Biotech Brewery Kill (5-2 at Madison regionals)

haerik 234

This deck went 5-1 in Swiss at the Madison regionals, bringing me to 8th seed. I then lost twice (once on each side) to finish in 7/8th. My runner was an unimaginative Dumblefork that's not worth posting. It went 3-3 in Swiss. I was the only person to make the cut with 16 prestige, because I had faced 3 people with 17+ prestige.

I started with @nixxus's list (which in turn came from @Chuftbot), which you can find in the Derived From field. But I made some changes, mostly cutting the Museums and finding room for BEA.

Games (Sorry, I don't remember everyone's names, but I at least have initials from my match slip):

  1. RIP - Val False Echo (W) - I mushined TFP early, which he stole. Later I mushined the Overwriter. He ran into it, then it just took a Bio-Ethics Association and a flip for the kill

  2. Edward P. - Whizzard Dumblefork (W) - Probably my favorite kill of the day. Click 1 Hedge Fund. Click 2 Cerebral Casts, I won the psi game and since he had 5 in hand when I only had 1 click left, he chose to take the tag. Click 3 scorched, then scored the Philotic Entanglement that I had mushined a while back.

  3. William Brown - Art Thief/Chaos Theory Stimshop (L) - Deus X recursion wrecks me. Film Critic wrecks me. Increased hand size wrecks me. This game wasn't particularly close.

  4. Jordan Morris - Siphon/Apocalypse MaxX (W) - He wanted to get full value out of a DDoS, so he siphoned last click with 3 cards in hand. There was 1 scorch in the bin, so he banked on me only running it as a singleton. But that's why I have two.

  5. DB - Haley LLDS Chameleon (W) - The fact that chameleon returns to hand after discard makes my life harder. I had two False Leads scored, which is really good with Bio-Ethics Association. But I wanted to be able to do at least 9 damage in case he had a third chameleon he could get out. It turned out not to matter because he hit a snare click 2, so I used a FL, then two BEAs and a flip got the kill.

  6. Trevor Stack - Haley (Pitchfork I think?) (W) - I was a bit worried about the chameleons again, but he didn't have as many, if any. I mushined TFP, scored it. Never advanced a False Lead, then mushined another TFP. The turn it was sitting there, he ran R&D click 1, hitting a Lockdown which fired. Looking at 3 with RDI, he hit: Shock, Snare, and Fetal AI. This brought him to either 0 or 1 cards in hand. Without many options, click 2 he ran R&D again, and the top card was another snare for the kill.

In elim I faced William again, so you can look at round 3 to see how it ended up. This one was also on stream if you want to watch it on the ANRPC Great Lakes Circuit Twitch. That said, the game isn't a great representation of how the rest of the day went.

OK, so those were my matches. Confession time: I don't think this deck is all that great. When I started playing it locally, I won a bunch. Then people figured out how to play against it and now I don't win nearly as often. Plus, stuff like Deus X is just a hard counter. However, my goal for the regional season was to get one of those gorgeous Maya playmats, and I decided that this deck would get me through the Swiss pretty well. It appears I was right about that.

It is a fun deck to play though. Despite some similarities, it plays pretty differently from IG or even the older Cambridge PE decks.

11 comments
24 Apr 2016 RubbishyUsername

This is pretty similar to the list that I'm running, so I'm really interested in some of the differences. I've found Chairman Hiro really improves the consistency of the kill: it's like 2 Bio-Ethics Associations at once. With it you can actually kill if they refuse to run while setting up, which helps deal with some of those awful matchups. I also run House of Knives over False Lead, since not running in click 1 was probably going to kill you anyway and it helps you land those ethics/flip kills after snares click 3. I'm also super, super interested in that ice package. Data Mine doesn't seem as good as Kitsune, Chum is unreliable and I always like Komainu for the click 3 kill on a poorly prepared central run. It also seems like a lot of Lockdowns that don't stack or encourage finding d4v1d.

It's a shame that you don't think this deck is particularly competitive. The card that I've found to be a hard counter is actually Net Shield. Oh, and I also want to ask about the excess of Lockdown and the Chum. How effective were they?

24 Apr 2016 Chuftbot

This type of deck is not as well positioned now as it was last year, sadly. People are so terrified of IG that they're packing a lot of net damage tech. It can do pretty well though, and it plays way faster. Glad you got that Maya!

24 Apr 2016 rubyvr00m

I won the tournament and one of my 3 losses on the day was to this deck. Can confirm -- it is a monster, and a very unexpected one at that. Congratulations on performing with an often overlooked ID. Your Yomi game was killer.

24 Apr 2016 haerik

@RubbishyUsername I did try Chairman Hiro, but the runner often gets to 5 points against me, so those extra two points meant he was losing me more games than he was winning. False lead is a big part of what makes this deck work though. House of Knives isn't bad, but False Lead directly won one game for me, and the threat of it strongly changes how the runner has to play.

I've never been good at creating effective ice packages, so it's mostly unchanged from the decks it's based on. Maybe @nixxus or @Chuftbot can comment here. I think the main consideration is rez cost. When you only run 5 economy cards, you need your money to fire snares and throw the odd advancement on things. That pretty much rules out Komainu. You may be right on Kitsune over Data Mine though, I didn't actually test that one. I was really impressed by Chum and Lockdown however. Both Cortex Lock and Lockdown are great to have behind Chum (except against Gordian Blade). Like every other piece of positional ice, it's sad to see early. But mid and late game I'm happy to see it. Lockdown directly won me one game, and like False Lead, the fact that it was there changes the way they play, even if it is just installing a D4v1d.

I think it's a decent option when people don't expect it, but Net Shield, Feedback Filter, and Deus X are hard counters, Siphon and Lamprey can be soft counters, and even without any of those just playing carefully will do it.

@Chuftbot Luckily Deus X (and Chameleon I guess) were the only net damage tech I saw. But yes, it plays much faster. Even on my longest round I had 15 minutes at the end. The rest I had 35 or more. Of course, I was also lucky because I didn't see IG until the elimination rounds.

24 Apr 2016 nixxus

@haerik I'll be giving your version a go at my next GNK, BEA is a fun card I never thought about for the deck. I'd agree that this is very much a tourney deck, my locals never fall of it anymore and the IG hate really does take it's toll on poor biotech.

In regards to Komainu i don't particularly like it in this deck style as it heavily punishes a single time, at which point pitchfork will Endless hunger it, It's easily parasited/chopped up by [Dumblefork/anarch in general], and there isn't enough other ice for it really to be a tax against "normal" decks.

As an aside, i'm personally not a fan of Kitsune either just because of it's high cost that then takes away one of your HQ defenses, but that's just me. With more 0c "on access" traps it could be better.

Congrats on the Regionals placement!

5 May 2016 burzum51

Any thought of Braintrust over False Lead ? To allow nerver advance and for the runner to check remotes ?

7 May 2016 burzum51

I replaced Archived Memories for a Data Raven . the tag on encounter make it very taxing on R&D.

7 May 2016 haerik

False Lead is way better. Scoring one makes the runner have to be very careful, and scoring two is basically game over for them. The only times I've come close to scoring out it with a mushined TFP, so Braintrust wouldn't help much there.

Data Raven would be ok. However I think that Snare, Fetal AI, and Shock make R&D scary enough, especially if there's a lockdown protecting it. Archived Memories is just all around useful. I've gotten back traps, scorched, jackson, econ.

7 May 2016 burzum51

Thanks for the reply. How 2 false lead make game over. From my play of this deck: - False lead is nice because force the runner to be more carefull - R&D is not that scary, lockdown is not overtaxing and runner just avoid to put multi acces when running R&D.

Dataraven is for me a meta call, even with faust runner must remove the tag after and add a tax of one click and 2 cred.

7 May 2016 haerik

If you have two False Leads scored, you can rez Bioethics Association, then make them lose their whole turn so it fires again without giving them a chance to trash it.

I agree that Data Raven is taxing, but if they're just single accessing R&D I can almost always get a kill setup using Bioethics and my ID before they get to 7 points. I don't think Data Raven is a bad choice, I just like the flexibility that Archived Memories gives you. I would worry some about having enough money to rez Data Raven and still be able to trigger Snare as well.

Another thing I just thought of mentioning: In this deck you prefer it when the runner doesn't check remotes. Bioethics is a big win condition (and probably the only one if you can't take advantage of a runner mistake). If they're checking remotes, you're not going to get it to fire.

7 May 2016 burzum51

I never rezed #bioethics in my games. Either the runner checked remote and trashed it of they find them in r&d. i may not play well but a faced rd lock many times as a 5 codegate is not a big deal. you are right about the money abd i think i will try archive again to be able to get back a trashed jackons or a money card.

Thanks for this deck it hard to play but the pleasure to kill a runner when they are 3 fetal and 2 future perfect installed have no price.