From:	"Abadia, Teos" <Teos.Abadia@****.COM>
Subject:	Re: Mage Deck and Deck strategy (long)
Date:	Tue, 9 Dec 1997 17:42:56 -0500

> ----------
> From: Mamoulian[SMTP:shine@************.NET]
>
> I run a mage deck and the one thing that has damaged me extremely is
> Riots,
> this will kill runners with a mage deck instantly, how do you counter
> it?
>
>
Bullet Barrier will stop one of the points of damage that Riots inflicts
on each of your runners. Armor Spell can protect the very weak mages.
Because of this, I have thought about having 2 Bullet barrier and one
Armor Spell. Currently I have 2 Armor, one Barrier.

You could also use Luck of the Irish, although its fickle nature (only
works half the time) keeps me from doing this.

You could also fight back. With 4 Wanted! cards, you might get two at
one time, and play them both on one target runner at the same time.
This allows you to turn two of your runners to fight the one target
runner. With an Armor spell and 2 Fireball, you can take out the
strongest enemy runner. Also, cards like Hellhound fit a mage deck and
tend to kill enemy runners. This way, even if the opponent is taking
you out, you are taking them out as well.

Overall, I find the weakness of the deck to be that the individuals are
strong only when in teams and with gear. It takes me a long time to get
my mages and shaman out and with gear. Once that happens, I can roll
rather quickly through challenges, as the multiple skills sleaze a lot
of encounters, and sleep and invisibility allow me to get more out of my
runs.

Another weakness is Mine Field. I often end up running with 5 or six
runners. In a combat deck, you might have 3 or 4 guys that can survive
5 or 6 armor piercing, but this is not likely with a mage deck. You
could add a decker, but I consider that as a violation of the "magical
theme" of the deck. Watcher spirits can help, by telling you what the
opponent's next card will be. If your opponent plays decks with few
challenges, then if the next card is a challenge, and she plays a
challenge on her next turn, you can expect that you know what it is.
This is particularly true if you use Watcher each round. If the person
has a deck that is low on FAME, they may draw for cards more often
(because they save more money) reducing the usefulness of Watcher. If
they have little FAME, they tend to go for 4 Nuyen and a card more
often, making Watcher very useful in determining challenges.

Daniel writes:
I'm curious as to the style of decks you
people are playing. What are they composed of? Themed decks?
Strengths
and weaknesses and stuff like that.

I have longwinded deck names (fits my style):

Decker-Supported Seek and Destroy Deck
This deck has a number of deckers and Fuchi, to generate Nuyen and
Recon. I add the best runners to this deck, calculated with my strange
secret method to determine the most bang/sleaze for my Nuyen. Gear
tends to be cost-effective, like a Katana is (for a low cost of 2, you
can give stomper a lot of damage increase). I have only 2 rockers in the
deck, as Fuchi keeps me going, and my deck is low cost enough to run
even if Fuchi should not come up. One way I test a deck is to see how it
performs if you never get one of the aspects of your deck. I find that
even if no deckers show up, the deck can win. If only deckers show up,
I still have a decent chance because of Fuchi. Deckers and no Fuchi can
spell trouble!

Mage And Shaman Astral Attack Deck.
You've seen this deck, which is solely a theme deck. The above decker
deck is not really a theme, as I throw in whatever works. This deck is
a theme deck, as anything that a Shadowrun mage favors is in, and
anything that conflicts (even challenges) is out.

Firearms and Gunnery Brute Force Deck.
This deck won yet again yesterday, and is currently undefeated, as are
all of the decks I am telling you about. (My friend is likely to win
soon, as he is approaching my level of investing time in strategy). I
made this deck around two cards: Ranger Arms SM-3, and Panther Assault
Cannon. To make those two cards work, I added lots of runners with
Firearms and Gunnery. This made guys like Iron Mike suddenly very cool
(has firearms two and gunnery). I added laser sight to increase my
chances of using Ranger Arms, as only a few runners have firearms 2. I
didn't use chipjacks, as I haven't found them to be helpful. I have 4
rockers, one of which is a Kromagnus. I added 3 or 4 ranger bows (get
to add firearms) and katanas (my big guys have melee).

Rigger Hell on Wheels Deck.
Currently under development, it uses many riggers and a few others that
can generate fame or add muscle or sleaze. I may be trying to do too
much, as I added two Uncle Joes and half my gear is chipjacks to see if
the sleazing helped. I have so far found the chipjacks to be almost
useless, except for the piloting skillsofts. Anyone have tips for using
chipjacks? (Why do you like them, what in your deck lends itself to
having skillsofts?). I have 4 Wanted in my deck, as the drones make a
single individual very lethal!
My favorite part of the deck is that 4 objectives are Robo Plant Revolt,
with almost all my challenges being electrical (RObo plant makes the
challenges repeat on a 5-6 and adds +1 damage to the electrical
challenges with a threat rating; I love seeing Fusion Gate twice in a
row and killing two of my opponent's runners). This makes me very
vulnerable to deckers, so I keep the Wanted in case a decker should
start getting lots of programs out, like Steamroller or Crash.

So, I use a lot of different techniques in building decks. This is my
first CCG, so I don't have prior experience, and I draw heavily from
this list. I approach the game like chess, in a way, in that I try to
know all the rules really well, and then choose an aspect of the rules
to play on my opponent. I am only looking for a thrilling game,
however, not to totally demolish an opponent. I always play to the
level of my opponent, as victory is only sweet if it is earned. My
current opponent is very hard to beat, so I use my best cards. I have
been lucky so far! Against new players I water down my deck or try
techniques I wouldn't usually use, which often teaches me while teaching
the new player.

Not too be misinterpreted, but play with yourself! Assemble two decks
with different strategies, and play both to learn, not to win. You can
learn a lot by your approach if you see yourself making the same
decisions with both sides. I often play this way, and try to use
different approaches and almost have a split-brain personality when
playing two decks by myself. The last advice is that if you start
playing, be prepared for 3 or 4-player games. They are very different,
and I always keep 3-4 extra cards that I don't include in a 2-player
game, but which are critical in multiplayer settings.

Anyone else have ideas and strategies? Please feel free to critique
(constructive criticism preferred) any of my strategies. I know they
can be improved.