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.
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| Deploy extra resources (at instant speed!) |
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| Search up lots of extra cards! |
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| 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:
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| 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! |
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.
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
1-2 Avatar Industries Mariner Suit
1 Jump Jets
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.
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| God, basically. Let's be real here; her generosity is your opponent's downfall |
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
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| "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 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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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| 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.
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| 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! |
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
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| 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 |
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
1 Purchase Order
Utterly Unethical Control
Resource Deck
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| Search engine and recursion engine to go on top of our resource engine. The Glass Man is a potent, but weak founder |
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!
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