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Cortical Scrub: One Turn Wonder

Created by Scott Dickie

It has been a very gruelling match for you, the honorable Corp. That lowlife Runner has brought you down to the wire. The score is 0-6, you are losing. Somehow you've managed to get to the last card in your R&D without anyone winning (for any one of a number of reasons, it doesn't matter which). As you start what will be your final turn of the game, you draw your last card, bringing the number of cards in your hand up to 6. You eye the Runner's cards on the table: full icebreaker suite, several good money cards, ample tag protection and linkage. Then you examine your own side of the table: not a single card installed! Most of your deck is in the Archives. It doesn't look good. Then, in an explosion of intuition, it dawns on you. You can still get out of this with a win, and all in this last turn of the game!

The challenge to this puzzle is not to figure out how you can win (by scoring at least 7 agenda points) in one turn, but how to do it while requiring the lowest possible number of bits with which to pull it off. You are starting with 0 agenda points (you have not scored any agendas), nothing installed, no possibility of tagging and/or bagging the runner, anything you want in your Archives, no cards left in R&D, 6 cards in your HQ, and the following additional restrictions:

Beginners Level:
No additional restrictions. You can have any 6 Corp cards you want in your hand, and any number of each card.

Intermediate Level:
You can have any 6 Corp cards in your hand, but only one of any given card.

Advanced Level:
You can have only one of any given card, and those cards can be any Corp cards except Tycho Extension.

Once youhave solved each level, see if you can do it again with fewer bits to start with. The best I've been able to come up with is a minimum of 13, 20, and 22 bits for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced levels, respectively. (In my 22 bit Advanced solution, I still had 9 bits left over! Can you match that?)


Created on: August 1, 1998 
Last updated on: August 1, 1998
Created by: Scott Dickie <codeslinger@mail.com>