Fried Runner, Sunny Side Up. 2nd Place Manchester Regional

tomdidiot 574

EDIT: This deck was also piloted to 10th at UK Nationals. A misplay cost me a place in the Top 8.

This deck started off as a joke in the London meta - how much bad pub can I give out with Weyland shenanigans, then subsequently clear with Elizabeth Mills. I debuted it at Quinns' October tournament, where it was running Shinobi and Janus, where it took first after flatlining Quinns in the final with Shinobi. I have since refined it into a modern Weyland supermodernism/glacier hybrid, taking out the janky kill cards, and instead running taxing ice that is annoying to deal with such as Tollbooth (taxing in general), Lotus field (anti-anarch tech) and changeling (a pain for Pre-Paid Kate to deal with). It is important to note that this is not primarily a kill deck - it can and often will kill, but it has a valid scoring threat that makes it so the runner MUST run and force them to be vulnerable to your kill. The deck relies almost entirely on scorch for the kill threat as the agendas are too small to punitive propely (though a runner silly enough to Stimhack twice against this deck is also at serious risk of death!)

The unique aspect of this deck is the Elizabeth Mills module. It gives the Weyland deck a long game that it usually lacks by clearing bad pub. Scoring hostile takeovers will now ideally give you an early economic boost, while not gimping your money in the long term. It also allows you to actually Frack for money. Frack, install Lizzie in your scoring remote, Rez and bounce her next turn. It's clunky, but 14 creds for 4 clicks from 0 is nothing to laugh at! Lizzie also has the welcome side effect of utterly hosing Noise pawnshop decks and personal workshop decks. Once In a practice game, when I rezzed Elizabeth mills, the runner immediately pulled all his crap off his workshop and never used the workshop again, meaning I could keep bouncing Lizzie up and down and being a general nuisance.

The Lizzies and jacksons also allow you to play the sort of bullshit that HB does all the time where they drop cards into deep remotes and dare you to run at the risk of letting you score out a 3/2. The fact that you can bounce failed traps rather than having to install over them makes this far more viable.

I have taken it to 4 tournaments this year: came joint 2nd at a game night kit (it had a true strength of schedule tie with another deck), 3rd at the Rayleigh SC, and 11th at the London regional (It was also taken to a meta-mate to 4th place at the Norwich SC). In most of these tournaments, it was my runner deck that let me down in the end . In Manchester, it went 7-3 on the day, with all but one of its wins coming from Flatlines. However, in several of the cases, I could genuinely have won by scoring out (and, indeed, all its wins at the London regional came from scoring out!) - it's just that scorching was easier and funnier. Unfortunately, it decided to flood out - not once, but twice, both times against Alex White's Valencia deck, which I genetally consider a decent matchup. In the first semifinal, it still managed to score 5 before Alex top decked the winning agenda. The final itself was anti-climactic - it lasted less than 5 minutes because I mulliganed a slow hand into an awful hand with 3 agendas and no ice, an Alex just picked it clean and stole an agenda from the top of R&D before I could find a second end the run ice to replace the oversighted tollbooth he killed with D4V1D.

Kill list - Rd1 maxX, Rd 3 Chaos Theory, Rd4 Kate, Rd5 Kate, Rd 7 Kate, Top8 loser's Bracket semis Noise. I got to at least 4-5 points in all these games, and could almost certainly have won by scoring out, but the scorch combo came first.

I also won by scoring out (an atlas, a fracking, and 3 hostile takeovers) in Rd 2 against Chaos Theory.

Losses were to Kate in Rd 6 (he imped my Midseasons AND my sea source), and to Valencia in the top 8 winners bracket semi-final and final due to flooding.

Particularly memorable moments included blowing up an aesop's pawnshop against noise (I was on 4, he had thrown another one in the bin, and it's not like he was going to use it!), the classic supermodernism trick of letting someone in to steal an agenda even though you can afford to stop him just so you could sea scorch scorch, scorching a MaxX who vamped me to 0 and kept tags, having a score cleaners allowing me to scorch through a full hand and plascretes, and fracking for 14 to get a Midseasons through against a runner who thought he had more money than me.

This deck is an absolute joy to pilot. It is literally dancing on a knifepoint and very unforgiving to both players; it punishes both players for making mistakes - it punishes runners for dropping too low in creds or not running plascretes. It punishes you for misjudging scoring windows. But until it gives up 5-6 agendas, you're always in the game - it is very hard to get locked out completely because of the myriad of threats you can get onto the board, and the ever looming threat of Lizzie Mills' Urban Regeneration plans.

My thanks to all those who have helped refine the deck - particularly my sparring partners Ben Ni, Zach Eaton-Rosen (London regional champ), Laurence Watson, Kester jarvis and Laurie Poulter (aka Bubbleboy). Also thanks to Tim Fowler, Iain Reid, and Brendan Jackson for their last minute input.

The deck is also known as "worst doctor ever", because of my medical background and its tendency to flatline people.

10 comments
26 Apr 2015 moistloaf

You can't really score through remotes without Ash, though, unless followed by your single Reversed Accounts

26 Apr 2015 tomdidiot

Ash is bad in non-vegan blue sun - you're pissing loads of money up the wall that you should be saving for the SeA/midseaons on keeping the runner out once.

26 Apr 2015 tomdidiot

You really don't want to be pissing money up the wall on Ash when you could use that to Rez bigger, nastier ice, or sea/mid seasoning them. He also costs too much influence, and the deck doesn't really have room for any more upgrades - it is already uncomfortably light on ice

26 Apr 2015 sythic

Props for taking back the second scorch on Rd3 to trash my Tri-Maf Contacts for the kill instead :)

26 Apr 2015 shanodin

Nice write up. Great to have 2 viable ways of winning. Too many decks push hard for the flatline and forget they have another way to win the game!

30 Apr 2015 jcdenton71

Hi, what do you use executive boot camp for? and do you think it would be a good idea to have 1 Orion for a curtain wall?

30 Apr 2015 tomdidiot

Executive Boot Camp can be used as a Harder-to-trash Elizabeth Mills/4th Jackson during floods, or to rez your ice as anti-leela/anti-valencia tech.

30 Apr 2015 tomdidiot

As for Orion - my main problem is it is breakable with 6 by Faerie, which makes it a far less attractive oversight target. It's also breakable for less money with Lady/Corroder, and is only really good at hosing Yog runners.

5 May 2015 jcdenton71

Thanks, also wondering what you think about having a nebula as an bad pub free grim / additional oversight target? or do you think its too much investment if you're not bouncing it?

12 May 2015 tomdidiot

Nebula could be an interesting splash for Grim... Unfortunately, I think it's just a tad too expensive to be worth it, especially since you can deal with Grim's downside pretty handily.