Vanity and Greed - Lunar Power

amavric 2297

So this is the newest variant of my Accelerated-Shutdown combo decks, which have been finding great success through the Game Night Kit season (two top finishes, and one second). This Blue Sun variant might just be the strongest to date, as the flexibility of Blue Sun's ability is absolutely phenomenal. We are sacrificing the free agenda counter on Project Atlas and the two extra influence from Titan Transnational, but what we are gaining from lunar power is more than worth it.

If you would like to read a more in-depth explanation of the playstyle and possible combos, please click the link under "Derived From" (which links to the old Titan iteration). There's a pretty long write-up there.

Otherwise, what's new on the moon:

  • Stay Out of Our Servers: ICE that is punishing to facecheck, rather than simply ending the run (<3 Assassin)

  • Economic Flexibility: return that Curtain Wall to hand and then send out the SEA operatives. Also Vamp and Account Siphon are not what they used to be.

  • Score Even Faster: Install-advance a Project Atlas turn one behind a Mother Goddess. Return ICE to HQ and score! Best of luck Shaper!

  • No Journalists Allowed: Oversight AI keeps those pesky reporters out of our servers

  • Seriously, Stay Out of Our Servers: Blue Sun's ICE stays relevant even into the mid-to-late game. Keep scoring those agendas.

If you want to fire one of the possible combos, it's incredibly useful to have an Atlas counter. You're going to want to over advance an Atlas in the early game (very possible turn one), and then score a Hostile Takeover from hand. After that, you're golden. Either continue to score aggressively behind massive ICE, or set up one of the possible Shutdown Combos (again, check out the 'Derived From' section). Agenda density in this deck is really low, so don't worry too much about the R&D digs. Keyhole however is definitely a problem.

The composition of Crisiums to Cyberdexes is totally meta dependent (both are necessary in my parts). The singleton Archer is almost never rezzed, but mostly for Oversight AI'ing, as D4V1D can not bring that bad boy down.

Here's a video of me piloting this thing.

Enjoy responsibly.

5 comments
16 Jan 2016 RubbishyUsername

Can I point out how much I love the editing in that video? Thanks so much for the demonstration.

16 Jan 2016 vor_lord

Subliminal Messaging? Sure comes in handy when some of your operations are in your hand.

16 Jan 2016 amavric

@RubbishyUsername Glad you enjoyed it! There's a couple videos on the channel of the old Titan iteration if you're interested.

@vor_lord That's an interesting include. I'm aware Subliminal Messaging adds a lot of flexibility to the ol' Shutdown Combo, but only in cases which involve Interns, no? The only ways I can see that being useful, if I want to triple Scorch, and one Scorch is in HQ. Shipment still requires two clicks, and all other combo pieces need to be installed prior to the Diagnostics. Am I missing something? I also see the possibility of it helping me discard cards from HQ without having to over-draw, but I generally have Mr. Howard for that.

16 Jan 2016 vor_lord

@amavric It just gives flexibility for what may end up in your hand instead of archives / R&D. I had two scorch in hand once. Shutdown, diagnostic out subliminal, sea, scorch. Then scorch scorch through a plascrete and a half.

27 Jan 2016 cassonetrunner

absolutely BRILLIANT this is the future of weyland, putting the runner "on match point" after scoring 3 point solve weyland late game problems. I don't think is even necessary bother with the scorch plan, I made a BABW version that commit on rushing the frist agendas then go for the PS AD SfSS Vanity finish. I love it so far. Didn't find any clot resistence but it would pretty easy to add some clot hate if that becomes a problem.