Burn, Baby, Burn

with Illithis, Gnost Prophet and the Congregation

Playing a burn deck in Megacorp isn't quite like playing chain burn in Yugioh, or burn in Magic: the Gathering. It's not possible, any more than it is to play characterless control, to play characterless burn. Neither should you want to, as many of the #psychic #assault cards either interact favourably with characters in Megacorp, require you to engage characters to play them, or have enhanced effects if you have characters with Magellan Cell Tokens on them. Illithis, Gnost Prophet comes in a starter deck that is packed with powerful burn cards, but not an awful lot else, so let's take a look at the initial list, go over what the cards can do, see what's worth retaining and what's a waste of space, and think about what else to add in order to power the deck up.

The founder herself has a few interesting abilities to note. Firstly, she's a card advantage machine, with the ability to engage to find a psionic event from your deck and put it into your hand. Second, she has the Loyal ability, so the opponent can't buy her off the field after you engage her to search your deck. Burn decks in Magic: the Gathering live or die based on their first seven cards of the game; Illithis lets the burn keep flowing until the opponent is a psychically-charred pile of ruin. Like all founders included in starter decks, the Illithis deck includes a founder-specific card, in this case Glimpse of Eternity which is another way to find burn cards from the deck - although a little riskier, since it involves putting all the non-hits straight into the open market. Illithis also starts the game and enters play with Magellan Cell tokens, which can be used to trigger bonus effects on several of the burn cards, and increases the power of Glimpse of Eternity. Here's the initial card list:

Illithis, Gnost Prophet

The true power of Gnost is in the ability
to sweep the board for a very low cost

Gnost Congregation

4 Gnost Acolyte

4 Gnost Cleric

3 Gnost Paladin

4 Gnost Layman

4 Banshee

1 Powered Armour

2 Siren's Call

1 Donation

1 Tidal Wave

1 Cold Snap

1 Glimpse of Eternity

4 Psionic Scream

3 Telekinetic Slash

2 Mindfire

2 Stealth Field

3 Character Assassination

5 Magellan Cell Migration

5 Affluent Consumers

10 Passionate Consumers

Much of the power of the deck revolves around the interaction of Magellan Cell Tokens with the cards Telekinetic Slash and Mindfire, yet the decklist only includes three Slash and two Mindfire. We're going to embrace these interactions, going up to four of each to match the deck's quantity of Psionic Scream. If you have the first edition Illithis deck, note that Psionic Scream has received errata; it now only deals two damage, and engaging a character for the bonus effect now only loses the opposing business $1m, rather than giving the card Disruptor. The card is still nuts, however; we aren't going below the four included with the deck.

Baby come and light my (mind)fire!

Mindfire is a strong card, similar to Political Corruption in The Glass Man's deck, but there's a card we can add here that seriously increases the card's power; Telekinesis. If you've played The Glass Man deck, you'll know the work Political Corruption can put in, but you'll also note that whenever you play it, there's almost always an exposed side in the network, and of course no opponent is dumb enough to place a card down next to the Corruption, unless, of course, it has a blank MQ trait score. It's a tough card to take down in a challenge, but as it is never surrounded, it can happen. Through Telekinesis, you can shift the opponent's board state around to clear a space near their business and place Mindfire where it is surrounded by your opponent's cards and unable to be challenged, dealing damage to them every A phase, both yours and your opponent's, and hopefully burning through their cash reserves as well. They may even be forced to divest a card near Mindfire in order to expose it to attacks the next turn, which is a massive benefit. Generally, IQ damage is particularly good in Megacorp; many characters IQ stats max out at two, and unfortunately this may end up leaving your Mindfire exposed when you accidentally wipe out a nearby consumer. But if you're destroying your opponent's cards on the field, should you really be complaining? Also interesting is that Mindfire itself doesn't take IQ damage, thanks to having a blank trait in that field, so you can supplement the damage on the left and right side with a Telekinetic Slash to the same row!

One thing to note about the deck is the main focus for victory, which is more than anything running the opponent out of money. All the burn spells have bonus cash-burning effects and we can run the powerful Gnost Paladin with Disruptor. We'll keep the economic victory focus up - and then we'll start the cutting room process, ensuring that we don't take out too many of the Magellan Cell characters, or we may be left unable to activate the bonus effects on Psionic Scream, Mindfire and Telekinetic Slash, and the deck's main strategy will fail. Gnost Cleric, however, has got to go; her poor stats to cost ratio and high upkeep cost aren't where we want to be. Gnost Acolyte, on the other hand, is well worth her spot, and can be divested on the turn you play her to go up a million, functioning as a Donation, if you don't require the board presence. The Magellan Cell Migration in the resource deck allows you to move a Magellan Cell token from a dying card onto a survivor, which is frequently Illithis herself, powering up the effect on Glimpse of Eternity. Gnost Layman is a simple "vanilla" character i.e. all it does is attack and block - there's no real 'flavour' to it - and will likely be moved onward in favour of a card with an ability.

Far better than the Magic: the Gathering
card of the same name, but doesn't do 
anything to improve your board position 

Banshee is an interesting card, but comes with the baggage of not actually improving our board position in a deck where board position is necessary, so we've got two options: 1) cut it, and play something else that does, or 2) build around the sacrifice effect by playing Banshee after deploying a human on a Dormant Volcano, annihilate them together and smack a 3x3 area for 2BQ damage. I know what sounds like more fun, so it's far more likely that we'll be on the volcano plan, despite falling to "the danger of making cool plays" instead of technically correct plays. Four Banshee is far too many for any deck, however, for two reasons; you can't really afford to have two in play simultaneously, as the EQ-growing ability will seriously weaken your business - it happens in every accounting phase, not just yours - and the possessed civilian doesn't take retaliation damage, so you don't need to worry about her dying too often. My set of general rules for numbers of cards in decks is:

4 - if you want to see it in your opening hand (or you are happy to see two of them) or if it is an essential piece to the deck's function

3 - if you'd like to see it either in your opening hand but drawing a second one is like drawing a blank, or if you'd like to see it within the first couple of turns of the game

2 - late-game bombs, unique or legendary-rule cards, high-cost permanent removal, or "silver bullet" cards that you don't mind drawing but you'd still like to be able to search for with an effect 

1 - "silver-bullet" cards that you only want to search for instead of drawing, or expensive late-game bombs, e.g. Battle Angel, Lunasys Battle Tank

The game's only direct card draw effect,
I have an unhealthy attachment to this
card, which is second only to Incarnate
Donor in the number of times it has   
been used in deck lists on this site      

Banshee sits between two and three on the scale, but we might not even play any of them! It's sometimes fair to say that zero or four is usually the correct number of a card to play - after all, there's many cards we have already written off as unsuitable for the deck and playing even one of those would be a mistake. Conversely, some cards are so good that going below four would be a sin. Other things to consider with Banshee are the continual drop to the EQ stat of your business - not the first time I have mentioned this, as it is a severe drawback - and that fact that the Suppressor ability is best used in an aggressive deck, or a Critical Hit combo deck. We'll note here that the only really offensive character we are playing is Gnost Paladin; the deck doesn't win by attacking, but by burning through the opponents cards and cash reserves. We'll also note that by being filled with events in favour of characters the deck operates mostly at instant speed. These two things combined mean that zero is likely to be the correct number, and we'll instead be running a quartet of Corp Advisor, to assist with keeping our hand full of burn, and enhancing our ability to play at instant speed by including the powerful control cards Misdirection and Timely Interception. The end result is going to essentially be a "counter-burn" strategy.

There is, however, one important thing to discuss that is likely to seriously affect our deck. Refer to our previous article on Making Money in Megacorp - the Illithis, Gnost Prophet deck doesn't contain anything resembling a financial engine aside from a single Donation. All the burn cards cost a minimum of $2m, and as we mentioned above, the deck is full of events, rather than characters, all of which have financial costs attached to them. We'll need to install a few ways of making money into the deck, and several of the ways included in that article are not going to be possible, e.g. we will struggle to play Incarnate Donor in this decklist, as most of the trait costs on cards are EQ, secondary in MQ. Let's take a look at the options we've got:

Lore-wise, ideal for a Gnost themed deck
as the massive retrenchment referred to
on Factory would have bolstered the   
ranks of the poor and disenfranchised   

As discussed in that article, one of the options - farming for money - isn't going to be ideal here. Illithis is a card advantage founder; we'd rather be playing an attacking founder to keep the opponent's attention away from our chickens and cows if farming is our plan. As we have noted, Gnost decks - and especially this one - have a tendency to play at event (instant or quick-play) speed where possible, but if we want to defend our farms, we likely need some sort of permanent defences in place - and we can't play Shepherd Trees for the same reason we can't play Incarnate Donor. And with Illithis in charge, we obviously can't play a second founder, so unless we want to switch over to Chi, Corp Socialite and turn away from searching up our burn, we can't make money using our founder either - and because our main deck is going to be full of burn we are unlikely to have any space for any kind of resource generation cards there either. Now, we could simply play four Tourist and four Donation, but this is a long way from being efficient - and takes up a lot of deck space! What we're going to do instead is use the Factory and Sea engine. In the game's lore the ranks of the Gnost are made up of the poor and disenfranchised, which the flavour text on Factory alludes to creating, via the wholesale discarding of employees in favour of automation. If we do, we'll now definitely have to turn away from the Dormant Volcano/Banshee plan, as we don't really want to be annihilating the terrain that we want to put the Factory on, but this isn't a huge price to pay in order to be able to afford to play our cards. We'll be cutting the expensive and physically weak Rally Site and losing a couple of Magellan Cell Migration from the resource deck in order to be able to fit the Factory engine, and a couple of Driverless Car Fleets to accelerate our way through the game. And because we are running those fleets, we want to be running Corp Executive, in order to be able to find them early

Here's the final list for "Corp/Gnost Counter-Burn

1 Illithis, Gnost Prophet
1 Gnost Congregation

3 Corp Executive
4 Gnost Paladin
4 Gnost Acolyte
4 Corp Advisor
1 Michael Basa, Data Obfuscator

3 Mindfire
4 Telekinetic Slash
4 Psychic Scream
3 Misdirection
2 Timely Interception
1 Glimpse of Eternity
2 Horizon Industries Mariner Suit
1 Jump Jets
2 Vulcan Cannon
1 Telekinesis
1 Assassination Contract

This is the last starter deck modification article for now; we'll be moving onto something new next time around. Meantime, join us at Rabblemaster Games for Megacorp drafts on Sunday afternoons from 1pm, and constructed on Mondays from 6pm!