From:	"Abadia, Teos" <Teos.Abadia@****.COM>
Subject:	Re: Aztechnology/ Cheap Decks
Date:	Tue, 19 May 1998 10:13:59 -0400

> ----------
> From: Paul D. Ossman[SMTP:guggenheimer@**********.COM]
> I too hate the idea of a game filled with such a wide variety of cards
> and
> options to be reduced to a simple and graceless Stomper rampage. Yet,
> I
> refuse to believe that such decks are truly superior and the only way
> to
> beat them is making house rules forbidding the use of certain cards.
[snip about Aztechnology and more]
> however, if you are
> using a deck that rewards creative combinations of cheap runners and
> corresponding gear, locations, hq, challenges, etc. this would be
> quite
> useful.
>
>
Christophe and Paul (who writes the above) are two old friends of mine
who I play with whenever I can get to North Carolina. I have played my
"Human Ganger Hate Deck" against both of them, with decent results for
me. Further revisions have followed, and I will post the deck
separately.

The idea that Paul writes about works pretty well. Take cheap runners
and give them the right gear so that their stats are on par with thugs,
but so that they are still cheaper. Underworld in particular presents
several ways to do this. Here are a few of the common strategies of
making cheap decks:

1. Black Market with Sisko to prevent arrests and/or lots of Mafia
Runners.
This strategy is useful to reduce the cost of all gear by 2 Nuyen.
Other players can use the location, but this may result in arrests. All
you need is one arrest and you can loose the gear and 3-10 Nuyen for a
Runner, which will cancel the savings they would have earned. Your
Siskos will keep you from fearing arrest. This strategy can make gear
cost only 1 or 2 Nuyen, or you can put very expensive gear in the deck
and with Black Market it becomes 2 or 3 Nuyen gear.

2. Low Cost Gear
Streetline Specials effectively cancel a point of armor for 1 Nuyen, if
you think of it that way. Not bad. Throw in Katanas, armor, Berettas,
and other low cost armor, and you can cheaply make runners much more
capable of inflicting and taking damage, without the need for combos
between runners, gear, and other cards.

3. Selling gear to Leo
I find this to slow down a deck to much and give back very little Nuyen
for a lot of turning. Others might like this strategy, though.

4. Runners that increase stats through other cards for low prices.
Sancho is a great example of this. He only costs 3, but if your deck is
all human, you can make his stats into 6/5! Lone Star Runners and 4
Lone Star HQ can mean that midway through a game your Lone Star Runners
are all +2/+2, with your Lone Star challenges beefed up as well.

5. Cards that mimic the effect of a much tougher set of runners.
Sleep, Duncan, Invisibility, Foxy Roxy, etc. All of these allow you to
sleaze a challenge that would otherwise require several runners to
defeat. By selecting a sleaze strategy (say Foxy and Duncan, or
medium-threat runners and mages with sleep and invisibility) you can
make up for not having a tougher deck).

6. Making the other person's deck expensive.
This has been the subject of numerous threads, and involves either
stealing Nuyen away, preventing Nuyen, or killing off the cards the
other player has paid for. The trouble with this approach is that you
can spend too much time spending your money to keep them poor, and in
the end your deck is very slow, you have no cash flow, and you never can
run. Keys to this approach are choosing a select group of cards that fit
the decks you are likely to face. In a two-player game, you can go
all-out to fight another player, and can combine several approaches (say
Sticky Fingers on Ice Queen, Lone Star Beat Cops, and Shady manager).
If you know the deck you are playing against, you can further tailor
that (like Better Offer or Lone Star Tracker Drone). If you are playing
multiplayer, you can't go all out, as you'll spend too much time keeping
everyone a little weak but you'll never ruin every player and someone
will end up very powerful and win. My favorite is to add a few cards
from this strategy in to any deck that is a cheap guy deck, but choose
ones that are cost effective (Challenges are often the best).

In my next post, I'll post two decks that make use of some of the ideas
here. None of the above is going to work all the time, and it is still
hard (although possible) to defeat a player that is using a "Bug/Thug"
deck. Still, you will have a lot more fun when going up against them,
as your deck will test their skills and yours as your every move is a
part of a strategy to utilize resources more effectively than your
opponents' decks.