Focus on the Prize Deck

[frankcastle_appa]

Here's a fun deck I made when reboot came out. This deck is built around the program focus, which gives all local assets deadshot equal to the lowest cyberaffinity asset in the city. For those of you new to the game, deadshot means that if your attacking asset simply survives the attack, the original target of the attack takes damage equal to the amount of deadshot the attacking asset possesses.

With this in mind, I chose assets which have a higher cyberaffinity and are likely to survive a blocking attempt. I kept the minimum cyberaffinity of the deck at 6, so that the minimum deadshot I'll get is +6. Cards like gaean crusader are ideal as he would survive all but the beefiest defenders and can regenerate fully at the end of the turn. Shiden tech fits amazingly into this deck as he has 8 hit points and armor 3, also meaning that your opponent will need a beefy defender or a group block to kill him. Assets like Gaean preator are also wonderful as he increases the armor of your monastery assets increasing the probablity that they survive an attack.

Don't be afraid to use focus at your headquarters. It will make active defense a breeze. You are weak to sabotage, but you should be able to set yourself up to deal with it via active defense. There is a modest amount of perception in this deck with the nanodyne runners.

Cards like mountain monastary seem like a good fit, but you'd have to swap the bases around, and I've never been able to get it as fast as it is in this form doing so. Feel free to change it to deal with the current metagame.

Don't run focus until you need it as a general rule. This way it is immune to core control officer and manus removal. It will also reveal the location of your HQ.

Note that multiple foci are devastating in a city.

Lets say you get 8 attackers in the city with just 1 focus. With a deadshot of +6, your opponent MUST make sure he kills 4 of your attacking assets minimum to save his HQ as 4 attackers surviving would do 24 damage to the HQ. The game is over though if he cant block all of your assets if 4 assets will survive.

With two foci in play he must kill 6. Assuming he can block all of your assets this leaves his HQ with 1 HP. The deck is designed to plop a bunch of assets at the enemy HQ, so this scenario could be a reality.

With three in play you get the idea.....

Enjoy......

4   Gaean Crusader
4   Gaean Praetor
4   Nanodyne Runner
4   Shiden Tech
4   Turem Acolyte
4   Shiden Acolyte
4   Focus
2   Build Site
4   CorporateSoft(tm) DevCampus
4   Corporate Regional Offices
2   Rakan Development Center
 

[LongShadow]

Focus is a fun card. Doesn't really cut it in open format, DHQ really diminishes it's usefulness because it only works locally. Quite expensive to run also.

That said, a great use is a Focus "Bob" using Codeslinger or Saro (vet) along with David's Sling. Any 1 FP asset would do the trick with a mnemonic upgrade pumped up high enough. David's Sling gets you by anything with more than 1 HP, and Focus provides all the damage.

Erratus HQ is also a nice fit with Focus, but the deck needs to supply some mil resources. Nice thing is anything can run Focus if you give it a backdoor authorization.

[Donbo]

Here's a version I've been tinkering with
2   AP Mine
2   AP Turret
1   CERT
1   Craven Armored Battalion
4   Mobile Six Team Blue
2   Mobile Six Team Gold
2   Mobile Surgical Team
4   Silent Sentinel
1   UNMF Dreadnought
4   CyberRig
4   Focus
3   Alliance Encampment
2   Build Site
1   Corporate Regional Offices
1   E-Mart
2   Ops Center
2   RakanWare Superstore
2   Utopia Command Post

Basic idea use cyberrig in combo with mobile six blue.
make sure you use only Fus assets at the enemy hq.
Since mobile 6 will usually be alive after combat you can do some decent damage with this combo.
I havent been able to make it work in a real game yet tho :/

[frankcastle_appa]

It's definitely a cool idea, but I think there are two main problems in making it work as is:

1) It doesn't really come close to rolling until around turn 8 (in my trainer trials)
2) It needs to generate a TON of military AND cyberaffinity (this is much more difficult than covert and cyber, for example to get)

Some things that may help:

With the base distribution split between FUS and CORP, corporate regional offices and the utopia command post are likely going to sit in your hand for a while. Corporate regional offices has the advantage since it can be used on top of build site, but you generally don't want to do that. Consequently these cards could stay in your hand until turn 5 when you played a common base from build site. I didn't like the feel of that.

The CERT is topdeck, but he doesn't have the cyberaffinity to run focus, which I assume is the "focus" of your deck He won't get a cyberaffinity bonus from the cyberrig either. What does he do? The extra card slot he is taking from your opening draw isn't worth it in my opinion.

I think you should remove the dreadnaught and craven. They cost a ton of military and its military you need to run focus, attack and deploy cards. Worse than that, one is not FUS and they don't benefit from cyberrig. Meaning that these cards early on actually delay your win condition. With the military savings, you would be better served with 4 texas wartechs. Focus could end up being an important part of defending your base! You don't want that not being an option. Wartech will give a nice bonus right off the bat. Wartechs and cyberrig is really nice. Aside from armor, will do more damage than either of these.

AP mine and turret won't help much either since one is UN and neither will benefit from cyberrig.

Surgical Team wont benefit from cyberrig since they're UN.

Combined, this makes the deck quite slow to bring out. I would suggest some of the following changes.

Here's how I might rework your deck a little bit:

Remove CERT, (think strongly about texas wartech to improve your win condition)
Remove Dreadnaught (maybe fill in with military surplus)
Remove Craven Armored Battalion (maybe fill in with military surplus or add texas wartechs)
Remove AP turret, replace with silver star ranger
Remove Mobile Surgical Team (maybe use charles doremann, itll spread out the resource requirements a bit and he can benefit from cyberrig)

Of course american union citizen is also cute as he draws a card and is FUS.

I seemed to have decently improved some of the base issues by using the following bases:

2 Build Site
4 NSA Franchise
4 Alliance Encampment
2 Utopia Command Post
2 Wartech Training Grounds
1 E-Mart


Its possible that you don't even need the utopia command posts and can throw in a cheap asset or more common bases(american union citizen perhaps).

[Game Keeper]

to Donbo:

Your idea is nice, you just need to build the deck around it. You have a lot going on in that deck instead of adding cards that complement your idea. I would suggest cheap FUS assets like Utopia Trooper, and maybe a  texas wartech to run the program. If you are using Focus, that needs to be the source of your damage, and not cravens and dreadnoughts.

[frankcastle_appa]

I definitely think the idea is cool, just wanted to provide some help

[Game Keeper]

You were more thorough than I was...

I think it's a common mistake to add "fun cards" to a deck that doesn't use them like CERT, Dreadnought and Craven. Most of them are deserving of their own deck, instead of being crammed together in one deck like an episode of Big Brother.

[Donbo]

Thanks for the advice Ill switch it up a bit.

I just like trying weird stuff from time to time...
Like my emminent resources deck...don't even get me started on that stinker ;p

[frankcastle_appa]

This deck seems like a natural for FUS(Alliance) HQ

[Game Keeper]

It's definitely worth trying... just remember Monastery and UN cards lose you 1/1/1, so try to minimize them aside from Focus.