If I had a million credits, I would blow up your house (BNL)

This is a loooooong one, so get comfy.

I am really pleased with this deck. It’s 100% home brewed and an absolute beast. The more competitive among you will more than likely not give this deck a second look – it probably wouldn’t carry you through most hyper competitive tourneys (although I really do think it has a competitive streak) – however, if you’re looking for a fun Weyland deck with multiple win conditions (including the ability to quite often double/triple scorch early-mid game, before the Plascretes go down) then read on, you splendid thing.

As my username would suggest, I love the jank, and this deck started out in HB as a way to leverage a combo between Isobel Maguire and Mythic ICE. The idea being that I could rez any ICE to protect any of my servers, then bring it back to hand once my agenda was behind a Mother Goddess. This tactic, combo’d with the automatic de-rezzing of Chimera would render the scoring server near impossible to access. Good idea, no?

No!

Maybe I’m being a little harsh. The deck actually performed ok, but I would often fall foul of runners getting me to rez ICE on HQ/R&D, jacking out, then running the MG scoring server. Plus the econ was pretty poor, even in ETF.

Then there were AIs. As soon as a Faust or an Atman hit the table, I knew I was screwed. The deck couldn’t really run Swordsman or Turing, because it meant that I would have to leave them rezzed, thus switching MG off, so my only AI hate was 3x Will-o’-the-Wisp, which was great early game but may as well have been blank if the game went long, or I was against any Shaper. Anyway, I’ll publish the list alongside this one. If you ever felt like you wanted to fool around with Isobel (oo-er), then this may be a good start…. I don’t know.

Also, Isobel always felt like a bit of a crutch; a card that felt like an escape if I did something wrong. On the plus side, no one ever trashed her when she was naked on the table (oooo-eeerrrr). At least not until it was obvious what she was doing in order to help me finish (the game - I’m so sorry).

Then in a moment of uncharacteristic inspiration, I considered Blue Sun.

What if I could automatically do pretty much the same thing that Isobel does, but also make a shit-ton of cash into the bargain? AND KILL PEOPLE??

Many of you will have probably reached this same conclusion within the first couple of paragraphs of this write-up. I imagine you screaming “TRY THAT IN BLUE SUN, YOU F*CKING MORON”, but please bear in mind that I’m pretty remedial when it comes to stuff like this.

And so I inadvertently created this monster. For a deck with only two remote servers ever in play (one to score out of and an occasional naked Jackson), it’s got quite a lot of moving parts, so I’ll go through the MVPs in detail. Any cards that I don’t mention, or mention only in passing just do what you would expect them to do.

Let’s start with the ID. Blue Sun’s ability makes you money… quickly. And this deck needs a lot of money. 3x Hedge and 3x Restructure are the only other sources of income, so your Oversights do a lot of work. Make sure that you do everything you can not to incentivise the runner to run and trash your big Oversighted ICE. It’s not a bad play to Oversight a Curtain Wall over an empty remote if you desperately don’t want the runner to run it. Be prepared for them to do it anyway though…. I always hold my breath whenever I Oversight anything. Also, consider Jacksoning Oversights out of Archives over some agendas, depending on what’s happening in the game. They are very, very important.

Agendas:

3x Posted Bounty – This is THE most valuable agenda if you’re going for the kill. I’ll explain the process in more detail later, but you’ll essentially want to install the PB in one turn, advance three times on a turn after that (not necessarily the next turn), then score at the beginning of a turn after that (again not necessarily the next turn). This three-turn play will leave the runner with 1x tag at the beginning of your next turn, leaving you with 3x clicks to spend in an attempt to murder their face off.

3x Project Atlas – This agenda is one of the strongest ways (but not the only way) to get your kill combo off to a flying start. An early 5x advanced Atlas is often all you need to close the game. At the beginning of the turn on which you score the Posted Bounty, you’ll also have two lovely Atlas tokens to spend on grabbing your Scorches before you even spend any clicks. No Atlas early game? Atlas been stolen? Not to worry – there’s a very good Plan B which I will explain later (not to be confused with the card Plan B, which is proper turd)

1x Oaktown Renovation – Depending on the matchup, I sometimes leave Oaktown in play for a few turns in order to grab the extra creds. Obviously judge your opponent. Are they likely to be playing Inside Job/ DDOS/Blackmail/etc? Also, does it matter if the runner steals it? Sometimes I just leave it there for them to use up their nonsense cards that get past my ICE. It makes me money while it’s there and it’s often not a huge deal if it gets stolen.

3x GFI – Because 3x GFI

Assets:

3x J-How - Because I hear that drawing through R&D lock and getting stuff back out of Archives is pretty good.

3x Snare! – Snare does more work in this deck than most others I’ve built. Because the majority of agendas in this deck are ‘never advanced’, Snare is very easy to dump in the scoring remote if you think there’s a chance that the runner will get in next turn. Plus it’s great HQ/R&D protection and has the chance to land that ever important tag if the runner runs last click. Plus there’s that rare and glorious moment when it actually just kills someone outright (not impossible if the runner has just Fausted through a Curtain Wall)

Upgrades:

1x Cyberdex Virus Suite – fairly situational, but can obviously stop Anarch nonsense in its tracks.

1x Will-o’-the-Wisp – a hangover from the original Isobel deck. Doesn’t see much play and becomes more useless as the game goes on, but putting Faust to the bottom of the runners stack early game is almost sexually exciting (almost).

Operations:

3x Aggressive Negotiation – The aforementioned ‘Plan B’ to kill the runner. With 3x Scorched Earth and 3x Aggressive Negotiation in the deck, you’ll often (incredibly often) see one of each in hand quite early on. If your plan is to go for the kill, once you have both cards in hand, and enough money, start digging for a Posted Bounty and slam it behind whatever ICE you have in the scoring remote (ICE tactics to follow). Next turn advance three times and trust that your clever ICE setup will more often than not keep the runner out. As long as you have at least seven creds – not impossible with Blue Sun – the next turn goes: Score PB / play Aggressive Negotiation and dig for Scorched / double Scorched.

This might seem like quite a combo-wombo win condition, but I promise that this play has won me the most games out of all the games that I have played with this deck. Just try it.

3x Oversight AI – I wouldn’t mention this card ordinarily, as its obvious as to why it’s in the deck, however, there is an excellent play you can do against Val, which is Oversight either a Swordsman (for Faust) or a Mother Goddess (for pretty much everything else) and just leaving it rezzed. Sure, the ICE will probably then be living on borrowed time, but it often gives you the window to potentially score out without fear of Blackmail.

All other operations are either money or death.

ICE suite:

The ICE has been quite carefully considered for this deck. The three pronged plan when it comes to defending servers is to either:

1: Make it impossible for the runner to access the scoring remote (a single rezzed Mother Goddess) 2: Make it disgustingly taxing to access any server (Curtain Wall/Hadrian’s Wall); or 3: Land an all important tag at an opportune moment (Data Raven).

When it’s not relying on Mythic ICE, the suite suddenly becomes very Barrier heavy, but don’t let that Corroder get you down – it’s still sickeningly expensive to break a Curtain/Hadrian’s protected server. Why not shove a Snare at the bottom of it?

Rezzing these expensive pieces of ICE off the bat is often very achievable with the amount of money that Blue Sun makes, plus you can bring one back to hand if you need money back quickly next turn (which also often turns Mother Goddess back on – god, I love this deck).

It’s worth noting that Employee Strike is a real problem for this deck, but not impossible to work around.

Swordsman is there for AI breakers, but expect a Killer to go down very early. It’s 50/50 effective.

Blue Sun’s ability to take ICE back to hand can be a huge strategy in this deck, not only for reclaiming creds, but also to move the protection around depending on where it’s needed. Juggling ICE around each of your servers like a demented clown is part of the more nuanced strategy with this deck, and is therefore the most difficult element to get right, but if killing isn’t an option, and AI breakers reign supreme, scoring out behind a sickeningly expensive server, whilst simultaneously bolstering protection over HQ or R&D when required is your only option left, and its very achievable.

Of the three centrals, R&D is the most important to protect. Agendas in HQ tend to be transient and don’t often stay in hand for too long; quickly ending up in either the scoring server or the bin depending on how the game’s going. Account Syphon is a thing, but Chimera is excellent early protection against it, especially if the runner has poked HQ beforehand as a test run.

Obviously this deck dies to good runner decks piloted by good players, but it’s currently performing in casual circles better than I could have hoped for and it’s definitely one of the best things I’ve ever made (and I’m including my kids in that list)

Give it a go, have some fun, and let me know if you come up with anything to beef it up even more :)