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!