Admin Deploy
Admin Deploy is a common Max card and one of Max's starting cards.
Description
Costs 1 energy. When played:
- 1. Play your leftmost card for free, then Exhaust it.
Upgrades
Admin Deploy A
Costs 0 energy. When played:
- 1. Play your leftmost card for free, then Exhaust it.
Admin Deploy B
Costs 1 energy. When played:
- 1. Choose a card in your hand. Play it for free. (Don't Exhaust it.)
Clarification
Admin Deploy's target is considered played for 0 Energy in every sense of the word after this card finishes resolving. For example:
- 1.Gemini will toggle its cannons once for Admin Deploy, then toggle again for the played card
- 2. Autopilot/Tiderunner will trigger for Admin Deploy, then the targeted card resolves, and then Autopilot/Tiderunner will trigger again for the targeted card
- 3. Avid Reader will see 2 cards played
- 4. Zero Doubler, if it hasn't triggered yet, will double the effect of the played card (though note that Admin Deploy A will take the Zero Doubler effect itself)
Admin Deploy can play Unplayable cards. Most unplayable cards have no effect, but will be Exhausted (or in the case of Admin Deploy B, discarded). Admin Deploy can play Avid Reader for its normal effect while circumventing its cards played requirement.
Strategy
Admin Deploy is one of Max's starter cards, and one that frankly has a tendency to get in the way a lot of the time. In the starting deck, its "play for free" isn't very impressive since it costs as much Energy as all other cards in your hand, barring perhaps Drake's EMP Slug or Riggs's Scramble.
Note that the leftmost card in your hand isn't completely random, especially if Max is one of your pilots: cards that you Retain from last turn will end up on the left during your next turn. This includes things like Toggle Cannon, Jupiter's Moons, and perhaps a Spacer — all terrible targets for this card (especially Jupiter's Moons, which can cause you to lose the run!) (System Security is one example of a decent target for this card that retains, but there aren't many natural ones.) Reroll and other hand-shuffling effects can mitigate this issue somewhat, but not necessarily reliably.
Admin Deploy also has interesting ramifications on the Gemini and the Tiderunner, who care about card plays, and those two ships will "see" both this card and its target being played, which can be situationally useful.
Sticky Note can be used to give an expensive card like Strafe, Clean Exhaust, or Stun Charge Retain, allowing it to become an easy target for Admin Deploy (but this is dependent on you drawing Admin Deploy on a later turn than those cards).
This card can be removed, or its upgrades can both carve out more consistent niches for it.
Assuming the Retain issue isn't a problem, its A upgrade is an Energy cheat on the turn you play it, allowing it to hit something more expensive than it most of the time. This works well if your plan is to play every card you draw (and your average card cost is high enough to justify this card not doing anything on its own).
Its B upgrade instead lets you choose the target, making it a more reliable way to cheat expensive cards into play. It does need to be drawn with them, but Max does have ways of making this happen consistently — Math.Max will often accomplish this, especially if you've kept your deck thin. Sticky Note, if found, can be applied to this card (or its desired target) to make this more reliable, and if Sticky Note and Lightspeed Boot Disk are both applied to Admin Deploy B, you'll be able to reliably cheat any card into play the moment you draw it for just 1 Energy.
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