Hello, And welcome to another Deck Diving! Today we’ll be looking at one of the new “one breaker” decks running around at the moment, this one being a Darwin build out of Whizzard.
So, this is one of a trend of Runner decks using just one breaker (Atman, Darwin or Crypsis) for their breaking rig, leaving them memory room for other programs and only needing to get to one card to have a full rig setup. The weakness of single breaker is you need some extra setup. Darwin is the simplest of these: He simply needs some time and some strength boosts to be able to break things. The rest of the deck becomes support for the breaker: money, strength boost, and tutors.
The Darwin deck can be run out of both Whizz and Noise: the Noise iteration having more Virus support, and often just milling the deck until there’s enough in the discard pile for one massive Archives run that wins the game. I have chosen Whizzard because I like his economic attack: unless playing against Weyland Operation economy Whizzard’s ability puts pressure on the Corp to protect their economic assets as an unprotected asset can so easily be trashed. This leads to less ICE protecting the centrals, where you want to be running. Get some Mediums running and you can make a bomb run on R&D.
On to the deck!
Identity:
Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead)
Total Cards: (47)
Event (11)
Deja Vu (Core #2) x2
Retrieval Run (Future Proof #101) x2 These two are best for getting back parasites and trashing as much ICE as possible/bringing it more into Darwin’s reach. Unlike Noise, Archives will likely be free reign for Whizz, letting Retrieval Run go off much more successfully.
Stimhack (Core #4) x2 When you absolutely, positively have to break into that server, accept no substitute.
Sure Gamble (Core #50) x3
Surge (Humanity’s Shadow #81) x2 Great for boosting Darwin quick, or finishing off a parasite when the Corp wasn’t expecting so they can’t purge.
Hardware (8)
Cyberfeeder (Core #5) x3
Grimoire (Core #6) x2
The Personal Touch (Core #40) x3 ■■ Boost Darwin permanently.
Program (21)
Darwin (Future Proof #102) x3
Datasucker (Core #8) x3 Bring ICE into Darwin range. Archives is good for a few free counters, though a smart Corp will quickly ICE it up to stop this. This is fine as it means less ICE on R&D.
Djinn (Core #9) x2 Tutor up Darwin/ have more Viriises running around.
Imp (What Lies Ahead #3) x3
Medium (Core #10) x3
Parasite (Core #12) x3
Yog.0 (Core #14) x1 1 Yog cause it’s just *so* dumb against code gates.
Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control #46) x3 ■■■ More Tutor.
Resource (7)
Ice Carver (Core #15) x2 Cut ICE into Darwin size.
Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow #91) x2 This deck really wants the bomb economy for one massive run. Kati is perfect for that strategy.
Liberated Account (Trace Amount #22) x3
Influence Values Totals –
Anarch: 72
Criminal: 0
Shaper: 15
So there’s a sample Single Breaker Darwin deck. Due to the deck room and reliability provided by these single breaker decks expect to see more of them as the game continues. The extra RAM room provided to play other programs is a great boon, if nothing else.
As before, if there are any types of decks you’d like to see covered in these articles feel free to let me know in the comments section.
Happy Hacking!
I think this is an interesting build, but I can’t help but feel you would be better served using a third copy of Deja Vu and a third of Surge or Stimhack over the Retrieval runs. Versus Anarch most corps will throw down at least 1 or 2 ice to keep them out of Archives, and should definitely put two down vs. Noise. This will make the Ret-Runs harder to execute.
It’s Whizzard, so unless you have some datasuckers going it’s unlikely Corp’s going to bother ICE-ing archives. That said, ya, Ret Run might be better switched for a number of different cards. Since this is a sample deck I’d rather go a couple of two ofs and let the player see what they want to cut and what they want to buff based on their playstyle. By all means, don’t assume this is a tuned deck: I’m doing far too many of these to tune every deck I post 😛
Thanks for the Feedback!