He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy... 0.4

Shiiuga 1266

Ever since Brainstorm was spoiled I've been dreaming of building and playing this deck. I finally got my hands on a copy of Liberated Mind the other day and I've been trying it out to surprising success since.

When I thought of it I very much saw it as a 'works once, back in the binder' sort of deck. I'm not saying it's tournament competitive, far from it, but Brainstorm/The Twins is hard to deal with even if you know it's coming. So far it's gone 4-2 in casual play (with the two losses coming in earlier iterations.

The Fix

The main gameplan is simple. Draw a copy of Brainstorm, put it on a remote in front of an ETR ice (just in case). Then, start scoring out in the remote. Eventually they'll start sniffing around it, so you rez BrainstormThe Twins and drop a metric shit ton of brain damage subs on them.

The reason to have it in The Foundry: Refining the Process is so you can always guarantee you'll have that extra copy of Brainstorm in your hand to drop to The Twins (assuming they haven't ended up in Archives thanks to Noise or Imp).

It works even better if you can horde the third copy too, and even even better if you have Project Vitruvius counters to spend recurring it, as The Twins can be used as many times as you can trash the ice. The timing window for the Vitruvius counters is after the runner passes priority post breaking subroutines on the second and subsequent encounters.

The backup plan, if you know Brainstorm won't kill them, or they aren't running the server it's on, is to keep building up your ice and and score out. This is something The Foundry: Refining the Process is actually surprisingly good at, and why Ash 2X3ZB9CY is there.

Card choices

I chose fairly standard ice rather than going gimmicky like Grail or NEXT. Grail is too influence heavy (though hilarious with The Twins) and NEXT is too flimsy early on to really keep the runner out.

Agenda suite is fairly standard. Don't fire the ABTs unless you're definitely not going the kill route. It ruins the surprise.

I went for operation econ because there's a lot of anti-IG asset hate around at the moment and you can't really afford to not have the money for an 11 credit combo. The Clearances also help you find the pieces a bit quicker.

Project Junebug/Snare! are edge case includes but are both funny. Put the Project Junebug in the remote and laugh as their reward for all their hard work is death. Really though, anything better for 3 influence could go in here.

Corporate Troubleshooter was in here for a while but I wasn't using it and this already costs a lot of sponds to drop without boosting it further. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, don't do it til it does.

Conclusion

This is fun as hell to play. Like I said, even when it's expected it often can't be stopped. Played one game where the guy knew in advance, faceplanted then realised he didn't have enough money to deal with it twice and it was game over. Another game I dropped a total of 90 -N I N E T Y- Brain Damage subs on Leela, who had Switchblade, 2 Silencers, a Cloak and 2 fully loaded Ghost Runners installed, but that only got her through 4 of the 5 necessary times (thanks to my 2 Project Vitruvius counters). It's always the last 30 brain damage that gets you...

It still needs a bit of testing and tweaking. I think I might drop Wall of Static and the traps to make room for some better barrier alternatives to Eli 1.0 and bring in a couple of Archived Memories to recur any trashed combo pieces.

Like I said, this won't win me any tournaments any time soon but it's a fun ride.

12 comments
3 Jun 2016 thesm17

It's always the last 30 brain damage that gets you...

Hilarious.

3 Jun 2016 GrantZilla1979

came for the Life of Brian reference, stayed for the brain soup

3 Jun 2016 PureFlight

How would you feel about putting in Neural EMP instead of Snare!? If you get one Brainstorm to hit, you can always kill them on the empty hand. I suppose that's assuming you've rezzed it without The Twins in place.

3 Jun 2016 Wolfknight

Do you bait them out with a Project Junebug in a super remote? or do you play more remotes?

3 Jun 2016 RubbishyUsername

@PureFlight this does require a full hand when the brainstorm fired, unfortunately. I do like the idea though. I feel like the third GFI could be Corporate Sales Team or NAPD Contract to drop the agenda points down to 20.

3 Jun 2016 Shiiuga

@PureFlight it's a nice idea but honestly if you drop it right you're gonna kill them. Snare! is nice because they might pull it from HQ or R&D.

@Wolfknightyou only really want the one super remote. Put junebug in if you think they'll run.

``@RubbishyUsername` there's no real benefit to dropping the GFI as it only counts as a 2 pointer to the runner but it's the winning point for you. I've been experimenting with a one of Chronos Project instead of an ABT.

17 Jun 2016 Daigelmir

Pretty interesting idea. I really like it!!! One question though, did u test this deck against Nero Severn: Information Broker? It seem it would be a tough match up because of his nasty ability. What's your strategy against him?

17 Jun 2016 Shiiuga

There's a couple of cards that shut this down hard. One of them is Nero. Just try and score out against him.

18 Jun 2016 Daigelmir

Fair enough. What do u think of Cybernetics Court? I think it can boost Brainstorm quite a bit. You can also squeeze an IQ while you're at it.

22 Jun 2016 Shiiuga

@DaigelmirI don't think it's worth it. You aren't going to put it in your super server and you don't really run a second remote here.

16 Jul 2016 meatsack

Have you tried Howler or Special Offer? Both seem good for twins + brainstorm.

16 Jul 2016 Shiiuga

@meatsackHowler unfortunately only fetches bioroid ice, which Brainstorm is not, and it then gives he runner the chance to Jack out. Additionally firing The Foundry: Refining the Process's ability on Howler would mean you can't fire it on Brainstorm.

As for Special Offer it self trashes when it fires and you can't reference a trashed piece of ice for the twins ability.