Megacorp draft at Rabblemaster Games

So we ran one of these. Turnout sucked, because it was only the store regulars who bothered to show up for it, but those who took the time to show up had a great time, and we had more than a few interesting matches. 

I previously wrote a guide to drafting Megacorp, after my first experience going 0-3 with a deck full of unplayable cards. We'll now take a look at how well I followed my own advice, and compare my deck with the draft winner's deck - and yes, it wasn't me this time either, although I put up a respectable 2-1 record - to see what was good, bad and indifferent about each of the decks and corresponding card choices.

First, a minor draft run-down, featuring the picks of yours truly.

Boom! AHAHAHAHA...wait, it costs HOW
much? It's not usable immediately either
This isn't where you want to be in draft!

Pack 1, pick 1: a choice between Thermonuclear Warhead and Corp Advisor...well, you'll notice the decklist doesn't include a Thermonuclear Warhead. I of course took the Corp Advisor with an utter lack of ceremony, because card advantage is great, and passed the pack onto Jaydn on the left. Amri, sitting opposite, has taken a founder for his first pick - this could spell disaster, if it's the virtually un-killable Azrielle or the searching machine Luke Seti. But I'll have to wait and see during our matchup!

Pack 1, pick 2: a choice between Thermonuclear Warhead, wisely overlooked by Jack sitting on my right, and Kickback - I'll take the cheap unethical removal over the almost-unplayable explosion almost every time; this one was no exception.

Pack 1, pick 3: Anubian Tracker vs. any number of other cards and I'm almost always going to take the Tracker. Dash Dingo is still a ridiculous card, despite the draft-searching being far less than the constructed, and while it's a little early in the process to hate-draft, if that founder Amri opened is Luke Seti, his deck will approach unbeatable with a Tracker alongside Seti, while if I have a tracker in play opposing Luke, that bodes well for my chances in the match. Any of my own search will push it over the top. Dingo is mine!

Hentai.jpg

Pack, 1, pick 4: Here I've taken a Tentacle Symbiote. This isn't a card I've discussed previously, as much of my writing has been constructed-based and it's not really a constructed-quality card, but it can be a great piece of removal if bonded to an appropriate character. The card alters the stats of what it is bonded to, -1 EQ and +1 BQ, and gives it the ability to engage in order to 'fight' an opposing character, i.e. each deals damage equal to any given stat to the other, and the other hits back. Similarly to Magic, this sort of ability tends to be relegated to limited play, but it is still a potent ability, and obviously here it needs to be played on a high-BQ character, so I'm leaning towards Raama for my draft founder, but it's still early - The Glass Man would suit the current card pool just as well, and would trigger Dash Dingo as he searches for a Kickback. Founder choice may become clearer as the draft goes on, but it's something to keep in mind at all times.

In general, my advice for founder choice, if you don't open your own, is:

1) Illithis, Gnost Prophet if your deck includes two or more #psychic #assault cards

2) The Glass Man if your deck includes two or more #moral #assault cards

3) Heracles, Senior Counsel if your deck is playing a long, defensive game

4) otherwise Raama, Incarnate Hierarch for survivability purposes

The draft continued in this vein, with expensive cards being overlooked in favour of cheap playable characters and removal. That's not to say, however, that all the expensive cards were ignored. I picked up one of those explosions pick six, after all the good cards in the pack were gone, and scrounged a late Tidal Wave out of pack 3. Pack 2 saw an Acrobatic Takedown - a great way for melee characters, such as Anubian Tracker, to increase their effectiveness - come across my picks, plus a Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier, which is one of the better weapons in draft, because of the splash damage effect. Jack opened a founder in pack two, so there will likely be two powerful decks going around to deal with, but I didn't note any other major screaming or outpourings of happiness, so hopefully there aren't too many other "bombs" floating around. But, the guys might just have great poker faces - it's hard to tell

Here's the second-place decklist, mine:

Generically powerful, but with only minor
synergy with the rest of the deck, Raamaa
was my founder of choice for this draft

1x Tentacle Symbiote

2x Kickback

1x Tidal Wave

1x Acrobatic Takedown

1x Grow Wings

1x Incarnate Neonate

1x Gleeful Seduction

1x Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier

1x Natural Death

1x Tech Vassal

2x Corp Advisor

1x Incarnate Inheritor

1x Corp Citizen

1x Kurzweil Cultist

1x Bomber Drone

1x Harborstreet Punks

1x Attack of Opportunity

1x Anubian Tracker

Here's the first place decklist - Amri's:

This was the founder Amri opened. Bad
news for the rest of the drafters; she's an
utter "bomb rare" that takes over games

1x Tactical Vassal

1x Corp Consultant

1x Student Protestors

1x Horizon Riot Control Squad

2x Gnost Layman

1x Incarnate Neonate

2x Blue Chip Shares

1x Incarnate Bond

1x Crowdfunding

3x Critical hit

1x Horizon Advanced Restraints

1x Jericho Retrofit Ranger XIII

1x Jericho Retrofit SY-I Slinger

1x Guided Munitions

1x Public Holiday

1x Lunasys Battle Tank MK1

The founder he opened wasn't Luke Seti, but rather the tough-as-a-box-of-rocks Chi, Corp Socialite - and it appears to have shaped his draft choices along the way. It also makes me glad to have picked up the Anubian Tracker and two Corp Advisors, as they would have made the deck unstoppable...even more so. Amri clearly understands the importance of low-cost threats when drafting Megacorp; like my draft offering, his deck is filled with efficient characters like Student Protestors, Incarnate Neonate, Gnost Layman and the tough-to-combat Horizon Riot Control Squad, who - if you'll recall my last article - should be a very high pick in draft because it is almost impossible to kill when it goes on the offensive. But the differences in the other cards make the two decks play very differently. I'll outline this a bit for you below.

My deck, despite my advice last time, is still quite removal-heavy. This is the way I like to play constructed - heavy on answers, light on threats - and it always bleeds through to my draft play. Here the deck includes 2x Kickback, Tentacle Symbiote, Gleeful Seduction, Natural Death and Tidal Wave; 30% removal to 70% other cards is probably far too high a ratio for any sort of draft. Obviously a bit of a weakness I need to work on, but in this case, it directs the style of play for my deck; play the threats down, remove your opponent's problem characters, and defeat their business with whatever characters remain after the dust settles. The added draw of Corp Advisor should help keep the hand full, so I have those answers and characters when I need them.

Amri's deck is quite different. His characters aren't meant to win the game for him, but rather buy him time to get his win-condition online, because this is a deck with a plan. The scary thing, however, is that he doesn't really require a lot of time! The deck can win as early as the second turn thanks to the ridiculous stats of Chi, Corp Socialite - effectively, she's 4/4/4/4 if you have any IQ free to pay for her ability. His goal is to boost Chi's EQ stat to five, preferably on the first turn, by attacking basically anything. On the next turn, Chi will challenge the opposing business, which is usually engaged from paying trait costs on the opponent's first turn, and score a Critical Hit for ten damage.

He certainly got me with it in the final match!

Stops retaliation. Great stats/cost ratio.
An unchecked Horizon Riot Control Squad
can just straight-up take over games

The rest of his deck is built around this game-plan. If he can't rip off a turn-two win, the Horizon Riot Control Squad can force the opposing business to engage; the two guns are there so he can equip one to Chi, activate Guided Munitions, and make an unblockable attack in the late-game; he's got two dead drop corp lackeys to deliver either the weapons or ammunition when required - but in a pinch they can also find Horizon Advanced Restraints, which can keep a character locked down to take double damage from a Critical Hit. Blue Chip Shares and Incarnate Bond help him fund these plays, rather than waiting on the resource deck's slowly growing cashflow. Main-deck resource generation is fantastic in draft; the rate provided by one low-level consumer per turn isn't usually enough to fuel powerful plays for more than a turn or two

The strength of a deck with a game-plan, rather than just a collection of generically good cards, cannot be overstated. My deck is close to what a "good" draft deck in Megacorp should turn out like - but it lost (and horribly) to the single-minded focus of Amri's deck, powered by Chi, Corp Socialite and three Critical Hits. He deserved his top finish, and is looking to establish himself on the charts as one of the best players of Megacorp in the state!

Keep your eyes on Rabblemaster Games for more draft reports and upcoming constructed and draft tournaments as we try to drive Megacorp's popularity up to the point where it takes on a life of its own. Give it a shot today - the boss will be more than happy to take you through a few games in-store.

Drafting Megacorp

There are more than a few differences between the draft environment of Megacorp compared to the constructed environment, and again more differences between drafting Megacorp and drafting other collectable card games. We'll explore this for a bit.

First, let's go over the basic rules for Megacorp drafting. Each player opens three packs in total - seeing 36 cards - from these cards, they build a 20-card deck. The resource deck is a mere ten cards, and can only contain basic consumers or drafted resource cards. Compare this to Magic, where you choose 45 cards and play between 22 and 24 of them. This difference in numbers means we only reject a few cards out of our final pool, so each pick counts for far more. We can't waste them on unlikely possibilities or expensive rares that we have no chance of actually playing; see below.

In constructed Megacorp, there is the potential to make a large stack of money using combinations of cards like Factory and Sea, Barracks and military characters, a mech suit and Incarnate Donor, and to use this money to fuel large, gorilla-style, board dominating plays. You cannot do this in Megacorp draft - fundamentals are everything! You'll need to rely on your consumers to provide a steadily increasing small cashflow, protect them from enemy attacks, and rely on early-drop characters to obtain board advantage. This changes our evaluation of so many cards compared to our evaluation for constructed that it isn't funny. Here's a few examples of cards that are outstanding in constructed Megacorp, but ones you shouldn't be looking twice at for drafting.

Don't even think about running Battle Angel in draft. In constructed she does two things; dead drops a ton of equipment onto the field for you to win the game with, e.g. a Horizon Industries Mining Suit, Vulcan Cannon, and Guided Munitions; or finds and equips an Angel Carapace, then clears the opposing board with a multi-target weapon spray. Firstly, the odds that you'll open both Battle Angel and Carapace are insanely low, and second, you're unlikely to be able to even afford to play her. Draft cashflow usually tops out at 3-4 million per phase, which doesn't even cover the upkeep cost for a single turn. Your only real chance to play her is going to be on turn 1 - then you'll be divesting her at end of turn because you can't pay the upkeep cost, and your opponent will buy her out of your open market to dead drop their own equipment onto the board. Too expensive and a giant liability to boot - not the sort of card to be running in a limited format, except in very specific circumstances

Dash Dingo won't leave your opponent in deep didgeridoo like he does in constructed; deck searching simply isn't as common in draft. Luke Seti isn't available as a founder for draft play if you're GMO-minded, and Corp Dead Drop decks won't be starting their list with 4x Corp Executive, 2x Maxim Glazhov, 2x Corp Executive like the lists I like to play do. But he still has his advantages, and is great to run if you're running Illithis or The Glass Man, with their regular and reliable search effects. Two of the important advantages possessed by Dash here are cost and stat distribution.

Consumer combat is far more common in draft than constructed - frequently, if you're ahead on the board, you can maintain that position by crippling your opponent's cash flow - and the Dingo's stat distribution is a healthy 2/1/2/2, keeping him alive during most consumer challenges. But his cost is notable; not so much the $3m, but the fact that he doesn't have a trait cost involved to play him.

Whether or not you are paying trait costs turns out to be one of the most important facets of Megacorp drafting. Damage is at a relatively low level compared to constructed play, which means blocking attacks with your business is a far more viable defensive tactic - you will want to leave it un-engaged where possible. The other reason it is important is because of the restriction on consumers. You can only run basic consumers unless you drafted other resource cards, and all basic consumers have a trait cost associated with them. Because cashflow is so important, you will be buying that basic consumer every turn, so you will be engaging something already for a trait cost, and may not be able to pay additional trait costs, especially if they are a different type to the consumer you just bought - and of course, you still want to develop your board position.

Characters without trait costs should definitely be taken early in your draft picks, and characters with high trait costs go down in value a little.

The absolute pinnacle of draft removal:
cheap cost and able to destroy multiple
low-IQ targets (i.e. everything)            

The same trait cost restriction applies for removal cards, and evaluation of removal in draft changes accordingly. Kidnapping is one of the best constructed removal cards, and you may think that given the tight money situation in Megacorp draft, that it would be great here as well. Instead it is merely good, because you frequently have to take an entire turn off to pay the trait costs involved in playing it. Players also have a smaller field in draft, so efficiency of removal takes a backseat to the ability to hit multiple targets; Telekinetic Slash, Mindfire and Political Corruption all increase in value; Kickback and Kidnapping are a little worse. Assassination Contract is still great, however, because of its permanency. Remember, also, when drafting removal cards that some work better with certain founders than others do. Psionic Scream and Telekinetic Slash can be found by the search ability of Illithis, Gnost Prophet - but Character Assassination isn't so easy to locate. The Glass Man, of course, does a great job of finding and re-using #unethical removal, but as we just discussed, that removal does lose some of its value in draft.

Here are some other cards that make a huge leap upwards in the draft pick order, and a few more that become far worse:

Still good - but you want
to prioritise obtaining a
mech suit to re-use the
deploy effect. Upkeep 
is markedly worse in   
Megacorp draft. 7/10    

First-pick quality; immune
to two types of damage,
can't be blocked, cheap,
and able to avoid removal
or lethal attacks at a price
9/10

The very definition of   
a bomb uncommon,     
punishing over-spending
early, and a heavy hitter
in the late-game. But not
cheap; acts more like a
one-shot effect in draft.
 8/10

Great stats for cost; even
though it includes a trait,
it's only a single one, and
he doesn't die to combat
when attacking. 8/10      

Great stats for cost, plus no
traits to pay. Good card for
any deck, just like Incarnate
Neonate and Gnost Layman
7/10 - a high pick

Its greatest advantage, 
untargetability, is not   
applicable in most drafts.
Still immune to two types
of attack, but with a high
trait cost, now filler: 5/10

Expensive, and you're not
likely to have both it, and
the ability to crew it, at
the same time. Almost 
always a poor choice: 1/10

Great stats for cost (are
we sensing a theme in
my writing here?) and
potential for combat 
tricks make all three
martial artist cards high
picks. 7/10 and rising if
you have good targets

Stats are a bit lackluster
and the ability isn't as
quite as broken when
you can only get a single
basic consumer out; not
as good as in constructed
6/10
 

Megacorp draft has more of the feel of managing a small business than running a world-spanning corporation; you need to be obtaining maximum value for money out of every single asset and event. One of the things that can hurt you the most is a dead card or two in your hand. Cheap, fighting assets is where you want to be in Megacorp draft, not $6m luxuries like Corporate Jet.

The one thing you can't forget about is founder choice. In draft, only the four starter deck founders are playable unless you open one of your own; here's a quick run-down on the advantages and disadvantages of each.

The Glass Man
Pros: offering a repeatable search effect and re-use of #unethical removal, Aohu's criminal mastermind is a card advantage machine
Cons: low BQ stat, one of the more common traits to challenge on in draft, frequently needs protection

Illithis, Gnost Prophet
Pros: a repeatable search effect, positive interaction with #psionic removal and cards referring to Magellan Cells, strong EQ stat
Cons: low IQ stat and several strong cards are immune to her EQ damage; she isn't a fighting founder by any stretch
Heracles, Senior Counsel
Pros: high MQ stat; the ability to counter #unethical removal or game-winning cards like Political Corruption, he's a strong defensive founder
Cons: low EQ stat, does not offer a repeatable search effect, several strong cards are immune to his MQ damage

Raamaa, Incarnate Hierarch
Pros: high BQ stat, one of the more common traits to challenge on in draft, difficult to kill due to regeneration and stats - they're all a minimum of 2, positive interaction with Life Insurance Policy, 
Cons: does not offer a repeatable search effect;

A couple of things to note about the starting founders; none of them are pure fighting machines. We don't have access to the heavy-hitting search ability of Luke Seti, the chunky stats of Chi, Corp Socialite or the action-based-and-difficult-to-kill founders Azrielle and Xu Huang, Gnost Monk. Don't expect to throw The Glass Man or Illithis, Gnost Prophet straight into combat - you may be better off using their search ability.

I hope this has given you all some insight on how to pick in your next Megacorp draft. Don't forget that Rabblemaster Games is holding them regularly; keep an eye on our Facebook events page and join in on the next one!

Building a Military deck in Megacorp

Normally, I recommend building around the Corp/Donor core if you want a deck that produces a fair amount of cash flow. But there's plenty of other financial engines available in the core set, some of which take less space up and are more versatile, some riskier but with the potential for a huge payoff. We're going to take a look at one of these strategies now, what you'll need to do in order to make it work, what other cards will prove beneficial to run, and what to avoid using in the same deck.

Home away from home   

Armed and dangerous,
and finds his own     
ammunition to boot!  
  

The card we are looking at to generate a big stack of money from is Barracks, on the left. Each Barracks has the potential to generate up to $6m per cashflow phase - the equivalent of six consumers - but there are obviously a few risks involved playing such a card. First; it's vulnerable - a single point of demolisher damage can take it out, along with the three guys you have garrisoned inside. You'll need to ensure that you have the BQ resources spare to clear the building when it is targeted for attack! Second, unlike a consumer, it does nothing by itself - making it a little unreliable when it comes to early cash generation. We need to ensure we can get it out of the resource deck to start with, then we need at least two #military characters inside meaning we need to buy enough time to draw them and then generate the game-winning cash flow it can provide

Now, the first questions is "why do we even want to play a military deck?" There's a few reasons, but the main one is quite simply that you get to bring the big guns. Cyberpunk worlds are filled with exotic weaponry, and we play #military because we want to wield some of that. In Megacorp, however, the big guns do not come cheap; the awesome cash flow of Barracks helps you pay for the $5m upkeep on Battle Angel, $3m upkeep on the Lunasys Battle Tank MK1, $2m upkeep on...well, you get the idea. If you want competent soldiers and heavy weapons like the real military, you'll have to pay through the nose like the real military.

Heavily armed and, yes   
incredibly dangerous          

Another reason to run a military deck is that a fair number of the cards have the #gun keyword. This allows you to power up attacks very cheaply through use of the ammunition cards Guided Munitions (precision) and Armor-Piercing Ammunition (penetrator) without also having to find weapons for your characters. Normally, ammo isn't that great, but when all your characters are armed, one piece of ammunition can enhance any part of the battalion.

So in order to guarantee maximum cash generation from your barracks, you'll need to ensure the main deck has a large concentration of #military characters. If the Barracks cards are only providing you with $2m of income per accounting step, you may as well be running consumers. There's a few interesting cards with the #military keyword, but you can't overload on them - you won't be able to avoid running "grunts" in the list. Every army has its privates, after all, squads aren't made solely of sergeants and captains. Fortunately, however, the deck won't need to run Blue Chip Shares or any other maindeck resource generation cards - the military guys will do that for us - which will also increase the defensive capabilities of the deck. We want to be running the below military cards:

3-4 NSA Member

3-4 Merc Rapid Response Team

2 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando

1 Michael Basa, Data Obfuscator

1-2 Battle Angel

This comprises approximately 30% of our deck - and we draw 12.5% of our deck in our opening hand. Chances are we'll have a military character in there, maybe two. For grunts, we have two choices; NSA Member is preferred to HLF Soldier. We don't want to run both here, as the opponent can wipe several of our military clean off the board simply by moving them around. The reason behind the choice is simple - HLF Soldier can't stand next to Cyborg cards, while NSA Member isn't quite as discriminatory. And yes, we will be playing #corp cards alongside our #military characters. Merc Rapid Response Team has a heavy MQ cost like many other Corp cards, Maxim Glazhov already has the Dead Drop 4 ability, and what good is the military without a means to get their heavy equipment onto the battlefield alongside them?

We'll also want to be running a few ways to increase the survivability of our characters; nothing is better than a couple of #mech suits to do that - and nothing is better at locating those than cards with Dead Drop - plus, we can Drop the ammunition required to power our military crew up.

So, these cards are in:

4 Corp Executive

4 Corp Advisor

1-2 Corp Consultant

1-2 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit

1-2 Avatar Industries Mining Suit

1 Jump Jets

1 Vulcan Cannon

1 Armor-Piercing Ammunition

1 Guided Munitions

Refer to our earlier article on "the Corp/Donor core" as to why the Avatar Industries products are some of the most effective on the market, but as a quick reminder, they 1) allow re-use of "on deploy" triggers, 2) save your characters from targeted removal, 3) are immune to EQ and MQ attacks, and 4) don't count as characters. Barracks has the same property of re-using deployment triggers - but unlike the Avatar Industries suits, can't re-use the on-deploy trigger of Corp Executive or Corp Advisor. Despite this, running the maximum number of Corp Advisor is essential; by drawing a card on deployment, we are essentially running a 36-card deck, which takes our concentration of #military cards to 12/36, or 33%, up from 12/40 - a not-insignificant increase in our ability to locate two of them early.

Let's take a moment to review the inclusion of Merc Rapid Response Team. Only average statistics, but being able to be deployed at instant speed is a very powerful ability, able to save a more important character with a surprise block. It allows you to add an extra character to your Barracks at the end of your opponent's turn, immediately refunding the cost of deploying it. Due to a very poor selection of #military #action cards, the search ability isn't anywhere near as potent as the Dead Drop cards, but it can find Acrobatic Takedown, a useful card to cancel an opposing attack and buy a turn's time while that character can't disengage, allowing more time to set-up a Barracks or two.

Because we are running all these powerful Military cards, there are a few final inclusions that we probably shouldn't go without. Battle Angel Carapace is ideal alongside her namesake - although we don't want to run more than one - and our characters will have no trouble crewing the Lunasys Battle Tank MK1

In the resource deck, we want 4 Barracks, 2-3 Lake or Mangrove, 2 Driverless Car Fleet, 1-2 Purchase Order, and the rest should be Selfish Consumers. Because we want an early Barracks, we need to maximise our chance of hitting one. The two fleets can be dead dropped out of the resource deck, and the Sea further reduces the size of it, until our chances of hitting a Barracks are 25% or more on each buy from the resource deck. We'll be purchasing 3 cards a turn from this deck, so it won't take us long to find one and start getting that juicy cash flowing in.

Our "military core" therefore comprises 9 resource deck cards and a full thirty main deck cards - there isn't much room for customisation. The core includes several powerful attackers and plenty of ways to push damage through, but doesn't include removal or protection. That's likely what we're going to fill the rest of our deck with.

Who else could afford a pocket full of
Battle Angels and have a tank "spare"

Lore-wise, think about which founder is the most likely to have their own privately funded army.

It's got to be The Glass Man; criminal mastermind of Aohu - and he's the perfect choice for most military decks. Through the use of Glass Man's Gambit, he can jump-start your first Barracks with a quick infusion of illegally obtained cash resources, and his ability to search for and re-use removal cards will make up for the lack of available space in the deck list.

He's fragile, but the defensive capabilities of the military core should help offset that weakness, and should he happen to head to the open market, his $5m price tag is a drop in the ocean for a multiple Barracks military machine cranking out twice that per turn.

So, here's a complete deck list for your perusal and replication later on:

The Glass Man's Private Army

Resource Deck

2 Purchase Order

2 Driverless Car Fleet

4 Barracks

2 Mangrove

10 Selfish Consumers

Main Deck

4 Corp Advisor

1 Corp Consultant

3 Merc Rapid Response Team

3 NSA (Neo-Sapien Army) Member

4 Corp Executive

1 Michael Basa, Data Obfuscator

2 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando

2 Battle Angel

1 Lunasys Battle Tank MK1

1 Battle Angel Carapace

1 Jump Jets

1 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit

1 Avatar Industries Mining Suit

1 Vulcan Cannon

1 Armor-Piercing Ammunition

1 Guided Munitions

1 Glass Man's Gambit

2 Acrobatic Takedown

2 Kidnapping

1 Political Corruption

1 Rampant Bribery

2 Assasination Contract

1 Kickback

2 Misdirection

Those interested in a slightly more "ethical" exercise of military might may enjoy making the below changes:

-1 The Glass Man

-1 Glass Man's Gambit

-2 Kidnapping

-1 Political Corruption

-1 Rampant Bribery

-1 Kickback

-2 Misdirection

-1 Battle Angel

+1 Chi, Corp Socialite

+1 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit

+1 Avatar Industries Mining Suit

+1 Vulcan Cannon

+2 Railgun Lunasys MK6

+2 Railgun Strike

+2 Mech Pilot Training

See what other awesome strategies you can discover in Megacorp for making large piles of cash; you'll need to, in order to out-compete your opponent in a world where business is war. Here's a few ideas for you to give a shot.

1) Combine the pollution-generating cashflow ability of Factory with the pollution-removal ability of Sea; the ocean's resources will run out long after your last opponents are ground into the dust

2) Combine the board-flooding ability of Incarnate Donor, Blue Chip Shares and Driverless Car Fleet to surround the physically weak Internet Access Node, protecting it from attack and doubling the cashflow of all surrounding cards

3) Abuse the re-deploy function of vehicles to repeatedly purchase low-cost consumers from the resource deck via Incarnate Donor, as in the Corp-Donor core.

4) a founder such as Chi, Corp Socialite combined with cards like Rampage and Siren. Chi brings additional wealth when she declares a challenge - what better way is there to raise a few dollars by increasing the number of challenges per turn?

Business is war; never lose sight of how you plan to fund yours!

Building around the Corp/Donor Core

The Megacorp TCG is fast becoming one of my favourite games, but some aspects of the game appear to drive gameplay very strongly in a certain direction. In Megacorp, every card has the ability to make some trait resources - and can be used immediately upon deployment - and direct card draw is very limited. These two properties of the game are immutable, and suggest a play style around deploying as many resources to the board as possible.

Deploy extra resources
(at instant speed!)       

Search up lots of extra cards!

Search up extra cards!

While this play style may not appeal to all players, it may be necessary to at least partially adopt it due to its inherent power level. Of course, every business needs assets to operate, and in Megacorp, your cash-at-bank, business and founder are the only ones you begin with - and that cash does not last forever! In a world where business is war, if you want your business to grow, you'll need assets that make cash flow and resources for you, and give you the ability to play other cards - and you probably want them quickly, before the opposing businesses can obtain an equivalent amount!

Of course, it would also help if our opponent would oblige by not destroying these resources, but let's be realistic here; that's unlikely to happen. This necessitates playing cards that can protect our extended board state; either reactively, by dealing with the opponent's cards as they attack or are deployed, or proactively, by removing their threatening cards before they become a problem.

I've played trading card games for twenty two years now, and as discussed in several previous articles on this blog, they are all resource limited in several ways. Let's go over the ways Megacorp is resource limited:

1) One card drawn per turn - common with most card games, especially trading card games, this rule is the biggest controller of the pace of every game it is included in.

2) One card from the resource deck per turn - a rule shared with Pokemon and Magic: the Gathering, this rule is what stops the most powerful cards being played and the most devastating attacks happening in the early turns of the game

3) The money restriction - a realistic simulation of actual business, where cash flow is required to continue playing cards.

4) Cards are purchased in the buy phase

5) Damage happens in the challenge phase

6) Cards that make cashflow come from the resource deck.

In trading card games, I'll say it again, RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN AND THE BEST DECKS BREAK THE MOST RULES  but despite this, two other rules have consistently held true since trading card games began: 1) the best removal cards are either the cheapest or the most permanent - preferably both - and 2) despite rule #1, the colour/type of removal you play is still dictated by the colour/type of permanent cards you play.

In addition to breaking the most rules, the most powerful decks are usually built around what is commonly known as either a 'core' or an 'engine' - similar terms, in theory, but not on the same scale.

We'll define an engine as a card, or group of cards, designed to deplete one resource and advantageously convert it into another. Yawgmoth's Bargain and Necropotence, cards in Magic: the Gathering that have been banned in several formats, are both single-card engines that allow you to pay one life to draw an additional card - a particularly strong resource conversion rate. Generally, a card is worth more than a point of damage is - and if every card did at least 2 damage, you wouldn't hesitate to pay half your life on the spot wherever possible.

A core, by contrast, consists of many more cards than an engine, and is designed to support the strategy of an entire deck. For example, the Yugioh "Trickstar" deck has a core of 3x Trickstar Light Stage, 3x Trickstar Candina, 3x Trickstar Reincarnation, 3x Trickstar Lycoris, 1x Trickstar Lilybell, 3x Terraforming - thirteen out of forty cards. The core allows the deck to extend its plays, go up cards in hand, and combine in various ways to deal damage. 

Any sort of deck with a "reanimation from the graveyard" strategy - usually a very good rule-breaking strategy, allowing strong end-game creatures to be brought onto the board early - is normally run from a core; it will consist of a) reanimation cards, b) your main reanimation targets, and the important part of the deck; c-i) ways to get reanimation targets from the deck to the graveyard and/or c-ii) ways to get reanimation targets from the hand into the graveyard, in case you draw them in your opening hand. Obviously decks will include more cards - the above reanimator core would be supplemented by secondary reanimation targets (usually disruptive ones, targeted to the specific metagame expected in a given event) and additional sources of card draw to find more reanimation targets or spells; cards to stop the opponent destroying your reanimated creatures, and ways to deal with your opponent's problem permanents. The key here is that the core of the deck remains static, and other cards are moved in around it depending on what matchups or problems are expected.

Now, the Megacorp TCG still has quite a small card pool in comparison to Yugioh, Magic and Pokemon. In the author's opinion, one of the strongest deck cores available in the game is provided by the below list of cards; it can be used to support several strategies, plays as many inherently powerful cards as possible, and breaks many of the game's basic rules. I'll discuss the use of the cards and advantages of building a deck around this core, hereafter referred to as the Corp/Donor core, but first, here it is:

The raw power behind the Corp/Donor
engine, with massive stats for his cost;
the Dead Drop 4 ability extends your
board by +2 cards early, and finds the
heavy weaponry in the late-game, which
he has no trouble wielding by himself!

Resource deck

2 Driverless Car Fleet

1 Purchase Order

Main Deck
4 Corp Executive
2 Corp Consultant
4 Incarnate Donor
3-4 Corp Advisor
2 Anubian Tracker
1 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando
3-4 Kidnapping
2-3 Assasination Contract
1 Jump Jets
1-2 Avatar Industries Mining Suit
1 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit
1 Vulcan Cannon
2 Misdirection
2 Blue Chip Shares
29-33 cards main deck, 3 cards resource deck

Yes, this fixes 29 out of 40 cards in stone, and the majority of the resource deck then becomes fixed in order to play these cards -it has some specific resource requirements - but this is fine because the cards are some of the absolute best at what they do. I'll explain the choices and some reasoning below.

God, basically. Let's be real here; her
generosity is your opponent's downfall

4 Incarnate Donor
2 Driverless Car Fleet
Business is expensive - we need a way to obtain resources from the resource deck at a much greater rate than the game's 'once per turn' restriction. As vehicles and equipment are much more easily found than characters in the Corp/Donor core, characters are necessary for resource generation and combat, and for another reason discussed below we need to max out numbers of Incarnate Donor. But I can't say enough about the versatility of Driverless Car Fleet - aside from being easily searched out, it is immune to attacks on MQ and EQ, and the bond/unbond ability is sometimes relevant. But the most important thing is the ability to deploy a card from the resource deck outside of the buy phase, allowing you to avoid exposing your new consumers to the opponent's attacks before they can give you cashflow, or find a surprise blocker to protect an important character from attack. There's virtually no cost to playing the card; at a mere $2m and no trait cost, it pays for itself in a turn or two and doesn't take up valuable main deck space.

1-2 Avatar Industries Mining Suit

"Industrial vehicle" my f***ing eye, this
thing hits like a truck, carries weapon
mountings like a tank, and penetrates
the strongest of defensive setups     

1-2 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit
1 Jump Jets

I cannot offer enough praise to Avatar Industries for the design of their "industrial" vehicles. The Mining Suit is the more powerful of the two, but the Mariner Suit is easier to bring out from the deck, and can provide the bonus of a secure location to place characters where they cannot be targeted. They offer a discerning business operator the following advantages, many of which provide a massive survivability increase to your entire network:
1) for the low cost of $1m, you can remove a character from out of the way of a lethal attack or event and bond it to the vehicle.
2) for an even lower cost of 1BQ, you can redeploy a bonded character to any space, which both re-triggers their 'on-deploy' effect, stopping them from being destroyed if the #mech would be, and potentially saving cards from being orphaned at end of turn. This is the key to the financial viability of this deck core - the reuse of Incarnate Donor's effect.
3) similar to Driverless Car Fleet, both #mech vehicles are immune to MQ and EQ attacks
4) Neither of the #mech vehicles count as characters; cards that affect characters will not affect them, and they can be found via Dead Drop searches

5) Bonding Jump Jets to a #mech is essentially the same as bonding them to every character in your network - a massive mobility increase.

4 Corp Executive
2 Corp Consultant
1 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando
1-2 Purchase Order

With the massive advantages provided by Driverless Car Fleet and re-use of Incarnate Donor via the mech suits, we are going to want ways to find these cards and get them onto the board as soon as possible.

The 4x Corp Executive with Dead Drop 4 is essential to bring two cards out in the early game, so we are running five of these effects - Maxim Glazhov provides that extra bit of power against opposing buildings as a bonus. Two additional Corp Consultant increases our chance of having at least one Dead Drop card in our opening hand, which is essential to the smooth running of a deck based around this core, and Purchase Order is the deck's backup search. Finding what you need is the key to making early progress building your business.

3-4 Corp Advisor
This is the only raw card draw in the game. If you are playing cards with MQ costs, such as Corp cards, and not running this card, you are doing it wrong. Sorry.

2 Dash Dingo
Anubian Tracker is the value behind this engine, triggering when any player searches any deck.  We'll discuss founder choice for this core later, but one in particular synergises very nicely with Dash here. He grants a deck that regularly searches the ability to deal damage outside the challenge phase of the turn; in this core, that's a huge amount of added value - and on top of that, he's a direct counter to certain founders.

3-4 Kidnapping

Permanent removal; but strangely, not
unethical. Balance reasons, or The Glass
 Man becomes an utterly insane founder

2-3 Assassination Contract
2 Misdirection
Remember - the removal we need to play should be a) efficient - either cheap or killing multiple targets; or b) as permanent as possible. It should also be in the same colour and/or type as the permanents we are playing, so we don't have trouble playing it. And, there's no reason we should not be playing removal cards - opposing permanents will cause you problems!
Assassination Contract is the core set's permanent removal, taking care of any character forever, without possibility of regeneration - and it's in-colour too. Kidnapping is also in-colour, and very cheap. Sure, it offers the opponent a choice, but correct play should make it as though there is no choice at all; e.g. Kidnapping the opposing founder when they can't pay its ransom - baiting the opponent into paying the ransom, then challenging the target with an attack anyway - or simply draining the opponent of resources on a key turn. The card rewards bluff and tricky play. Misdirection can not only change the placement of a key event like Telekinetic Slash or Political Corruption, it can also deflect attacks, causing opposing minions to swing wildly at their employers, Disruptive attacks to target their owner's business, or Demolisher attacks to target their owner's buildings. Character and consumer choices in the Corp/Donor core are partially chosen for their ability to engage for the trait resources necessary to play this polarising card.

The core set's strongest weapon     
attachment, bar none, and able to be
wielded by almost a third of the Corp/
Donor core, don't leave home without
one of these in your back pocket!      

1 Vulcan Cannon
Arguably the best weapon attachment in the game. Most other weapons have an activated ability that replaces the equipped character's attack with the weapon's text. Vulcan Cannon grants an additional activated ability to the equipped card - which, like Driverless Car Fleet and Anubian Tracker, can be used to deal damage outside of the challenge phase. In the Corp/Donor core, five characters and four vehicles - two main deck and two resource deck - can wield the Vulcan Cannon. If you expand the core past 1-2 vehicles main deck, you should play additional Vulcan Cannons.
2 Blue Chip Shares
Again, running a business is an expensive proposition. Despite this core's many ways to accelerate resources from the resource deck into the network, additional income is usually required - strong characters, mech suits, removal and heavy weapons can all cost more than your accelerated cash flow can provide for, and making maximum use of the Avatar Industries products isn't a cheap exercise. Blue Chip Shares and Incarnate Bond are the two main deck straightforward ways of providing additional cash flow in the core set - Incarnate Bond provides a burst of cash, but that cash frequently has to be spent on bidding against your opponent when they attempt to purchase it from your open market during the next turn. This core prefers the steady dividend paid by Blue Chip Shares.

Founder Choice

There are plenty of founders available, but only two choices make sense in this core. As there is not enough room to play many 'action' cards, we can rule out Azrielle, Independent Enforcer and Xu Huang, Gnost Monk. Illithis, Gnost Prophet is out - we aren't producing any EQ in this core, nor Magellan cells, and the removal is consequently Incarnate/Corp based - one of the main strengths of Gnost is the burn cards. The core only includes four #human cards, so Raama, Incarnate Hierarch is ruled out; likewise, Luke Seti is out due to a lack of space for mutation cards. Two founders stand out as reasonable picks for this core.

In Megacorp, it seems a "socialite"     
obtains money by making an emotional
challenge. We have another, different
word for this in real life                        

Chi, Corp Socialite offers regular income generation and strong defensive stats. Founders typically start with ten points of stat allocation, 3/3/1/3 or 4/1/3/2 or somesuch distribution, while Chi, if you can activate her IQ ability, is essentially 4/4/4/4 -and rising every turn you make a challenge. She's tough as nails, and if you can make her challenge twice a turn, e.g. with a card like Siren (which we aren't doing here) the income generation also doubles. The robo-socialite isn't a build-around-me founder that requires specific deck construction, she's simply a solid choice when that steady income generation is required. Nothing exciting here, just a difficult-to-remove, slowly-growing-larger, consistent income source.

The Glass Man is a physically weak founder, which is partially offset by the defensive capabilities of the #mech suits in the Corp/Donor core. Rather than steady income, he offers bursts of cash through use of the card Glass Man's Gambit - at the cost of taking up several additional deck slots by playing that card, and whatever other unethical cards you will want to play, since they will now be very easily found. He has the bonus of triggering Dash Dingo's ability, allows re-use of unethical cards, and is $1m cheaper to purchase back on the off-chance that he dies horribly. My preference in most cases - and it certainly helps that the core already plays unethical removal cards.

Resource deck choice

1-2 Purchase Order

2-3 Driverless Car Fleet

Everything else cheap, cheap, cheap - we'll be ripping 2-4 cards out of the resource deck every turn, so if they're $2m-3m each, it won't be long until we're broke. Any expensive consumers played will need additional benefits; Affluent Consumers, for example, engages to pay the cost of Misdirection, so small quantities are acceptable. Actor provides a trait resource of any type, which can be useful in a dual-type deck core like this - but he's still probably better replaced with a zero-cost consumer.

Sample decks built around this core

Glass Man Unethical Walkers

Avatar Industries provides training for
#mech operators at a very affordable 
price, bringing the machines near the
point that they can one-shot the     
competing business

Resource Deck

3 Mangrove

2 Driverless Car Fleet

2 Purchase Order

8 Selfish Consumers

5 Compulsive Consumers

Main Deck

4 Corp Executive

1 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando

4 Incarnate Donor

2 Corp Consultant

3 Corp Advisor

2 Anubian Tracker

2 Avatar Industries Mining Suit

2 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit

2 Mech Pilot Training

1 Jump Jets

1 Political Corruption

1 Glass Man's Gambit

1 Rampant Bribery

3 Kidnapping

2 Assassination Contract

2 Misdirection

2 Vulcan Cannon

2 Blue Chip Shares

Utterly Unethical Control

Resource Deck

Search engine and recursion engine to
go on top of our resource engine. The
Glass Man is a potent, but weak founder

1 Purchase Order

1 Actor

2 Driverless Car Fleet

2 Mangrove

1 Affluent Consumers

8 Selfish Consumers

5 Compulsive Consumers

Main Deck

4 Corp Executive

1 Corp Consultant

4 Corp Advisor

4 Incarnate Donor

1 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando

2 Anubian Tracker

1 Economic Hitman

1 Michael Basa, Data Obfuscator

1 Glass Man's Gambit

2 Political Corruption

3 Kidnapping

3 Misdirection

2 Assassination Contract

1 Rampant Bribery

1 Kickback

1 Jump Jets

1 Avatar Industries Mining Suit

2 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit

2 Timely Interception

1 Vulcan Cannon

2 Railgun Strike

The first deck focuses on the Avatar Industries #mech suits - already part of the core - by increasing numbers, adding more Vulcan Cannon, and including Mech Pilot Training to power the suits up to thei full potential. Corp Executive trained to pilot a mech gives it a BQ stat of eight - enough to rip through the average business.

The second deck uses the Corp/Donor core to build a resource base with the intent of powering a designed to stop the opponent doing anything. Extra Misdirection, Timely Interception, Economic Hitman to steal assets and Michael Basa to clear the opponent's hand help to maintain the favourable game state built by the core. Stacks of unethical removal keeps the opponent's board clear, and the game is ended by a timely Political Corruption or a disruptive Railgun Strike

The Corp/Donor Core is a versatile base for any deck, allowing fast resource generation, which appears to be the key to building a successful business in Megacorp. Try it today!