Polish HB (1st & undefeated @ Wrocław Regionals)

Matuszczak 2298

An extremely strong, consistent and flexible build that is very popular among Poland's top players, but not yet widely played worldwide. Jander, Selverin, myself and a few others all had a lot of success with various versions of this build.

EtF offers an insane ability that essentially gives the corp a credit every turn, very solid economy with the Campaigns and the best ICE package in the game. The only thing missing is Caprice, which is now mandatory for any deck that aims to win by slow advancing agendas. I used the remaining 4 influence for Tollbooths that are simply the best expensive pieces of ICE in the game. Alternatives include, but are not limited to Crisium Grid, Cortex Lock, Power Shutdown, Blacklist, Ice Wall or even Sweeps Week and the choice is heavily dependent on the meta as well as personal preference.

In my opinion the greatest strength of the deck is the flexibility it offers. It can play as a glacier, as a rushy deck and as everything in between depending on the matchup and the card draw.

I recommend to try the deck: it is crazy good and fun to play.

Went 8-0 in the Wrocław Regionals, hard-carrying me through Swiss and then leading me to tournament victory. HB bet Stealth Hayley, 2 Net-Ready Whizzards, Stealth Andy and Oracle May Ken in Swiss. In the cut it beat Leela and 2 Reg-Ass MaxX.

27 comments
28 Jun 2015 prozz

I like playing it with Project Vitruvius instead of Accelerated Beta Test. Very easy to overadvance and profit from them. Props to guys for inventing it, very good deck!

28 Jun 2015 iloveMRT

Most annoying shit around those days. Play for profit.

28 Jun 2015 Matuszczak

@prozz It surely is a very close call, ABT is just personal preference. I usually install-advance it anyway, to threaten using the ability with Jackson in hand or just to maximize use of ID. I know for a fact that @Jander plays 2 of each, 3 Vitruvius & ABT seems reasonable as well.

28 Jun 2015 Humanoids

Something I have trouble is understanding NEXT Gold. How often do you find yourself using it? Isn't 2 copies too much? And haven't you run into a lot of Net-Ready Anarchs?

28 Jun 2015 Matuszczak

@Humanoids Granted, NEXT Gold is expensive and often has a terrible rez/trash ratio. You get a huge threat and a buff to the Silver's and Bronze's for the money, however. I was considering cutting one for an Ichi 1.0 and I'm happy I didn't. It's poor against Shapers and Stealth Criminals, but very good in other matchups including Net-Ready Anarchs (I played 4 yesterday). They need to find their NRE and still have to live in constant fear of Troubleshooter. It actually won me every game in the cut, two of them by trashing 2 crucial programs, the other one by flatline, but in that one I have managed to lock MaxX out anyway.

29 Jun 2015 IonFox

Once The Underway comes out, would you put Marcus Batty in? If so, what would you remove? Great deck btw, congratulations on your victory.

29 Jun 2015 Matuszczak

@IonFox He looks excellent on paper, I'll definitely try. 1 Caprice, 2 Batty seems reasonable. I might cut an Ash or a Troubleshooter, leaning towards keeing Troubleshooter, but not sure yet.

29 Jun 2015 apo

Not sure if Batty fits into Polish HB.

NEXT Gold can be forced out with Troubleshooter influence free, since the deck has more than enough dough to do it. On the other hand if used to ETR, Batty is just a worse Caprice.

When playtesting 2x Batty version I would definitely cut Troubleshooter, as 3x NEXT Gold enforcing cards is too much I think (it's not something you can do until midgame).

1 Jul 2015 Matuszczak

@apo I believe he does, but I might be overhyping Batty. Troubleshooter and Batty are not only Gold-triggering cards, though. Half of the time I just use them on etr ICE.

1 Jul 2015 apo

@Matuszczak Fair enough. I'd rather keep the second Booth, but hey - I got no experience piloting this deck after all :).

BTW, what's the reasoning behind 2x Wall of Static? Just Lady hate? I kind of liked how Turing and/or IQ complemented the ICE suite in previous iterations.

1 Jul 2015 Sjone

I really like this deck. I am playing EFT BB variation as well. I like the surprising Gold with Troubleshooter. I would really love to see here also one Will-o-the-Wisp and one Biotic Labor. For these I would change agenda set to 2x ABT, 2x Vitrivius, 1x Eden and 3x PriReq. What do you think about it? Does it worth to drop NAPD?

1 Jul 2015 Aerosaucer

I've been playing a close variant on this deck for months (since Gold came out - before breaker bay came out they were blue or green clearances). I spent the 2nd tollbooth worth of influence on 2x Crisium Grid and I'm very happy I did. If you can keep them off legwork and maker's eye it's going to be very hard for them to score once you get stabilized - plus I hate getting siphoned :)

The deck hard carried me through swiss at Cambridge regionals as well, dropped 2 games of 7 but one of those was against bblum and came down to a psi game where if I'd won it, I won the game. The other loss was because I stupidly stacked 4 strength ice on RD against a good Kate player who installed Atman then Maker's Eyed over and over, so it's an indictment of my play and not the deck. I failed to make the top 8 cut because I made a terrible meta call with my runner deck - this deck is so good it almost made up for that.

I've also been running Hades Fragment + Chronos Project over the Vitruvius and 2nd NAPD. Cronos won me 2 games at the top swiss table at regionals- it's really good to get rid of their one copy of Atman. :) That said, the agenda set up you have might be better because your less likely to lose a 3 pointer to a random access and you actually want to score all your agendas. However, another upside of Chronos is that if they steal a 3 points, Chronos, and a 2-pointer, they still haven't won, so the agenda mix can sometimes get lucky and take advantage of that. I did not feel like I lost any of my games because of too many 3-pointers or not enough 2-pointers. I think I'll stick with Chronos just for the potential to blowout games that I probably wouldn't have won otherwise.

I prefer ABT over Vitruvius because the synergy with NEXT ice is just too good - not only do the ice you get with ABT strengthen your other ice, but your towers tend to be tall late game (because if it goes late, you're playing a glacier deck that uses many cheap taxing ice instead of few big ice). I run 2x Archived Memories (more on that later), so similar to install -advance to score Vitruvius with 4 counters, you can install-advance ABT, advance twice more next turn, then have one click left to install jackson or use AM to get back any dumped agendas (and sometimes you can just keep a jackson out in your second remote before scoring an ABT).

2x AM is key to late game against good players, because they will try to RD lock you and keep you from drawing Caprice. You need to be able to fetch her after they trash her to score that last agenda sometimes - plus AM has amazing general utility anyway, synergizing especially well with the Campaign economy and letting you get back Silvers that are parasited.

Against decks that don't run even a single copy of parasite, this deck CRUSHES. A lot of people have been cutting their parasites lately, and this punishes them hard.

2x Gold is great, especially with CT. Sure, there are many situations where it's not worth rezzing. But the upside is HUGE, game-winning, and until this decklist was posted often catches even good players by surprise, and makes it very difficult for an inferior player to take a game off you by luck.

1 Jul 2015 Aerosaucer

By the way, I run 2x IQ instead of wall of static (and don't have a 2nd tollbooth). IQ does great work in this deck by mitigating your weaknesses to Atman and Yog. A lot of decks have a really hard time against it despite its weakness to datasucker compared to Lotus Field.

Also, I meant I dropped the 3rd NAPD for Chronos, I still run 2 NAPD.

4 Jul 2015 HauntPun

Boring

4 Jul 2015 konradh

This deck teached me how to use Cyberdex as quasi Corporate Troubleshooter.

4 Jul 2015 Matuszczak

@Sjone Biotic Labor is decent to close the game, but once I get to 5 points, every card I install becomes such a threat that I'm usually able to find a window anyway.

Haven't tried Wisp, but it seems weak: in most matchups the opponent will have a good way to deal with it by SMC/Special Order.

Rerarding the agendas, I don't think it is worth playing more than two 3-pointers, they are a huge liability anyway.

@Aerosaucer Crisiums are really good, I know for a fact that @Jander plays with 2 as well. I just figured that a good old Tollbooth gives me more flexibility and discourages Siphons/Legworks/Maker's Eye comparably well (meaning they will still pull them off if they really want to, but it will be costly).

Regarding agendas, I'm not a fan of more 3-pointers: losing one from R&D is involved in most of my losses. The Chronos Project dream scenario is not worth the extra risk.

Archived Memories are awesome, they do seal the endgame very often. I see the reasoning behind 2, one is usually enough, however.

I'm running Wall of Static to mess with Lady, Atman and Anarchs without tutors. I'm not a great fan of that ICE, but it's doing its job. I used two run IQ/Viktor 1.0, but there are a lot of Yogs/Gordians around now so I don't want to run too many Code Gates. IQ is actually better than Lotus Field in this deck as it does make the weakness to Atman 4 even worse.

5 Jul 2015 TonyStellato

It's "beat" not bet. Even in the past tense. But nice deck I'll give it a try

5 Jul 2015 Matuszczak

@TonyStellato Thanks, corrected.

6 Jul 2015 juliandark

Not really related to the deck, but people don't play PPVP Kate in Poland?

6 Jul 2015 iloveMRT

@juliandark Lately nope.

6 Jul 2015 apo

@juliandark, @iloveMRT Also this particular build is totally fine against Kate.

6 Jul 2015 ZiNOS

Thessaloniki Regionals was won by a similar deck which added the Caprices once we saw them in action. Thnx for sharing the list before.

Still, in Thessaloniki, there is too much ICE destruction around so we are still going the Bioroid Way. Too many Parasites in our Meta and Victor 2.0 is still king ;)

6 Jul 2015 juliandark

You can easily play this without the next suite, just swap gold for some Ichis, Silvers for Markus and Bronzes for Turing/IQ. That is much more Parasite resistant, sadly much more expensive.

7 Jul 2015 Sjone

Without the doubts! But used ice suite is matter of meta calls. Parasite recursion especially in shapers is going to be always good counter to the Next ice set and ice recursion is not really the solution because of tempo loss.

20 Jul 2015 tbigfish

I've dropped the NEXT Gold, as they just didn't ever really do anything. If I had enough money to rez them, then my opponents were always super cautious about them (as I clearly had a massive pile of cash), and they're too expensive to rez early. Swapped them for Turing, which kicks Eater in the face.

23 Jul 2015 juliandark

Swapping caprices for Markus Batty makes those golds much more dangerous. There was a pretty popular deck using that strategy posted here recently, check it out. But yeah, with Faust heavy meta, you might want to put at least 2 Turings in anyway.

23 Jul 2015 tbigfish

@juliandark - Ah, that does seem interesting. I want to include the 2 Turing, but with Markus I kind of want the NEXT Gold brio now...