Opus Andy v9 - 4th Place, Sheffield UK Regionals

This deck went through a long, long series of revisions before reaching this particular list, but all of them started from the same basic place - as a runner, there is a very little more important than a powerful economic engine, and in my opinion Magnum Opus is the best, most resilient, most powerful economic engine in the game; however, finding it early can be a huge tempo hit which gives up the early turns of the games to the corporation, which can lead to games spiralling out of control as you can't exert early pressure on their economy.

Andromeda, with a mulligan, should see any card in her deck of which there is 3 copies in her opening hand over 90% of the time. The original incarnation of this deck was filled with Econ Events and 3 Opuses, with the idea of exchanging Andy's ID text for something which read "skip your first turn; you begin the game with 8-10 credits and Magnum Opus in play".

However, it soon became apparent that those Easy Marks and Lucky Finds were dead draws outside of the first turn; with an active Opus, spending a click and a card for 3creds instead of just clicking for 2 was wasteful.

Instead, the deck evolved to be where it is now over several weeks of testing, and there are still changes I would make after yesterday's games.

The gameplan for this deck is pretty simple. Get an Opus, some +MU, and start looking for Special Orders and Breakers while pressuring servers. Faeries should leave you safe to start just checking ICE early without too much risk of getting blown out by unexpected ICE. Get a rig full of efficient breakers and then go after them. If they are relying on Asset based economy to tax you, Opus doesn't care, so kill every PAD, Sundew, Marked Accounts and Capital Investors you see. Set up for a turn where you can Siphon people, shutdown their big ICE, and run. The key to this deck is to balance pressuring your opponents R&D, HQ, and Remotes, all while building up a huge credit pool to deny your opponent a scoring window.

Remember when playing this deck that one of the most powerful turns this deck can take is "take 8 credits, pass"; the real skill to piloting this deck is knowing when you can do that, and knowing when you have to do that even though your better instincts tell you to run.

After yesterday, I would probably remove the two Traffic Jams - they served me well when I took this to Manchester Regionals, but I think they are just not reliable enough to slow down dedicated FA players and I was never excited to see them when I drew them. Also, the one Kati Jones I put in the deck at the last minute proved to be a mistake. Again, with an active Opus, it takes Kati 5 turns to be more efficient than just clicking for creds, and when you are playing TagMe with your Siphon's (mostly), often she is just a dead draw mid-late game. I would probably replace those three cards with two extra Inside Job (I went down to 1 from 3 in v8 of this deck and found myself missing them in the tournament), and an extra Symmetrical Visage, which I liked every time I drew it as it gave me the incentive to keep drawing through my deck, when its very possible to stagnate when you have Opus/Rig in place and you are focussed on attacking.

In terms of matchups, this deck tends to do very well against any deck which can't score all its agendas from hand. Obviously Caprice (and to a lesser extent, Ash) are still a problem, when you have R&DI, HQI, and a pile of cash and breakers out, it leaves Glacier decks very few safe places to keep their agendas. NearPad and Blue Sun seem to be the decks best matchups - once you have a pile of cash, Oversight becomes dead to Blue Sun as an Econ Engine, as its entirely possible to just run and trash their Curtain Wall before they can bounce it. NearPad's unprotected asset econ is just so much meat for the Opus Grinder and eventually your economy outpaces them. RP is the matchup this was designed against, and it operates pretty effectively against them as well, but Psi Games are the X factor in all RP opponents - what I think this does is give you as good a chance as any against RP, without guaranteeing a win.

Against straight FA, either NBN or HB, finding your R&DI and HQI are important, and you need to play more aggressively, and its probably your hardest matchup. You need early Siphons, multi-access, and breakers, and you need to also keep the pressure up which is a fine balancing act.

Against grindy Jinteki decks, either Blacktree or Genomics, my tendency is to get my rig up quickly, then treat the rest of my deck as life points. I don't draw, I make lots of money and since I know they can't FA, I wait for them to pile up Agendas in HQ and then go fishing. Box-E is particularly useful in this regard, having saved me from a 7 Net Damage Philotic Entanglement in the tournament yesterday.

Against Scorch decks, I've found Box-E plus a Plascrete to be enough to make them frown and cry. Being disciplined with your hand size means that their Traffic Accidents become useless, requiring a straight Triple Scorch to eat through your Plascrete plus 7 cards.

This deck is very versatile but also very challenging to play. It often has very specific playstyles it can adopt based on your opponent, and being able to quickly assess what you are playing against, therefore what approach you need to take, is the key to unlocking this decks potential.