Streets Ahead

One of the avenues for making a few dollars in Megacorp we haven't explored yet is trading in the property market. In a world where business is war, there is still the option to work behind the scenes and establish a financial empire without engaging another company's assassins and enforcers in open combat - and with enough capital, simply purchasing your opponent's assets and putting them to work in your empire.

If this sounds like fun to you (and it does to me, despite the borderline unethical aspect of corporate poaching) then you might enjoy playing an "infrastructure/civilian" deck in Megacorp and taking responsibility over thousands of lives...for your own profit, of course; why else would you care!

Board extender plus your gateway to the
lucrative property market of Aohu, it also
allows for defensive blocking plays with
the searching ability

The beginnings of such an infrastructure/civilian deck is the self-propagating Highway. It provides several advantages to such a deck. Firstly, the card is a straightforward way to trade in the property market, allowing you to purchase a Highway from the resource deck for $2m, which can be sold, at minimum, for its valuation cost of $3m in the next divest phase. Don't underestimate this ability; it's the sort of useful on-board ability that is active even if you draw a defensive card rather than an action card and have no plays for the turn. Secondly, the same ability can also be used defensively, similar to the way we have discussed activating Driverless Car Fleet in previous articles, mid-combat, to provide an instant-speed blocking consumer as long as the card you want to defend is adjacent to an empty space near Highway - and the card's ability to move your characters and equipment can easily position your important assets in such a spot. Slightly more restrictive here (it can only defend against BQ attacks) it is still a useful passive ability to have. Finally, the deck's money comes from other cash flow machines that require a critical mass of cards with certain hashtags, and Highway provides the necessary #infrastructure and #road tags required to take advantage of those cards. Note that none of the abilities on Highway are cashflow abilities - it can be freely engaged for resources if necessary.  

A reasonable buy-and-hold investment,
but a quick sale and re-buy on the sly
is where the real money is at here! We
absolutely want to max out on this card
as it interacts with every other card in
the resource deck (see final list, below)
and is the key to our most profitable 
 divest sales at the end of the turn. It is
almost useless to other decks that are
not running the same strategy, and in
the mirror match, it provides cash flow
while in play and is an extremely       
unattractive target to purchase from 
the opponent's network.                      

The cash flow machines we're talking about, the ones that take advantage of Highway and its #civilian counterpart Street, are Hypermarket and Automated Toll System. The Hypermarket provides enough cash flow on its own, provided it is adjacent to a #civilian card or two such as the aforementioned Street and Toll System - or another Hypermarket, which immediately adds another $2m - but the real money is in buying and selling the property itself. If your network of roads and other #infrastructure has extended as far as the necessary three cards with that keyword, the Hypermarket you purchased for $4m can be resold in the divest phase for $9m. Assuming for a minute that  your opponent isn't also playing some kind of weird infrastructure/civilian deck (like us) they won't be interested in purchasing the Hypermarket from your open market; hopefully you can repeat the transaction during the next turn. It is one of the most profitable properties to trade in, and we want a full set of these in our resource deck, despite the lack of the #infrastructure keyword that it requires to operate - it would be disgustingly good if that keyword was included on the Hypermarket itself.

Now, making over 100% profit on a transaction, as per the above example, is great, but Megacorp includes two important cards can help boost the gains from property sales. Lake increases the valuation of buildings on it by $1m, a minor boost, but worthwhile because of the very low opportunity cost of playing a small amount of #terrain in the resource deck (a single piece changes none of the odds of hitting any cards) while the expensive initial investment in a Central Business District would seriously pay off while making this sale - and any future sales - increasing the amount of cash received to $18m, and potentially even more if we have more #infrastructure in play than the minimum requirement of three. This works out to 80% profit on the first sale, but as we don't count the cost of the CBD in the profit calculations for the second sale, our profit margin on that, or any future Hypermarket flips, is a staggering 450%++

#Military decks in Megacorp have some of the highest cash flow rates in the game, but these figures dwarf the amount of cash a #military deck can generate - each Barracks at full capacity only provides $6m in cashflow - and a bank account of this size can easily be used to purchase half the opposing business network, should anyone be foolish enough to attack our massive property empire!

"Bane of any road user" but we are the
administrators here, not the users. Also
note that the ability that grants money
is not a cash flow ability; the Automated
Toll System can be freely engaged for a
couple of trait resources!

Automated Toll System provides the other way to take advantage of Highway and Street, this time interacting with the #road keyword. A very low initial investment, all that's required is to place a few characters adjacent to the self-propagating roads, and the cash starts rolling in. We'll have no choice but to play a few characters in the deck - all the cards we've discussed so far are resource deck cards, and they'll need defending - so a little careful positioning can be richly rewarded. Automated Toll System includes both the important #civilian and #infrastructure keywords that are rewarded by playing Hypermarket, and incidentally (it rarely comes up) so does my favourite resource deck card in the game, Driverless Car Fleet, which we should definitely be playing in this deck here as well. Highways and Streets make their own way into the network, but we don't want to be stuck playing a single resource card per turn when we have access to all this money; we want to be re-investing it with an eye to future profit! For exactly the same reason our main deck will include no less than four Incarnate Donor, to help accelerate our plays and get multiple money producing resources onto the battlefield as possible. Activate the deck-thinning search abilities of Highway and Street before playing Incarnate Donor or activating Driverless Car Fleet if possible, which will increase your chance of hitting one of the more valuable properties in the resource deck. As discussed early in the article, Highway and Street do not have intrinsic cash flow abilities and can be freely engaged to pay the resource cost of cards like Incarnate Donor, so we need not worry about running any consumers.

*yawn* every deck article, blah blah blah
sick of seeing this card yet again, whine.
It can fetch four Automated Toll System
from the resource deck in one shot; we
would be insane not to run this bad boy!

Now, we'll need to consider what to play in the main deck, aside from those four indispensable Donors. We'll discuss a few alternatives without locking down anything, except - and you're likely sick of hearing me talk about this card, because I do it all the time -  we have to run four Corp Executive in this deck, and possibly two or more Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando as well, for increased redundancy in having access to the Dead Drop 4 ability. The reason for this is simple; Automated Toll System, unlike the other cards in our resource deck, is not a location - it is an equipment - so Corp Executive can fetch both our cash flow producers (the Toll System) and our board extenders (the Driverless Car Fleets) at the same time. This ability to extend and ramp up cash flow simultaneously is not available to any of the decks I have previously discussed in Megacorp articles, and provides an incredibly powerful base to begin the #infrastructure deck's game plan. Picture turn one as follows:

* Reveal Highway and purchase for $3m, deploying adjacent to our founder
* Play Corp Executive adjacent to the Highway, searching up four Automated Toll Systems.
* End turn. Do not make the mistake of divesting anything here!

Positioning of the assets is very important, like playing with Mekk-Knights in Yugioh. With just these two characters adjacent to #roads and the Automated Toll Systems in play, we've established an income of $8m per turn. After paying the now almost trivial upkeep cost of Corp Executive, who can defend our Toll Systems with the aid of our founder, we have positive cash flow of $5m per turn waiting for us when we next have an accounting phase. While absurd, keep in mind that going below $2m at the end of the first turn can be dangerous against certain opponents; Political Corruption - or revolution by Disruptive Gnost elements - is a city builder's worst enemy! 

Other beginnings to the game can be less risky but similarly absurd, e.g.

* Reveal Street and purchase for $3m, deploying adjacent to our founder
* Deploy Corp Executive, anywhere this time, searching up a Driverless Car Fleet and two Automated Toll Systems.
* Deploy Corp Citizen adjacent to the Street
* Divest Corp Executive at the end of turn.

This opening line establishes a slightly smaller positive cash flow of $4m per turn, but leaves $5m in the bank instead of the previous example's $3m. Depending on how aggressively you bid to go first, or what your opponent is playing, this more subdued start may be in order, but either opening line puts you in a position to purchase a Hypermarket revealed at the beginning of the next turn...with enough #infrastructure cards in play to be able to sell it for $9m at the end of the turn. 

Dancing in the streets!

Celebrations will ensue in the Streets when you play Public Holiday on your opponent's turn when they attempt to break your board with character combat, or the versatile uncommon Misdirection or powerful rare Timely Interception if they attempt to do it with events. The #infrastructure deck is a little fragile - the price we pay for having access to awesome cashflow in this game - so playing defensive cards like these is going to be essential if we want to establish any kind of a board presence. Although, as per the above couple of examples, it isn't going to take long to do this. So, we've established a small property empire that, if unimpeded, has per-turn expenses of $4m and incoming revenues of $13m, and stifled our opponent's ability to break our board position.
What's next?

Well, unfortunately they probably still have a board position, because we haven't been putting them under any pressure yet, and after noticing the awesome influx of cash to our bank account (bloody corporate spies are everywhere, no idea where they obtain these top-secret financial details) they may not wish to oblige us by doing something foolish like "engaging their business for trait resources" or "attacking with a powerful character" or "activating their founder's ability" because we'll simply relive them of that asset during our next turn. In return, we may not wish to attack with characters that are serving important defensive functions such as protecting Automated Toll Systems and Central Business Districts, both in order to not lose access to those cash flow producing cards in a retaliatory assault, and because our opponent who didn't attack us last turn - or who had their attack stifled by our Public Holiday - will have no difficulty blocking those attacks. Combat is likely to devolve into a stalemate; how do we win the game?

We've got more than a few options and it's possible that we'll have room for several of them in the main deck. All we have to do is avoid the challenge phase whenever possible - and Megacorp provides a couple of different ways to do this. Firstly, we can use the ability of Corp Executive to search up the old 20th century standby weapon Vulcan Cannon, which gives an additional activated ability to the bonded card, and is able to be wielded with ease by that Executive; this comes with a very minor deckbuilding cost, as we are already running four of the Dead Drop searchers. We simply blast things out of the way and freely attack afterward. Triggering the ability of Dash Dingo, either with Executive or the self-propagation ability of Street and Highway is our second possible way of keeping the board clear, particularly of the smaller characters our opponent might play; again, a fairly minor deckbuilding cost as we are already playing full sets of searching cards. We can force the opponent to engage cards by playing characters with the Suppressor ability - although this doesn't avoid using the combat step, and won't always engage the target that we want to purchase. We can play Economic Hitman, Guided Munitions and Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier like we did in our article about the Azrielle's Assassins deck, again being forced into using the challenge phase - and it has restrictions, being unable to Hitman anything exceeding $3-4m in valuation...

A card I've been unable to find a use for
up until now due to the expensive cost
of his ability, plus the upkeep cost of 
both cash and trait resources - but he is
perfect here; just buy out the enemy!  

Or we can harness the awesome power of WHISKEY with Fluffy Langel, Celebrationist! Fluffy is all about plying the opposing characters into abandoning their defensive posts for a life of reckless hedonism. He's got a bit of a sinister side to him, however; a penchant for forging the signature of opposing characters while they are drunk, installing some #nano, then renting their bodies out combat vassals - they wake up, hungover, as valuable members of your property management empire, pointed right back at their point of origin. It's not a cheap method - we are essentially buying the character at twice its cost, although the opponent only receives half of this amount - but it has the advantage of avoiding the challenge phase, and is a repeatable effect, able to be activated multiple times per turn, only costing the target's valuation in $m, and can be used if Fluffy himself is engaged. I've been looking to find a use for getting my opponent's characters drunk, so we'll give it a shot here

Let's take a look at a preliminary #infrastructure deck list:

Dash Dingo here is how we build our 
board advantage up. Ideally, we will use
him to pick off a consumer, or another
weak opposing character (or building)
whenever we search our resource deck
with Highway or Street or make a Dead
Drop with Corp Executive

Resource Deck
4 Highway
4 Street
2 Driverless Car Fleet
4 Hypermarket
4 Automated Toll System
2 Central Business District
2 Actor
1 Lake

Main Deck
4 Misdirection
4 Timely Interception
4 Public Holiday
4 Corp Executive
4 Incarnate Donor
4 Corp Advisor
4 Corp Citizen
4 Anubian Tracker
2 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando
2 Fluffy Langel, Celebrationist
2 Vulcan Cannon
2 Guided Munitions

Ha - I say "preliminary" and we've hit 20/40 with no difficulty whatsoever - in fact, we've gone over in the resource deck by three! Generally, maximum consistency is necessary in deck building; every card that we have four-of in the main deck is one we would like to see in the opening hand. The two-of cards are our backup starters (Glazhov) and game-winners (Fluffy, Cannons, Munitions) which for the latter, we won't want to see immediately, and for the former, are there for decreasing numbers of brick hands. We can't keep a hand without a Dead Drop 4 character with this deck; don't try - it's too slow

Note that in the main deck, we don't go above forty cards because we want to increase the chance of opening any one of our four-of key cards. In the resource deck, however, we are making a minor sacrifice to consistency in order to enable certain important plays - and to increase our percentage chances of hitting cards with certain keywords.  We are playing a defensive and controlling deck here and it is essential that we enable both our early defensive plays  - it is entirely possible to lose by the second turn in Megacorp - and our opening turns with the highest potential.

Accordingly we have to account for the following - and get ready, because there's a little mathematics involved here. Skip ahead a page if you need to.

1) Statistically, the play that leads to the most instant wins is a turn 1 Misdirection on your opponent's attack or main event, i.e. Telekinetic Slash or Kidnapping. While this effect is available on turn zero (engage business for trait cost, engage founder for additional cost) we want to enable this outside of those cards where possible, so our founder and business are free for action! The main deck is running 16/40 ways to enable this and the resource deck is running 4/22 - two Central Business District (which we really don't want to engage for Misdirection, but it's better than losing) and two Actor. We can't afford to cut either of these cards. With regards to probability, our chance of having a main deck turn 1 Misdirection source is ((16/40)+(16/39)+(16/38)+(16/37)+(16/36)) which is added to our odds of a turn 1 resource deck Misdirection source (4/22 - technically we're running 23 resource cards, but we don't count Lake because it's free and replaces itself) and we absolutely cannot afford that second figure to become 3/21 or less (a decrease of approximately 3.89%.) The main deck figure, of course, doesn't change. Actor's #civilian tag, and the fact that he's a character that can attack from the resource deck - like a creature-land in Magic - are additional benefits to running him, plus his ability to make trait resources of any colour assists in playing and paying for various abilities in the deck

2) Our highest financial potential on turn 1 is from the first example discussed; four Automated Toll Systems and two characters adjacent to roads. So we cannot afford to cut an Automated Toll System, or we cannot even make that play; despite not wanting to open-flip a Toll System (we'd rather search them out) the cash flow potential is too high not to run maximum numbers. Neither can we afford to cut any of the roads - the first one cut is 3.3% less chance to open-flip a turn 1 road for this play

3) Playing a single Driverless Car Fleet is an unacceptable risk to our long game and too many is a risk to our explosive openings. We do not want to open-flip it on turn 1 either, for the same reason as above, but cannot afford to have the only one destroyed with the corresponding 100% reduction to our buying power from within the resource deck.

4) Cutting a Hypermarket severely reduces our odds of hitting that valuable property from 4/22 to 3/21 - a significant loss we cannot afford to take - so we need to max out on numbers of this card. As discussed earlier, it interacts with every card in the resource deck in some way and is our key to maximum cash flow in two ways; cashflow itself, and huge divest sales.

5) Cutting any of the Central Business Districts is also a 100% reduction to our chance to draw into the Hypermarket/CBD combo, which is unacceptable for the long game, but it's a poor first turn card; as with Driverless Car Fleet we have to balance the odds of open-flipping it on turn one with the power level of the card.

6) This is where it gets tricky. Cutting #civilian cards reduces the cash flow potential of Hypermarket while increasing our odds to draw it; technically this is complicated by the fact that Hypermarket itself is also a #civilian card, but see point 4) above, we aren't cutting that card in any case. The resource deck has 18/22 #civilians; cutting one of them changes our odds of hitting one to 17/21 (approximately 0.87% reduction) while increasing our chance to draw Hypermarket from 4/22 to 4/21 (the same percentage increase) but when it comes down to it, we can't even look at making this trade-off! Points 1-5 above cover all #civilian and #infrastructure cards in the resource deck that are essential to our game play, locking in 22 resource cards - and we'd rather hit a road first turn than a Hypermarket in any case - so the slightly lower odds of hitting Hypermarket on T1 rather than another #civilian card isn't the huge deal it otherwise might be, and may even be preferable. We'd love to see it on turn 2 or 3, after making a few of our starting dollars back

Highest long term potential, but also 
the highest initial investment in the
deck, means we don't really want to
open on CBD - so we don't play four.
Ideally, we'd like to place it next door
to an established Hypermarket, then
sell that market off immediately to   
realise our massive levels of profit.

I'm a long way from being bad a maths, but mathematics, probability and trading cards is still likely a topic for a better mathematician than myself! Odds of drawing specific cards always change with every draw step, every search, and every purchase from the resource deck - you can use a hypergeometric distribution function to calculate these odds - but in this deck, those numbers are subject to sudden and serious change. Take, for example, the strongest opening discussed above; when four Automated Toll Systems are fetched from the resource deck on the first turn after purchasing a #road from the top of the resource deck. Suddenly, your chance of revealing Hypermarket next turn isn't 4/22, but 4/17. Numbers are a delicate balance in deckbuilding, and haphazard changes shouldn't be made without at least a little calculation regarding the odds of opening a great hand, utterly bricking, or drawing key cards at important times. I've seen so many players of Magic cut two lands and two cheap removal spells from a decklist to accommodate four huge creatures, then complain that "I can't draw any lands" or "I never draw removal anymore" or "this second copy of this huge guy is a waste of a card in my hand" without even giving a thought to WHY this is happening. Most of the time, readers - and I've learned this the hard way several times - you should trust the deck designer! Brewing is fun - you should never stop - but accurately calculate your odds of the Magical-Christmas-Land first-turn kill before shouting to the world "this list is viable and the greatest thing the community has ever seen!" I'm pretty bloody sure my theorycraft on resource deck numbers is correct, but if anyone better at maths would like to correct me, please sound off in the comments below or contact me via Facebook. For example, it's not correct to add a second Lake - it increases your chance of bricking on a resource deck buy to above 0% and given how essential our resource deck is to our game plan we can't afford to do that!


The last thing we need to consider is our founder. We've made no mention of it up until now, which suggests that the deck doesn't require any specific founder. I believe, however, that the best founder for this deck is going to be Heracles, Senior Counsel.

Not most players' first choice for founder
but ideal for this deck

Now, I can hear you all now: "dear god Simon, what in the nine hells are you thinking here?" but hear me out before you judge me here! We are a defensive and controlling deck; despite our lack of direct removal cards in the main deck, we are all about shutting down our opponent's plays, and Heracles is a very strong defensive founder. The deck has two main weaknesses I've been able to identify so far; the early turns require heavy investment in order to obtain an early pay off, making it susceptible to Political Corruption - and our cash flow setup can be stifled by Kidnapping characters that are located next to roads. Heracles' ability to cancel the effect OR deployment of an unethical card is an excellent backup to the mountain of Misdirection and ton of Timely Interception we are running in the main deck; we've maxed out on numbers, but there is still no guarantee they will be in the opening hand! Heracles also has the correct mix of trait scores to pay the costs of certain cards in the deck, e.g. 3IQ covers Misdirection's cost, 4MQ covers the high trait cost of playing Fluffy Langel, and 1MQ covers Fluffy's upkeep trait cost. The other important thing to note is that other #action-based (Azrielle, Xu Huang) or searching (The Glass Man, Illithis, Seti Spaghetti) founders don't even get a look-in here, as we aren't playing any of the cards that interact with them (aside from Dash Dingo) or even any cards that can be found by them; Chi, Corp Socialite is not a defensive founder despite her ridiculous stat levels - she wants to be attacking - while Raamaa is a poor choice when your resource deck contains two characters; the sacrifice of consumers is what makes her strong!

Play to defend your property empire, and see how your #infrastructure/#civilian deck performs at Rabblemaster Games' next Megacorp Constructed Monday from 6pm.

-Simon Driel; Director, Rabblemaster Games and Megacorp enthusiast

Deck Doctor - Firebombing with Raamaa

Consume! Devour! Scam the insurer!

In Megacorp draft, we frequently run across the synergy between Life Insurance Policy, which is a common, and Raamaa, Incarnate Heirarch, who can be freely chosen as a proxy founder. Raamaa's ability to annihilate in order to survive is the key - the Insurance Policy is simply played next to the annihilation target - being an event, it can be played in response to another card - and Raamaa survives while the opponent has spent their valuable card (or their attack with a strong character) plus financial and trait resources...in order to give you two million in currency. This is a pretty big swing and sometimes pretty hard to come back from - and particularly in draft, where removal is thin on the ground. Does this sort of nonsense have a place in constructed as well? Probably.

A key part of the firebombing engine,
Banshee has an MQ trait cost, despite
being a Gnost card, which will prove to
be quite convenient in this deck list

In draft, we sometimes come across another dirty annihilation combination; this one between two uncommons, Dormant Volcano and Banshee - or its rare equivalent, Basilisk. One of our regular customers and the local distributor for Megacorp, Theo Pollard, mentioned to me the idea of using this synergy after reading our last article on Azrielle's Assassins, where we discussed using a founder that has an ability that interacts with the main deck's premise, the way the deck in that article interacts with Azrielle's #military keyword. He had a preliminary deck list running all of the above cards and asked for a hand in "deck doctoring" it to completion. Theo also expressed a desire to play with Economic Hitman - which he pulled at a Rabblemaster Games draft last weekend - so here's the first in our article series of Deck Doctoring; Raamaa's Firebombers, by Theo Pollard.

Let's get to work!

A very powerful character, combining
high trait scores for its cost and a host
of powerful abilities that are enhanced
by being given the ability to deal area-
of-effect damage, like we are doing in
this deck list here

The above mentioned cards - Banshee and/or Basilisk, Dormant Volcano, Raamaa and Insurance Policy - are going to form the core of the deck, and work together like a jigsaw puzzle. Annihilating characters keeps Raamaa alive to threaten our opponent, gaining us money when those characters are next to Insurance Policy, and Banshee functions as a way to do that if Raamaa happens to have been taken unawares and removed from the network, while also functioning as a potent offensive threat; Banshees don't take damage in combat thanks to their Suppressor ability. Dormant Volcano functions as a way to take additional advantage of this exchange, adding a damage bonus to every annihilation - and we aren't talking about a small amount of damage here. The maximum output of a Dormant Volcano is 18BQ - two damage to every card in a 3x3 radius centered on its target - which is one of the highest potential damage amounts in the game. With this spread of damage, and the way Economic Hitman enjoys being able to spread damage around, we are going to be focusing on enhancing the AOE damage potential of the deck through equipment, in particular the Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier and the free deployment ability of the Railgun Lunasys MK6, and otherwise doing what we can to ensure the maximum chance to draw our puzzle pieces and make the deck tick over while we wait to do so.

You're probably sick of seeing this card
in articles written by yours truly, but
in this deck, she does everything we
want, and more besides.

Now, as far as the rest of the deck goes, obviously we need to be running a good amount of each of the individual pieces (4-5 Banshee and/or Basilisk, 4 Dormant Volcano, 3-4 Life Insurance Policy) and our founder acts as a combo piece as well, but we have to note here that none of Theo's suggested individual pieces are searchable! This means we're going to need to construct the deck to have the greatest chance of drawing the key components. In Magic, we find our combo pieces by playing cantrip spells like Preordain and Ponder, digging through the deck and/or shuffling useless cards away until we locate what we're looking for. When we play Yugioh, cards like Pot of Desires help clear away the chaff and put the important cards into our hand. We can't do this in Megacorp - card draw is very limited - so what we need to do is increase our percentage chance of drawing the cards we want. We'll need to do everything possible to reduce the effective size of our main deck and our resource deck, since we need cards from both of them.

Four Corp Advisor - the only raw card draw in the Welcome to Aohu set - will reduce the effective size of the main deck to thirty-six from forty, increasing our chance to draw Banshee or Life Insurance Policy, but the deck, in order to run at full power, is reliant on finding Dormant Volcano from the resource deck. The synergy between Raamaa and Life Insurance Policy is great, but without access to Dormant Volcano, the engine only makes money, it doesn't deal any damage. We normally see only one card per turn from the resource deck, so we need to find a way to play as many cards from this deck as possible, in order to ensure we see one (or hopefully, more) of our Volcanoes during the course of a game. Naturally, here, we turn to our old friends Driverless Car Fleet and Incarnate Donor, the core set's most powerful acceleration cards, in order to do this. Donor has the upside of having the #human keyword, so we can crunch it with Banshee to set a Volcano off - and it won't go to the open market where our opponent could otherwise buy it - while Driverless Car Fleet is equipment and is easily searchable by the same cards that will be searching for the Railgun Lunasys MK6 and Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier. The searching card in question is, of course, Corp Executive; the backbone of basically every deck that I build. He provides several advantages to this deck, as a powerful body that finds important cards and reduces deck size.

You're probably sick of seeing this card
as well, but there has long been a maxim
in deck building, "good decks play good
cards" and Corp Executive is a very good
card, providing card advantage along   
with hitting the opponent like a truck.

Now, I'm not biased towards Corp - I simply prefer to have access to the necessary cards when I play the game, rather than relying on the top of the deck. There are a lot of powerful equipment cards in the game that I enjoy having access to, Megacorp is not a game where you get to draw a lot of cards from the top of the deck, and Corp Executive can search up multiple cards from either the main or resource deck - and can find some from each if necessary. Running Corp Executive provides the important benefit of deck thinning, increasing our chance to draw the key cards from the deck during our draw step, and can be re-used via a #mech suit, further thinning the deck and adding to our board position. Dead Drop's ability to obtain multiple cards is a boon to the deck thinning ability of the card; if we search for, e.g. a Grenade Launcher and Guided Munitions, that's two less chances we have to draw the wrong combo piece next turn. Neither of the cards we searched for are bad cards - we want them in play to equip to Economic Hitman - but they are not the combo pieces we want to draw. It isn't worth playing a card solely for its deck thinning ability, but the search function also contributes to the deck's main strategy. We'll also need to ensure we have enough humans for Banshee to annihilate by playing plenty of basic consumers in our resource deck, which won't need any other special additions outside of the Dormant Volcano and Driverless Car Fleet cards, as our main deck is a little human-light. Raamaa, of course, can annihilate anything thanks to her Vorachai lineage, so we don't need anything to help her out aside from a fair chunk of characters.

As far as building a resource base goes, the majority of our cards have MQ trait costs; we've got a couple that include IQ and a few more that include BQ, but note that we mostly want to be doing BQ damage, to go alongside the damage of Dormant Volcano and our AOE weaponry. We'll want a healthy portion of Selfish Consumers, since Banshee, Corp Executive, Economic Hitman, Corp Advisor and Basilisk all have MQ trait costs, but the rest of the cards suggest a slant towards Compulsive rather than Savvy Consumers - partly because the good removal cards Kidnapping and Assassination Contract have MQ/BQ trait costs, and we'll definitely be running these - and partly because playing an early Incarnate Donor is far more important than playing an early Economic Hitman. What we'll essentially be playing is a Corp/Donor core combined with the firebombing Banshee core - and we probably won't have much room for extra cards on top of what we're doing with those two cores.

Let's take a butcher's hook at a preliminary deck list here:

Characters

Oh no, my Incarnate Donor appears to
have died horribly in some industrial
"accident" so pay up, scam target...
excuse me, I meant to say "Insurer"

4 Incarnate Donor

4 Corp Executive

4 Corp Advisor

2 Economic Hitman

3 Banshee

1 Basilisk

Non Characters

2 Tobias Maschinekraft Grenadier

1 Vulcan Cannon

1 Railgun Lunasys MK6

2 Horizon Industries Mining Suit

2 Guided Munitions

3 Kidnapping

1 Assassination Contract

3 Life Insurance Policy

3 Rail Gun Strike

2 Misdirection

2 Timely Interception

Resources

4 Dormant Volcano
3 Driverless Car Fleet
8 Selfish Consumers
5 Compulsive Consumers

Now, I say "preliminary" deck list, but we've hit 40 cards already, and there really isn't anything I want to be cutting from this list. It's really a question of balance, testing, and metagame specific cards for the local shop, and whether we need to enhance or reduce certain capabilities of the deck. We have the options of making changes like the following:

Trim a #mech suit or a Rail Gun Strike for some tech like Critical Hit, taking advantage of the Banshee's suppressor ability. Here we are trading consistency and the ability to flood the board, plus general damage output, for the potential of a surprise Raamaa kill.

Cut a Banshee for a Maxim Glazhov or Battle Angel, enhancing the deck's search power, the effectiveness of Guided Munitions and increasing weapon-based AOE damage, but decreasing the chance of a firebomb launch

Remove a Corp Advisor and Timely Interception for two vanilla human characters like Gnost Layman, reducing the deck's velocity and chance to draw combo pieces, and reducing defensive capability against events - Timely Interception is the stones - in exchange for increasing the reliability of Banshee annihilation and the deck's defensive capability against characters. 

Theo, let me know what you think about what I've done with this list. Is there anything you'd rather be playing in here that I haven't considered? What do you think doesn't have a place here - or have I hit the nail on the head with this build?

Don't forget to join us for Megacorp draft at Rabblemaster Games on Sunday afternoons, or constructed on Monday nights.

If you've got a deck idea you'd like doctored up, don't hesitate to submit it!

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!

Precision Targeting with Azrielle's Assassins

One of the most despised tactics in real-time strategy gaming is "turtling" which is the term for surrounding your base with six or so layers of towers in an effort to avoid being crushed by the opponent's regular units. Megacorp's use of the Surround Rule allows for a similar strategy of putting your business and founder inside a shell of other cards, for example Desert (followed by a second desert off the trigger) effectively blocking off two sides of the card in question with a 6BQ wall can make it difficult to attack; if the business is on the third side, and you're playing a deck that attacks mainly using EQ or MQ, there's only one place to get through.

Megacorp is also a game where a lot of the action happens at event (instant) speed, and what looks like a lethal attack can be avoided simply by playing Blue Chip Shares in response to a challenge and using it to block. This can be a source of frustration to players wanting to Critically Hit, for example, and founders like Luke Seti and Raamaa, who are difficult to kill at the best of times, become virtually impossible to deal with.

Certain decks are quite capable of flooding the board with seven or eight cards in the first turn or two, other decks can set up a difficult to breach perimeter without too much difficulty, and accurate play with events can prevent a lot of damage to critical cards.

So, how about we ignore all of that?

Theft and destruction

Azrielle's Assassins

1 Azrielle, Independent Enforcer
1 Corp Enterprise

4 Corp Executive
4 Tactical Vassal
2 Anubian Tracker
2 Maxim Glazhov, Cyborg Commando
1 Battle Angel
2 Michael Basa, Data Obfuscator
4 Corp Advisor

Sabotage and hacking

1 Economic Hitman

3 Guided Munitions
1 Railgun Lunasys MK6
2 Lunasys Y-1600 Lancer
2 Vulcan Cannon
2 Horizon Industries Mining SUit
1 Battle Angel Carapace
2 Railgun Strike
1 Assassination Contract
1 Armor-Piercing Ammunition
2 Misdirection
2 Timely Interception
1 Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier

4 Barracks
2 Driverless Car Fleet
2 Mangrove
9 Selfish Consumers
3 Savvy Consumers

This deck is designed, in essence, to ignore any and all defences set up by the opponent. Three Guided Munitions and the Armor-Piercing Ammunition provide any of the characters with #gun the ability to either ignore blockers with a Precision shot, or Penetrate a surrounded target - and several of the characters are naturally armed, including the high-powered Maxim Glazhov and the hand-devastating Michael Basa, Data Obfuscator. Cards like Railgun Strike, the Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier and Vulcan Cannon ignore targeting restrictions and camouflage.  Maximum numbers of Corp Executive and Tactical Vassal, supplemented by the above mentioned Maxim Glazhov and the damage triggers of Anubian Tracker, provide easy access to ammunition and weaponry - and there are no shortage of powerful weapons available for use here. Some of their tactical uses include:

2 Vulcan Cannon - for wiping out entire columns of cards; devastating when equipped to one of the Horizon Industries Mining Suits

1 Railgun Lunasys MK6 - grants Penetrator and allows for cheap deployment of Railgun Strike, wiping out entire rows (or columns) of cards and sometimes picking off a few million with the bonus Disruptor effect

1 Tobias Maschinekraft E5 Grenadier - splash damage to get around Camouflaged cards; great in the hands of Michael Basa if he can't target the business directly or gaining control of multiple cards with Economic Hitman


2 Lunasys Y-1600 Lancer - this is the tactical (and sometimes opportunistic) endgame; combined with Guided Munitions, $4m can be wiped straight off the opponent's bank balance

1 Battle Angel Carapace - which is not restricted to use by its namesake card, as the addition of Flying and Initiative is fantastic for any any card. However, it is best used in a Battle Angel's hands as it boosts the power of her scatter shot by a thousand percent - and functions as a Lunasys Y-1600 Lancer when wielded by the Angel, providing a $4m disruptor shot without having to discard a card

High risk and high reward, Barracks has
many functions and is well worth its   
exorbitant price tag, as long as you can
defend it; very low stats for a building  

While not a seriously #military deck, we do have a total of ten characters with that keyword, so Barracks is our financial engine of choice here. We don't need to draw a huge amount of cash resources from it - just enough to pay for the upkeep of the more expensive and highly effective military characters, because while it is quite capable of doing so, we aren't really playing the long game with this deck. Our goal is to make surgical strikes more than anything else; cutting cards off from connections to the business, line or scatter-shot attacks against rows or columns of weaker cards, Disruptor attacks against the opposing business when they're a little low on cash - or hit it with Michael Basa and force them to discard the last two cards they have been sand-bagging. Barracks has the additional benefit of boosting our characters' stats and providing a hiding place when they are targeted for removal, but it's not a tough building and requires a little defence. See our previous article on #military decks for tips on how to play with the card. Note that characters only need to be bonded to it during the A phase for the cash flow; they can jump out afterwards

One of the harder cards in the game to
remove - and even more than usual in
this deck - plus the correct trait scores
for wielding the deck's weapons.         

I considered a couple of different founders when creating this decklist, but Azrielle, Independent Enforcer turned out to be the ideal choice, despite the inability to make use of her main action-finding ability; we're more concerned with her ability to be a total brick wall. Azrielle, like much of the deck, has the #military keyword, so an early Barracks can begin generating cash flow for you immediately, regardless of the contents of your hand, and having that keyword means she can hide inside when targeted by removal, attacks, or abilities. Azrielle is damn near impossible to destroy at the best of times, thanks to her inability to be targeted by #unethical cards and her 3IQ stat preventing death from the likes of Telekinetic Slash and Psionic Scream, but certain cards still take her out - ironically, Assassination Contract; there is a reason why that card is the core set's best removal - so a way to remove her from being targeted will make her essentially invincible. Barracks also has the ability to redeploy Azrielle to any location when you unbond her, meaning that 2BQ can shift her from one location in your network to another very quickly, fast enough to block attacks against important cards.

Azrielle's BQ trait score of 3 also makes her tough enough to wield the Vulcan Cannon or Railgun Lunasys MK6, two core components of the deck's strategy, making her the choice over the game's other powerful cash-making founder Chi, Corp Socialite. In this deck, Chi suffers from the problem that you always want to be attacking with her to take advantage of her money-making ability. Chi is a poor defender of the Barracks, while Azrielle passively generates money while guarding it; the Vulcan Cannon and and Railgun attacks do not require use of the challenge phase.

As discussed above, our strategy in playing the deck is that of an assassin, like Azrielle herself. We'll be spending our early turns, most games, by establishing a little cash flow, finding weapons and ammunition while playing defensively. One we are properly equipped for it, we'll be making surgical strikes and targeting the opponent's weaknesses, keeping an eye out for things like the below

(Prime target here)

We want to be going after these targets, in order where possible:

1) Poor business connections in their network - we can destroy several cards for free by cutting off their connection from the business; row or column damage is ideal for this. Note that this is almost always the play that removes the most value from the opponent's network, which should be our goal in most cases.

2) Essential cash flow producers - the Automated Toll System in an #infrastructure deck, the Restaurant in a farming deck, a Barracks in the #military deck; all of these cards demand a high initial investment in return for their awesome cash flow, and destroying the core piece can cripple your opponent's entire game plan

3) Buildings such as Residential Apartments or Hotel which have other cards bonded to them, or characters with multiple mutations or holding multiple equipment. We want to obtain full value out of our strikes, hitting multiple cards where possible

 4) The opposing business. When they have low cash at the bank is the time to strike with Disruptor, wiping out the last of their reserves and (hopefully) winning the game. If you can make this play without risk then you can make it earlier in the game, but accurate risk assessment is the key here.

Essential to the deck's function; we are
playing defensively and countering the
opponent's plays; rather than going in
straight for the throat, we are patiently
waiting for an opening to rip them apart

Now this is by no means a cheap or budget deck; aside from playing a non-starter-deck founder, it's packed with rare (twelve) and exquisite (seven!) cards, pricey uncommons like Anubian Tracker and Driverless Car Fleet, and the set's most expensive uncommon, Misdirection, is an essential part of the deck alongside the Timely Interceptions. Firstly, because we are playing defensively and setting up equipment in the early turns, we can't afford someone to be taking out our Vulcan Cannons or Railguns - we need to point those attacks someplace else. Second is because of our main win condition; a single, precise shot to the heart of the business. The last thing we want to see when making that shot is an opposing Misdirection turning our lethal attack back towards our own business, especially after activating the Guided Munitions! One-shot kills in trading card games need to either be too fast to react to, or you need to have some kind of protection available; we are taking the second route here.

So if you're sick of players turtling up, flooding the board and making it impossible to attack the important targets, or sneaking in blockers at the last minute, give Azrielle's Assassins a try. It's fun being able to ignore your opponent's board state and sneaky tricks!