well, but it didn't really give us a plan. There are several things we could do with it; tag-n-bag and speed are pretty obvious, and we also considered going back to our Fooling with Ice strategy. In the end, we went for speed, since our experience with it would give us a benchmark for how Planning alters our working environment. Still, we wanted to keep working on intentionally layering ice. We went with 30% ice, a bit shorter than usual, since Planning would allow us to acquire resources sooner, or at least get them in a functional order. With 15 purchase orders available for ice, we chose 5 "inner-layer", 5 "mid-layer" and 5 "outer-layer" cards. We didn't plan to protect more than three forts (R&D, HQ, and one SDF). Playing with speed, we didn't plan to get a lot of ice on there anyway. So here's what our team came up with. Planning Consultants x 8 Systematic Layoffs x 2 --Speed advancement Management Shake-Up x 2 Project Consultants x 1 Chicago Branch x 2 Efficiency Experts x 1 --Cash Accounts Receivable x 3 Coyote x 2 --Outer layers of ice Fatal Attractor x 1 Ball and Chain x 1 Viral 15 x 1 Riddler x 1 --Middle layers of ice Iceberg x 1 Sandstorm x 1 Fetch 4.0.1 x 1 Twisty Passages x 1 Cinderella x 1 Vacuum Link x 1 --Inner layers of ice Mastiff x 1 Mastermind x 1 Dog Pile x 1 Artificial Security Directors x 1 --Agenda Corporate War (ObHiJoe!) x 3 Corporate Coup x 1 Charity Takeover x 1 Viral Breeding Ground x 1 Fetal AI x 1 Singapore City Grid x 1 Jenny Jett x 1 Weapons Depot x 1 Systematic Layoffs/Management Shake-up/Project Consultants: We are tempted to replace the Project Consultants with Systematic Layoffs. Only two of our agendas have a difficulty greater than 4. Between the Weapons Depot and the Artificial Security Directors, the Project Consultants are too overpriced for this low-key market. Chicago Branch has high priority for installation into the protected SDF. Accounts Receivable: We planned never to be poor, and we haven't been (no matter what you've heard, poverty is highly overrated). We may replace one of these with Credit Consolidation. This does make protecting HQ a higher priority than protecting R&D (a reversal of our usual opening priority), since we don't want to be victimized by Weather-to-Finance and other bit-draining perils that converge on HQ. Frankly, some of the Proteus ice reqqed for the middle layers is here because we wanted to try out the "pay-as-you-go" plan (so far, we are not impressed, and these will probably get replaced with something more solid). Twisty Passages (along with Jenny Jett and Singapore City Grid), however, is in keeping with our intentions to build interlocking ice structures. Fetch is here because it made us feel better to think that we had SOMETHING that could give tags, and there weren't other slots available. We'd throw another Dog Pile in here if we had one. Mastiff, well, Mastiff is just our barbaric yaup; it keeps team morale high. Successfully rezzing a Mastiff (at the right time, that is) is a victory unto itself. Initially, we chose our Agenda with the criteria Black Ops bitgainers (starring Corporate War). Artifical Security Directors was a no-brainer. But then, we confess, we suffered a bit of mission creep. Those Proteus ambush agendas are just so, so,... so US! [On a side note, i think they're terrible tournament cards: IMO, it's the same as planning to give the runner agenda points. Hey, David Mar, remember what i said about Proteus providing the corp with phase cards? Viral Breeding Ground is a definite Phase 3 card for the corp, and you can use it to distract the runner who's in Phase 2; in fact, unless you're in Phase 1, process it out in the open, if you like.] Weapons Depot is helpful, but more importantly, it's a good psyche card. It pushes the runner's panic button. [There it is. i really haven't played it much, but i like playing it, which is a good sign. So far, the only agendas a runner has scored out of it were two consecutive hits on R&D in a game where these were the only two cards that weren't covered by Planning Consultants. And in that game, i'd expanded the deck by 5 cards that were not appropriate to the deck (i'd thrown them in to see how they played); the end result was that i overworked the Consultants. Rob King suggested that a Rescheduler would come in handy, and i may take his suggestion by using it and a Corporate War to replace Viral Breeding Ground and Charity Takeover.] Skipper Pickle spickle@ili.com