Card of the Day

Written by Foolkiller

This card, actually a recent "discovery" of mine, is a surprising sleeper Operation card for the Corp. The optimal card to consider with this one is Corporate War.

The idea here is to accumulate 7 or 19 bits, whichever you can get to, and then use Overtime Incentives (O.I.) to gain the extra time needed to install a Corp War and score it manually in three actions. This leads to a total of 2 cards, 7 bits and 5 (3 "normal" + 2 extra) actions to score a 3 point agenda and gain 0 or 12 bits.

Proceed as follows:

0: Draw
1: Play O.I. (4) Gain *2.
2: Install Corporate War
3: Advance Corporate War (1)
*4: Advance Corporate War (1)
*5: Advance Corporate War; score! (1)
Gain 12 bits and 3 agenda points.

The advantages to this approach are manifold. Its cheaper then Management Shake-Up. Its easier than trying to get Artificial Security Directors scored FIRST, to enable the one-turn Corp War. Its easier and faster than using Weapons Depot to get Corporate War (and less vulnerable).

Another excellent advantage is it allows you to concentrate your ICE on HQ and R&D early, when its most important. You need to get one subsidiary fort built just in case some yahoo plays with a bunch of Precision Bribery cards with Time to Collect, but other than that, you don't need to build Subsidiary Forts. I use bit nodes to fuel this concept (like Rockerboy Promotion and BBS Whispering Campaign) so these forts also serve as "placeholders" against Precision Bribery.

Two O.I. can also score a Tycho Extension manually for a total of 12 bits (same as Project Consultants) so you can combine agenda types, but Corp War makes a better choice overall.

Using O.I. for any purpose other than scoring is not at all economical and should be avoided at all costs. Be prepared to use it only for scoring purposes and it will serve you well.

Other agendas work with O.I. as well, though not as elegantly as Corp War. These include:

1. Corporate Downsizing
2. Artificial Security Directors (go figure...)
3. Genetics-Visionary Acquisition
4. Hostile Takeover (on second thought, don't do that!)
5. Marine Arcology (not a bad investment actually)
6. Executive Extraction
7. Project Babylon (nah...)
8. Project Zurich (um, no..)
9. Security Purge (hmmm, tastes good)

That's it. Obviously some of these work MUCH better than others. Marine Arcology is not a bad card to use to get a slow bit engine going, and Security Purge is nice if you also have Planning Consultants but its a rare card and it requires devotion of part of your deck to setting up for the score. Since Artificial Security Directors is also a rare card, this setup makes a really good speed strategy available to players that don't have vast card resources.

Overall, Corporate War makes the perfect match for O.I. If you take the time to build up to 19 bits before initiating your first score you will always end up on top (5 bits more each time you score) giving you extra cash to rez ICE. A nice compliment to O.I. are upgrades which protect HQ and R&D (such as Simon Francisco) so that the Runner will have a hard time getting your Agendas in the only places where they have a chance to score. Red Herrings and Rio de Janeiro City Grid are some other good compliments (due to their low rez cost and deterrent capability).

O.I. is a card with a narrow purpose, but I've found it serves in some very specific decks better than any other card of its type. For this reason, I say the card is very good, but must be used selectively.