Giving Megacorp a constructed workout

Luke Seti, meme creator, finds steady 
employment at Rabblemaster Games   
and, it seems, worldwide. As it turns 
out, a free search every turn is great! 
Who'd have thought?    :)                        

If you're into playing Megacorp, there's a bit of a lack of information about what's good and playable in constructed and what cards are a waste of time playing in decks. Either that, or all the articles are in French or Indonesian and require translation - which isn't straightforward in a game where new terms like Disruptor and Divest are introduced, which don't have precisely the same definition as in English, and won't necessarily have the correct interpretation.

Rabblemaster Games is here to remedy that!

From what we've seen in-store, there seems to be at least four major deck archetypes in the game; Incarnate/mutate, Psionic burn, melee-monk, and equipment drop - of which the Battle Angel ramp deck I shared with you all, in our previous article here, is a variant of. We'll go into detail on some of the archetypes, but something to remember in any game that has a constructed format is that card lists are only good in a vacuum - without knowing what you'll be coming up against, your card choices may be suspect. Certain cards, and particularly founders, can make games very difficult right from the beginning. Consider one of the more playable founders; Luke Seti, Memadapt, above, who is known to be the founder of decks at the top of the French metagame.

On the first turn, Luke Seti can grow a set of wings, making himself essentially unblockable, and make an attack against your founder. Can your deck survive that?

How critical is your founder to your deck's operation? What are you going to do if he/she/it is Kidnapped or the target of an Assassination Contract

The battle angel ramp list runs Chi, Corp Socialite as the founder - she can survive that first turn unblockable attack (in most cases) with no problems simply by altering her stat scores using her ability. Now, one card does not defeat an entire deck, but being able to survive that first attack can make a large difference, and in Chi's case, you want her to be challenging things for that extra money, not getting crunched in the face on turn 1.

"Dash Dingo" is melee for attacking only;
but note that the powerful triggered 
ability works just fine at max range!    

The Luke Seti deck can search every turn with very little in the way of consequences, and likely will run Anubian Tracker to benefit from this searching, and any searching the opponent will be doing as well. As you will recall in the last article, we noted that searching the deck via dead drop and/or mutation abilities is one of the few ways to extend your hand past the first five cards; therefore, we can safely assume Anubian Tracker is going to be a part of any relevant metagame for the foreseeable future. Some decks can search 2-3 times a turn, and some founders (Illithis, The Glass Man and the above mentioned Luke Seti) have native search abilities; decks can and will be built around using those abilities. Get your dirty GMO hands on some Anubian Trackers now; whether you're the one searching and triggering, or if it's just to counter your opponent's strategy, "Dash Dingo" will put in a lot of work for your business. With decent stats for its play cost, it also has the advantage of only costing money, so it can be played in any deck

Incarnate decks have a lot of raw power and can be quite aggressive - you'll need to be prepared. A well built Incarnate deck will have a mutation for every situation and will have no trouble deploying them on the first or second turn; in particular, watch out for the ones that grant Initiative, Regeneration and movement abilities - especially if they can be activated at instant speed.

If you can't survive these early attacks, you will want cards that can get your characters out of the way. Corporate Restructure, for example, is a pretty bad card for this purpose, being a one-shot effect; the surprise factor is the only thing going for it, while Jump Jets is a far more practical solution. Consider the advantages of Jump Jets in comparison:

The ultimate in evasion technology:
cheap, searchable, versatile, and cool

1) it can be searched for by dead drop abilities or Purchase Order, meaning it will be there when you need it; you don't need to rely on natively drawing it.

2) it can be engaged to provide an IQ resource, which conveniently pays the cost of bonding it to another character or vehicle, but can also be used elsewhere

3) bonding Jump Jets to a character or vehicle saves the jets from being destroyed, if an attack would otherwise hit it or if the opponent targets the jets 

4) if you have another card that allows you to unbond and redeploy, it can be used to move multiple cards.

Because attacking in Megacorp attacks the network space rather than the card, character mobility is important, particularly if they are powerful characters with abilities you want to keep around. Have no doubt that your opponent will be targeting them, and you'll need to be able to save them. In addition, cards such as Rampant Bribery - which would otherwise return to the controller's hand on a successful kill - are countered by movement effects. More on those later!

One of the few ways in Megacorp to
draw a big stack of cards. Pay attention!

Gnost decks appear to come in two flavours; Psionic burn, which is usually 100% Gnost themed cards, and melee-monk, which has a scattering of other cards, because the "action" cards played by the deck are not necessarily Gnost. The burn variants are full of Mindfire, Telekinetic Slash, Psionic Scream and other horrible cards that wipe out rows or groups of assets. Illithis, Gnost Prophet is the usual founder played in these; the decks usually run 2-3 Glimpse of Eternity to help refill their hand - Illithis can search for it - and a stack of Gnost Paladin, Acolyte, etc. to provide the necessary Magellan cell counters to trigger the bonus effects on the burn spells. Telekinesis makes frequent appearances, shoving a card out of the way to install a Mindfire in the square between four cards, preferably next to the business where it can be granted the disruptor ability. The burn deck sometimes requires a little time to set up, and Public Holiday does a great job of buying time for a turn while you develop a resource base to be able to play all the burn cards. The deck may feel a little slow, but what it does very well is penalise the opponent for over-extending their board or spending too much cash too quickly.

Melee-monk decks play quite differently. Xu Huang, Gnost Monk is the usual founder for this deck, thanks to his huge mobility, although Azrielle, Independent Enforcer can also be played. These decks focus on "action" cards rather than burn spells, many of which increase the mobility of characters. The two founders make for slightly different decks, but the play style tends to be the same - protect the queen or king. Both founders are powerful, and with a correctly built deck, easy to keep alive for repeated smashing of the opponent.

Can't be kidnapped, assasinated, bribed,
corrupted or otherwise turned away from
 her mission. Survives a Telekinetic Slash,
Psionic Scream or Mindfire. Blanking the
 opponent's removal spells is an old tactic,
  but it never seems to go out of style!     

Azrielle can pick and choose actions from a large portion of your deck, depending on how much IQ is spent, and her immunity to unethical cards like Kidnapping, Kickback, Political Corruption and Rampant Bribery makes her a particularly hard target to kill. One of the best ways to eliminate the opposing founder is to Kidnap it - particularly in the early game, your opponent is unlikely to have the cash spare to pay the ransom

Decks like these play actions that can disengage, move, or grant flying and regeneration abilities to characters under their control. The characters played are usually the martial artist cards, which also allow you to search for action cards to keep them alive and kicking. These decks deal massive chunks of damage via cards like Critical Hit, can take out multiple assets in a single turn via Rampage, and you can't rely on blocking or retaliation when the attackers can be given Flying or Suppressor at a moment's notice thanks to the action-searching abilities in the deck!

"Go ahead, try and hit me; I'll wait"
"The master of defence is one who isn't
even there when the attack lands"
-Xu Huang, Gnost Monk

Xu Huang, while not as straight-up invulnerable as Azrielle, has the ability to dodge out of the way of most attacks, as long as you've got an action ready to target him. His normally average damage is bolstered by attacking an adjacent target, but the real power behind Xu Huang is the card Ascendant Palm. It's an action, so you can target the Gnost Monk and move him into melee range, and the wording of the card - two Magellan Cells and MQ of three or more - are designed to fit precisely within his stats. Then, if you happen to smash (and I mean SMASH since Ascendant Palm grants Demolisher) down enough things that he's orphaned in the opponent's network, you can move him back into yours at the end of turn.

Rampage is particularly nasty with Xu Huang, as his BQ statistic, assuming you are attacking with it, will increase by two for each asset destroyed during the Rampage. Of the two melee-monk founders, Xu Huang decks tend towards having more Gnost cards, as the Gnost Paladin is also a fine target for Ascendant Palm if you can get him into range, while Azrielle decks are more inclined to run Savvy Consumers in their resource deck to power her ability up. Melee-monk decks have the same advantage discussed earlier with Anubian Tracker; the Martial Artist cards do not have any trait costs associated with playing them, leaving your trait-providing cards free to produce those traits in order to pay for actions if necessary, to block attacks, or to search the top quarter of your deck with Azrielle.

Clearly, not being tied to a specific trait grants you more freedom in deckbuilding; if you're playing a heavy Gnost deck, like the burn deck discussed above, and running a consumer base of sixteen Passionate Consumers, you aren't playing Kidnapping or Assasination Contract, despite the high quality of the cards - you simply won't be able to pay the trait costs. Gnost cards, such as Glimpse of Eternity (above) tend to be low cost financially, but high on the trait costs. Your removal, if you ever plan to actually play any of it, should consist of a mix of Mindfire, Psionic Scream, Telekinetic Slash and Character Assasination. You're essentially locked into this configuration due to the rest of the deck being built to produce the tons of EQ required.

Now, none of those high-EQ cost removal cards are bad cards by any stretch of the imagination, but when building a Megacorp deck, you have to be acutely aware of which choices you can make, and which choices are essentially forced on you and therefore not really choices at all. This is really no different to Magic, Pokemon or Yugioh, but the smaller Megacorp card pool has a tendency to magnify this effect. I personally can't wait for the next set release, and the expanded selection of cards to build around!

A trap. "The Danger of Cool Things"

I have no doubt there are other strategies - after all, a cyberpunk world is always a large and diverse place - but our expectation is these fast-paced strategies will be most players initial go-to for deckbuilding. Other strategies of wealth-building, such as infrastructure, aviation and farming - with a view to purchasing as many cards as possible from the opponent's board after the second turn - may be too slow to compete at first. Farm decks will require terrain to deploy their herds and flocks on, which can be slow to get out, plus a way to convert their food into money, such as a Restaurant or Cafe, and so many of those cards take up valuable resource deck space. Cards like Hotel, Tavern and Barracks are risky - nobody wants to put all their eggs into a single building-shaped basket and lose them all to a point of demolisher damage! Decks with a heavy military theme are chock-full of expensive cards; despite the massive 2x2 area attack damage of 5BQ that a Lunasys Battle Tank MK1 can put out, the initial cost of $5m & 2IQ - plus upkeep of $3m and 2IQ -can easily put it out of the realm of affordability.

  Next time, the design and development
team can just call it "the f***ing stones"
and be done with it. Much easier!         

What we are seeing an awful lot of, and you'll recall our last article suggested it may be the case, is a lot of decks running four Incarnate Donor. The card is one of the better ways of extending your plays past the initial five cards and increasing your resource generation at the same time, and makes for a great first play of the game. Players are warping their consumer base in order to fit this card into their decks, and we suspect that part of the reason Incarnate & mutate decks are at the top of the metagame is that they don't have to do that; the card is a natural fit. But, Incarnate Donor also has great stats for its cost, and many decks already want to ensure they can pay for BQ costs; the two best removal cards in the game, Kidnapping and Assassination Contract, include both BQ and MQ in their casting cost. Warping the deck around playing this card may not be such a disadvantage in the end.

The last thing to note is that while the majority of cards that produce cashflow are located in the resource deck and released once per turn, this isn't a hard and fast rule. Cash flow is essential to the running of any business, and the two maindeck ways to increase it are Incarnate Bond, which matures after three turns and gives you a burst of cash, going to the open market afterwards, and Blue Chip Shares, which is a straight-up cash flow increase after the initial public offering period of three turns. If you are not already doing so, you should be running these cards in your constructed deck.

Get into Megacorp constructed at Rabblemaster Games today!
If you're into Magic: the Gathering, it plays a lot like a 1v1 Commander game, except that everything has haste.

The boss will take you through some demonstrations - he's a huge fan of the game - or you can come and check out the gameplay during our regular tournament nights; draft is on Tuesday nights from 6pm, constructed on Monday nights from 6pm, and watch out for more tournament play on Sundays, coming soon!

Bonus decklist section!

Battle Angel Ramp (founder: Chi, Corp Socialite)

Maindeck
4 Corp Executive
2 Corp Consultant
2 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando
2 Battle Angel
4 Corp Advisor
4 Incarnate Donor
1 Battle Angel Carapace
2 Avatar Industries Mining Suit
1 Guided Munitions
1 Railgun, Lunasys Lancer 6
2 Railgun Strike
2 Vulcan Cannon
2 Timely Interception
2 Misdirection
3 Blue Chip Shares
1 Jump Jets
3 Kidnapping
2 Assassination Contract
41 Cards

Resource Deck
1 Purchase Order
3 Driverless Car Fleet
3 Affluent Consumers (no credit for other expensive resource cards)
8 Selfish Consumers
5 Compulsive Consumers
20 Cards

Azrielle's Wrecking Kru (founder: Azrielle, Independent Enforcer)

Main Deck

3 Corp Advisor

4 Corp Martial Artist

4 Incarnate Donor

3 Incarnate Martial Artist

3 Merc Rapid Response Team

4 Misdirection

1 Superhuman Leap

2 Critical Hit

2 Attack of Opportunity

2 Muay Thai

2 Gallian Lineage

3 Acrobatic Takedown

4 Assassination Contract

3 Incarnate Bond

Resource Deck

4 Affluent Consumers

2 Driverless Car Fleet

8 Selfish Consumers

6 Compulsive Consumers

Psychic Soulburn (founder: Illithis, Gnost Prophet)

Main Deck

4 Corp Advisor

3 Gnost Paladin

4 Gnost Acolyte

3 Gnost Cleric

2 Anubian Tracker
2 Siren

4 Telekinetic Slash

4 Mindfire

4 Psychic Scream

2 Glimpse of Eternity

3 Telekinesis

2 Character Assasination
3 Public Holiday
40 cards

Resource Deck3 Dormant Volcano
3 Magellan Cell Migration
13 Passionate Consumers
3 Selfish Consumers