Decklist of the week

Hydra (1st place Preston Regional +)

Identity

Description by the author: Cerberus 4510

This deck took me to 1st place at Preston Regionals (38 people). It also went undefeated for my apprentice at the Hockley Regional getting him to the top 4. It went undefeated for him at the Find the Truth open. Finally, Dan (Phoenix) took a variation of this to 2nd place at the Swansea Regional, dropping a single game in the final. In the weeks of testing I've seen this deck lose once to flood, it is a very strong deck.

This deck is heavily inspired by sirris deck, which I looked at and thought that Tech Startup was a phenomenal choice of tutor for spicy tech. I opted for IT Department because it is very easy to lock out games with it, but also because my ice is so taxing, dragging the runner through it to trash IT Department is often enough to give you scoring windows. My next choice for tech was Blacklist, I was playing this before Moose was out and it caught a lot of Conspiracy breakers and generally was very effective at creating lock out or scoring windows. Finally I kept Contract Killer to deal with Film Critic but it also hit Kati and Pro Co and occasionally gives you a flatline victory.

The game plan for the deck is very flexible, hence the name Hydra. It can play standard glacier, it can rush out a Nisei early behind cheap ice, or it can create lock out using Blacklist or IT Department. It is often worth putting an ETR ice and face check ice on a remote and jamming IT Department, if the runner cannot find their breakers and deal with the Ag ability they'll likely lose to the lock. Even of they can deal with it, it's incredibly taxing and will create opportunities for you.

This deck generates a lot of concedes in tournament play, and can be slow, therefore I'd always ensure you play a fast runner deck.

Variations - we are currently testing variations without Contract Killer, and playing GFI with the influence with Melange as additional economy.

Match ups - this deck is very strong across the board, having good match ups against Reg Andy, Siphon Whizz, and lock Shaper decks. I believe reg whizz has been most challenging to date, but believe that a change to the ice suite helps to resolve much of this. Testing Tithonium has proven successful to date.

This deck is a bit of a monster, you should try it! (Or shout at me for using IT Department)