Demo Decks

by Greg Dglas Teed

I'd like to provide a few deck designs that I have been developing for use in demos.

Firstly, there are a few principles I decided to adhere to when designing these:

  1. Include only common/vital cards so that the decks may be easily constructed out of spare cards any local "card lord" (or reasonable hand-drawn facsimile) would have as extras;
  2. Adhere to a three-of-a-card limit. This provides order and structure for the deck as well as making it more understandable for players of "that other game." (Unfortunately, we must work to thee lowest common denominator). As an aside, it also provides coherent deck designs for new players who want to try their hand at a restricted tournament. As a matter of interest,
  3. Each deck will have a strong theme (as recommended by Whirley). This promotes playability in the deck and permits for simple in-deck goals that help illustrate how subthemes help promote victory in play. For example, in the "Information is Power" deck, cards are included which reveal or expose installed cards. This helps the Runner in his decision making, which makes for much more precise and effective runs.

Also, since the deck designs are open for public display, demoers might want to write up the contents on, say, recipe cards and distribute them to would be players.

For the true card lords, who have tons of each of these cards, decks can be constructed specifically to be given away to new demo participants in order to encourage further play. This is probably the most effective means of getting someone to continue playing a game.

If you folks like these decks, I'll create brief write-ups on how to play them. You know and I know, but absolute weefs might not know, eh?

Corporation Decks

The astute will notice that the Corp decks are not "maximally efficient;" not as well thought out at the Runner decks. Remember that these are demo decks and that, initially, Corp decks seem more powerful than Runner decks. I thought I'd even things out a bit for initial play. I will probably refine these some more in the near future.

Big Ice Corp

Psycho Tycho (Shareware version)

Tag 'n' Bag/ Dain Bramage

Gotcha!

Dawgs of War

Runner Decks

Runner decks are broken down into two types: Draw Engines and Search Engines. Search engines rely upon The Short Circuit to get programs and Mantis, Fixer-at-Large to get The Short Circuit. This engine is used primarily with program heavy decks like Stealth and Clowns. Draw engines are meant for program light decks that rely upon getting through lots of cards relatively quickly. These decks will have Cruisings for Netwatch and Stakeouts included as well as a single Crash Everett, Inventive Fixer. Note that both deck styles will have Jack'n'Joes - three guesses why... ;)

Each deck uses three sets of identical breakers, I've tried to make each deck significantly different from the others. Each deck also includes six "utilities" which include one base link, one deck, either a Crash Everett, Inventive Fixer or The Short Circuit, some sort of damage prevention and some sort of tag avoidance. In some cases, one or more of these slots might be used to enhance the theme of the deck (for example, the "Information is Power" deck).

Each of these "Shareware" decks are designed to help teach the game. Note, however, that when using these decks as teaching tools, the demoer must exercise care. He/she will know almost precisely how to beat each deck. This would be true in almost any event, of course, but especially so in these cases because the card selection is so limited. Along these lines, I found that I can win most games when these decks are involved, so I have put together omni commons/vitals decks for my use which should be significantly less powerful than these demo decks.

Breakers 'n' Bitz 'n' Bitz 'n' Bitz...

Clowns

Information is Power

Big Dig

Stealth

Back to The Main Page