Six-point Exploding Minds

bubbathegoat 605

This deck is just fun, it will never be tier-1, but it has been fun every time I've played it. It runs the Valley Grid deep cheap ICE server to drive down the runner's hand size. This pairs nicely with Edge of World which will deal brain damage for ICE that isn't even Rezzed. However you get there, negative hand size kills, but a hand size of 1 is vulnerable to The Brewery flatline.

Nisei MK II is a powerful workhorse in this deck. It can make the runner decide to risk fighting through a Valley Grid server again to secure the game winning agenda, or die trying. With Excalibur it just ends all runs for the turn and creates a scoring window. Scoring an early Nisei MK II, even as a never-advance/Greenhouse flip, goes a long way towards securing the win.

Originally I didn't have any advancable traps, but most runners caught on very quickly and started hitting any advanced card, so I added 2x Project Junebug. It can flatline, or setup a flatline, but mostly it creates a scoring window or uncertainty. Cerebral Overwriter would be more painful for a runner to hit, but I haven't tried to find the influence yet.

This deck can become awash with money. Celebrity Gift can build into some wonderful set-ups. Show an agenda, but make the runner fight through a Valley Grid for a chance to grab it? show a Biotic Labor with it to hint a fast advance? show Edge of World and a 3-2 agenda and install into your scoring server! Make the runner second guess his or her instincts by telling him or her exactly what you are doing. Biotic Labor can be used for an occasional fast advance. to make the runner second guess which central they should be pressuring.

The weak spots are Chairman Hiro, and no Jackson Howard. The deck rushes like there is no tomorrow, and uses all binary ETR ICE, so your first agenda should be your easiest to throw down and score. I try to score every agenda almost as soon as I draw it, so the pressure is always there for the runner to jump at everything that goes into the scoring remote; I haven't felt a need for Jackson Howard and this deck isn't meant to be tier-1 anyways. Chairman Hiro was supposed to force the runner's hand size down below 1, or to 1 for a Brewery flatline, but in practice this has never worked, and he's only ever been stolen or discarded. I think replacing him with 2x Neural EMP would make the deck better, since they would combo with Jinteki Biotech: Life Imagined for flatline from 2 cards. Parasite ICE destruction is a real horror for this deck, and will basically pick it apart, since all of the ICE is cheap to rez, it is also quick to die to a Parasite.

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