[Scholar/Crime] Deck: Rancor

[rha737]

text format:
agent
4 malfatto
3 leonardo da vinci
3 mario auditore
3 giovanni auditore
2 fabio orsini

site
5 merchant ship

action
5 plentiful crop
4 tactical upheaval
4 scientific espionage
3 in-depth analysis
4 impending pandemic
5 discreet calling
5 forced charity

first off i need to admit this deck inspiration came from tuism. although i've never actually played against his deck, i've seen posts on here speaking of a deck that used fabio orsini along with some bounce effects to maximize damage. that initial thought got the gears turning and i decided to try something in the same vein. so far, i have to say this deck works EXTREMELY well against all types of decks except possibly counter. i've had no issues against site decks, discard, rush, late-game finishers, etc, and have practically gone undefeated.

the deck completely throws away the early game for a late game domination by slowly executing all opponent cards on the field while building up massive card advantage. the deck can feel a little slow due to this, as you tend to have to rely on Da Vinci or Ezio to finish the game, but since the deck draws insanely well (especially when bouncing Da Vinci), it's not unusual to have 10-15 cards left in your sequence once the game ends.

impending pandemic is mostly for emergency situations, as well as bitter sweet. i just play as many income boosters as possible in the first few days, then drop an auditore (whichever is more needed), followed by a malfatto and then begin swarming mercenaries all the same time clearing the opponent's side of the field. usually, by late game, the opponent is sitting on about 0-2 cards in hand and 0 on the field, compared to your 6-12 cards in hand and 6 agents on field.

[Brontobeuf]

While I understand the attraction of Knowledge is Power, Rosa and forced Charity, my suggestion to improve this deck would be to add some Plentiful Crop (dropping KIP is maybe the best option).
You have a strong drawing power, so it should not be an issue to grab the card advantage back.

This deck is just like my first good deck (6 months ago ^^), and I remember that ressources early game were the only issue I faced. I was playing only one Fabio, maybe 3 is a good idea.

[rha737]

thats a very good point. i will test play with plentiful crop over knowledge is power, since the draw power seems a little redundant with this kind of massive advantage building. it is extremely powerful to have control over sites and agents via auditores AND then scientific espionage for any actions that can throw off your loops.

plentiful crop would definitely help me save those precious starting gold for an earlier rosa in fiore/forced charity.

[The Rancord]

Calling a deck rancor, when im roaming the forums.... Tsk tsk tsk

[rha737]

hahaha it completely slipped my mind! apologies good sir

[Tuism]

Cool take on my star deck! I must say I still don't like malfatto despite the synergy he does have with the action agents, but that's probably a more personal thing and I don't like rosa in fiore, too slow for my liking and it sacrifices card advantage. Sure card advantage is already maxed out in a deck like this, but I feel you can't have enough in case of a tough matchup

And I avoid in depth these days cos of espionage being everywhere like a bad smell

But these are all personal meta game choices really

[Brontobeuf]

Malfatto is awesome dude. Such a pain for Crime decks.

[rha737]

Tuism: yea, if i'm playing against green, i always make sure to have an espionage in hand if i'm playing an in-depth analysis in the late-game; that way you can just steal it back

i'm testing rosa in fiore out these days. the +3 is kind of massive, but it's either this or merchant ship, as having a site as an income booster is pretty crucial for letting giovanni and ezio auditore out against non-site decks.

so far i've had no complaints with malfatto; i actually can't imagine playing this deck without him!

[Tuism]

Actually I've tweaked my deck and made a version with Malfatto since reading your iteration, and it worked really well over lunch Not that I've had anyone decent to test against yet, will have to do later I find that having Malfatto increases the number of choices to consider tenfold, which is both a good thing and also leads to analysis paralysis - half the time I end up not doing anything I just gotta get used to it

I agree this deck neeeeeeeds lots of resources, which is what my previous deck also had, but with a different card set. Will have to see!

Good one dude

[UnCL0NED]

I've been thinking about putting Honest Worker in my Bounce deck. Exactly what Tuism says... You need the resources in a bounce deck. Honest Worker might give it that boost to make it kick in earlier... Thoughts?

[Tuism]

Try it out, I think this deck needs the early burst more than the later +3 gold a day, but lemme know how it goes

[rha737]

i will need to play test honest worker more, but i did have that idea of using him, since malfatto's effect activation cost is exactly what honest worker provides

i did make minor tweeks to the deck; found a way to fit plentiful crop in and reduced the total number of unique cards from 15 to 13, so it gives a more focused direction of play in the deck. with plentiful crop, speed has been improved, but i find myself losing to site decks more (although this is probably completely unrelated lol).

getting 2 Da Vinci out and then using Pandemic can create some very pleasant card draw effects. Also, de-buffing Carlo/Lanz and then stacking Orsini to finish them off is great. Against Agent decks, this deck seems to run into few problems; it's just counter-heavy site decks that are giving issues. site rush loses to this interestingly; it's really only when a site deck has consistent solutions to giovanni that this deck just gets shut down.

edit: oh yea, one more use for pandemic: use it to double the income value of your rosa in fiore. after i have 2-3 rosa in fiore in play, if i am still a bit hungry on income (sitting around 8-14 income), i like to play pandemic if i am in a position to gain advantage, and that allows me to get another tremendous income boost (6-9 more).

[rha737]

some minor tweaks, again:

merchant ship put in place of rosa in fiore—ability to gain +2 on day 0 seems more important than i originally conceived.
tactical upheaval put in place of knowledge is power—same card draw, but synergizes well with orsini to give him some punch.
in-depth analysis put in place of bitter sweet—playing both merchant ship and plentiful crop requires some more direct card advantage rebuilding. also, there were times when it was redundant to have malfatto and bitter sweet both lying around; i would rather have pandemic in those kinds of situations.

pandemic is a very hard card to play...requires some psychic abilities on your behalf sometimes.

[Ringel]

Inspired by this thread, I decided to give a variation on this deck a go (it uses Thieves Guild). It is heckafun once it gets going.

[rha737]

oh man that just sounds evil. post the list if testing goes well. cheers mate