Old article reprinted

Somewhere In-Between

Copyright © 2003 CW Kelson III (Tad) all rights reserved

April 2003

Failsafe Mag artickle

Somewhere in-between the newbies and the pros are the rest of us. Those that rank more than they skill. Trying to improve with playing in tourneys, watching the others decks, always looking for the trade to make that deck we think will rocket us to the top to rival the Top Ten in Rankings.

All these factors as well as the camaraderie we feel drive us, the ones in-between the top and the bottom to all get along and help each other out as well as play the game we love ChronX.

This column will be from my perspective, focusing on the game, elements I like, decks I make and use as well as snippets of comments and likely fiction and poetry related to the World of ChronX.

I have been around a lot longer than many. I first regged back when it was free for a while. That was sometime about mid ’97. My first character Tadster got a 4^th Anniversary HQ. Well I did not play much. And lost track of the game with the death of that PC also. Years went by and somewhere I saw a link to www.chronx.com It reminded me that I had enjoyed the game. So wandered over and re-registered and got a registration for my son, JPK, and started back in. A couple of hundred dollars later here I am. Now just last year I was ripping that old machine apart. The one that first had CX on it. It has been a few years since I had cracked the case, and pulled the old second HDD out. Popped it into my current machine and there was the old CX character. So I moved that old one, Tadster, to my new machine, did a few swaps from character to character and here I am in my most current incarnation.

I realize I have not a lot of advice to post to those that have been around less than I have. Will try as well as do what I do best from a coaching perspective, foster good will, teamwork and sportsmanship. So within my faction, TAA, I will strive for sportsmanship among my faction mates as well as my fellow in-between-ers as we strive to make it to the Top 10 or greater.

For the first meat of my column I will present my current favorite deck to play.

I call it Cultist Recycle. I have yet to win with it except versus the trainer. Still the idea and the concept are sound just that no one plays me in world and lets me take the 40 or so turns for I to get up to steam before they beat my HQ into burning rubble. The idea is simple. Get the Ruka Dogs, Sarkov Escorts out and in the same city as the Cult of Purification. Then you just keep adding on to get Purifying Horrors. When you need to kill them off and bring them back with the Orpheus AI to constantly increase how many Cultists there are to speed up getting Horrors. Works great in theory. The AI also helps in recycling assets that die. The Organlegger is nice to rob from your opponent and the rest are there for support or defense or resource generation.

This deck works best on the world map. It is a bit slow for Europe. I have played it once versus the Trainer in Antarctica. Worked pretty well until the 7^th Air Cavalry Strike took out my Headquarters. It should work ok on the Ice and Snow unless someone is running like the Bion HQ with all mechanical assets. Against a UN Deck if you can get a few horrors into their HQ and Poison Gas and take out most of the defense then the Horrors should pound it pretty nicely into rubble. It is took slow for Asia and way too slow for Pacifica or America. Too many changes to make it suitable for NS Sprawl.

It took me buying 2 Cults of Purification from Mickey Finn, trading for 2 more, and more cash to get a full 4 of each of the Purifying Assets to get it started. Bought the 2 AI cards and some more trades have allowed it to make the current configuration.

Now on to what cards are in this deck:

Qty Card

1 Andrea Nara

4 AP Mine

2 Autocannons

2 Birth Cry

1 Casualty Insurance

4 Covert Ops Contract

4 Cult of the Purification

1 Erratus Librarian

2 Erratus Monk

1 Fourth Anniversary HQ

4 H. Thalmann

4 Kaikei

2 Napalm Strike

3 NSA Franchise

3 Ops Center

1 Organlegger

2 Orpheus AI

4 Ruka Dogs

1 S. I. Kobylka

1 Saiko Komon

4 Sarkov Combine Escort

3 Satellite Imagery

2 Sentience

4 Silent Sentinel

2 Sniffer Spores

4 Tinker Base

1 UN Intelligence Center

2 Tithe

1 Yakusa Contract

It runs a little low on resources at the start. The opening draw is very important. I have yet to win with the deck but if given some time to get the Horror generation started then it is not too bad. If you wanted to change the defense to more mechanically inclined then you could rely more on the Horrors to do defense with the poison gas if you have like all immune assets instead of my Silent Sentinels and other assets.

The Yakusa are there to generate Covert via Kaikei and the Covert Ops Contract. Saiko Komon is there to draw out Tithe once you find their HQ to slow them down and generate more resources to fund the Orpheus AI and the recycling of dead assets into the Cult foundry. Once I get the Orpheus AI into play I tend to get a little cavalier about asset death. Since the plan is to recycle them back in if Ruka Dogs die then I get 2 for the price of 1. Which is the whole point of the deck.

I rarely actually use the Sentience as it obliterates the assets. The dual duty of Cultist and Birth Cry is excellent since becoming a cult member leaves those assets tapped. This deck used to sport 2 Turem Centers which should most likely go back in. Though they came out in the quest to thin the deck overall it does detract from the recycling purpose to a great degree. At 70 cards it is fat compared to the majority of decks I see and play against. So I rarely win with it. But I have fun which is my main focus.

Next column will feature how I like to design ideas, where some of my ideas come from as well as another deck to illustrate.