Argus: Threatening Your Security (Gamers Den Store Champ, 1s

Congrats on your second store championship! I wish my Kate had been as well piloted as the one that beat you!

Awesome deck! I have always seen argus as a supermodernism id and this is pretty much my dream come true. I am excited to test it out.

Played it tonight at my local league despite not being my kind of Argus deck. Destroyed! Very good deck.

I have been playing mine more like a PE deck. This rush version is an interesting take.

@SecurityRake That's awesome! Glad to hear it did well for you.

Looks like a really cool deck. Might be enough to get me to move my Supermodernism-type deck out of Blue Sun. I reckon the addition of 1-2 Housekeeping could make it even nastier. Played against Housekeeping for the first time today, and as Shaper it is horrible to try and deal with. Congrats on the win :)

@CobraBubbles Yeah Housekeeping is really good, I wish I could find room for it. Possibly replacing the Power Shutdowns would work.

In one of my games I hit the unexpected PSF+The Cleaners combo with a data raven counter. Of course by the time I get all that set up, I could win any number of ways with this deck, but that was a fun one!

@SecurityRakeI think that's part of what sings about the PSF+Cleaners out of this deck. A good deck OPENS avenues for victory, it doesn't lock itself into/out of potential wins by overcommiting.

@Fictional A few questions--genuinely, not trying to poke holes in your boat:

1.) Why the one refinery? With Melange this seems somewhat redundant, no?

2.) Seems like Archived Mems is really good in this, functioning as another Scorch or other desired card.

3.) Is 3 Jackson necessary really? I assume they are there for Power Shutdowns? Were the Shutdowns key in keeping your smaller ice relevant against non-Anarchs?

4.) Ideally, how are trying to best utilize Architect in this beyond the obvious? Any cool plays out of the ordinary you are trying to set up?

5.) How instrumental were Data Ravens? Would the influence be better served for another Mideseasons which can just tag them into oblivion? Or were the Ravens formidable for their threat in tandem with the ID?

6.) What are your games like against decks that land early plascretes? The deck is only threatening Scorch and PSF if the runner just eats tags. What do you do in this situation?

Thanks!

@travisrchance I had a chance to tool around with this deck a bit last night and it proved to be pretty fun. I really like your suggestions! Here was my thoughts after my limited play time with it. This is probably the archetype I will continue to play with thought out of Argus (thanks OP!).

1.) The refinery is pretty nice in here to bait runs out. With that said I was never really at a loss for cash, so I might just ditch the refinery entirely for Melange next time I try this build. I do feel like you don't really need both. If you wanted to run a single trap, I do feel like shattered remains would be more effective and make the runner think twice about advanced cards if they trash it early.

2.)Archived Mem is a great use of influence. So many different things you could do with it. The extra scorched is probably the best play with it, but it would also enable you to play double traffic accident from hand to eat a plascrete.

3.)I swapped shutdown for Housekeeping and haven't looked back. Housekeeping is a monster of a current and really slows runners down or puts them in tight spots. The loss of a card, coupled with either the extra meat damage or the tag on steal out of this ID puts the screws to some decks early on.

4.)Architect is just to enable more rush play methinks. Its a better sentry than Errand Boy, which is probably the alternative if you wanted to put the influence into something else. Although, I typically found myself not really using it all that often. It helps me build deeper servers, which is useful but I am not completely sold on it.

5.) In the half dozen games I played with this deck, Data Ravens were not that important. They typically just resulted in an ETR ice as most runners don't want the extra tags. I will probably be going down to a one of next time I try this build.

6.) Here is something I had a bit of a problem with. The ID ability helps as runners still do not want to go full tag-me most of the time against this ID, but if you don't get a PSF scored, the deck kind of looses some serious momentum. Taurus might be a worthy include, as well as shattered remains.

@travisrchance

Oddly enough I had games where pretty much all the cards you mentioned were key. I found very little econ in one and ended up gliding on a 25-cred GRNDL for the game. Data raven might as well say "You can't run here until you have a plascrete", and that's not bad. And once in a while, they take a counter and it can win games. Dunno about Architect.

@Myriad Refinery isn't really a trap though, as it requires an action to use. So you would be down actions and credits only for them to run and trash it--unless they didn't have the credits up, which seems unlikely. This makes the card more of a risky econ venture than a viable trap--unless you wanna feint it out just to have it killed.

@travisrchance I enjoy answering any questions. Any ideas to make the deck better are always welcome.

1. The one refinery is just to bait runs if the runner outpaced me and I need to create a scoring window. This could easily be any other trap. A shattered remains in this slot would work well too.

2. Yes archived memories would work well in this deck possibly replacing one of the architects would be good.

3. I like 3 Jacksons simply because I hate playing against Noise. This is a personal choice. I think 2 Jacksons would be fine for most people. No the shutdowns were not as good as I wanted them to be. Just like @Myriad I am replacing the shutdowns with Housekeeping, I think this will work far better.

4. There are no cool plays with architect beyond the obvious, it is there to help get off to a quick start. But Mimic is rampant right now so I think going to a 1 of architect would be good enough. Or possibly replacing them with something else entirely.

5. I personally think the 2 Data Ravens are necessary. Yes they usually just end the run. But this forces the runner to find an answer before they can go through them. I usually have them on my centrals so this often means the runner is trying to get through Data Raven and not focusing on the scoring remote which I think is far more important in this deck since the plan is to rush out agendas.

6. Hopefully a runner landing an early plascrete slows their tempo allowing for a scoring chance. Otherwise trying to force them into a spot where they have to go tag me will give a you a chance to triple scorch as well.

What do you do against Anarch Eat-hole decks? Keyhole means your ID ability and Midseason will be completely worthless, and you don't have any of the cards that slow Eater down (Wraparound, Swordsman, Crisium Grid), and you even mentioned cutting the Architects. Chronos Project is nice against Maxx in particular, but not amazing against other Anarchs and even against Maxx it can be difficult to get it out at the right time.

I mean, you must have some kind of plan if you won a Store Champs with the deck. Do you find you can just score agendas fast enough to win the race against Keyhole?

@nybb There are 2 crisium grids to help against these decks. The jacksons and the data ravens are decent against this too. Also the identity is still very good against these types of decks because it costs a click to keyhole, a click to steal out of archives, and then they still have to take tags or damage which can leave them vulnerable. So it takes these decks a lot of clicks to safely steal agendas from this identity. Or a lot of time before they can get a full 7 points into archives.

If it is a matchup you have issues with you can also trade in an architect for a sea source to give you another scorch play without needing the midseasons.

@Fictional Ah, I totally missed the Crisium Grids, haha. I guess I'm used to them popping out and costing influence!

But to the main point, I think somebody playing Keyhole against this ID will probably try to just grab all the agendas they need at once, instead of going to archives to grab single agendas right after they're trashed. I guess that does slow them down a bit, so that's nice.

Try False Lead instead of chronos project?

@nybb If they let the agendas sit in archives then Jackson Howard can put them back in the deck, if they grab them right away, then they get taxed/punished.

@nybb Also, you can't have 4-7 agendas sitting there, as you will die when you try to steal them.

@Humanoids ...why would you die? You could just steal all the agendas and take a tag for each one. It wouldn't matter if you won the game immediately.

@Fictional

how do you use Melange? If you have access to Midseason Replacements (either by drawing it or having scored an Atlas) then it seems great, but what about before then? Putting it in your scoring remote seems bad because if the runner just lets it sit there then you're just giving them time to get set up by durdling instead of scoring agendas.

I also question Chronos Project over False Lead. Am I correct in thinking that was purely because you were expecting MaxX?

@Crunchums Melange is used because the scoring remote is set up pretty fast and is used while waiting for agendas to score. Another option I you want to go faster may be to replace them and find the influence room for green and blue levels.

Yes chronos project was because I expected a lot of Maxx. I have since switched over to false leads and they are definitely better.