Dude, Where's my Nexus?? 2nd NYC (69), 7/8th Philly (55)

"People like MS Paint memes, right?"

This deck is for :fried_shrimp: only!! Non-shrimpies need not apply.

This list is the result of months of playing and tweaking the Nexus Kate archetype. It (and various earlier iterations of it) made 3 store champ top 4s in 3 attempts (including a win), went 3-1 in Durham, 4-0 in Philly, and 7-1 in New York, for a combined 14-2 in regionals. This deck is definitely not the best deck in the meta right now (especially with the rise of Museum decks), but it is better than people give it credit for and is my baby and I will keep playing it until the meta absolutely forces me to give it up.

Play strategy is pretty simple: mulligan for mopus. Draw like mad to get down rabbit holes and security nexus, lock down R&D. You have standard shaper bullshit to contest rushed remotes, and clot + 2x saccon to clot lock pure FA.

Matchups: It has a very favorable matchup against glacier decks and all flavors of Yellow. It went undefeated against NBN in regionals, having played against fastrobiotic, asset spam, tag storm, and kill decks.

This deck can have trouble with rush decks that run lots of gear check ice, although the matchup is definitely winnable. Against spammy gagarin decks that don't pack a kill threat, I think this deck does fine, especially if you keep shrike in there (more on that later). Against hot tubs, I think it's probably a bad matchup. I've only played against it once (NYC grand finals, I lost), though I mulliganed into an absolutely terrible hand and was outclassed on player skill by my opponent, so it's hard to know for sure.

Super friends IG is far and away this deck's worst matchup. If you don't lucksack into 7 points in the first five turns, you might as well concede.

Card Choices

Most of the cards choice should be fairly obvious. Just a couple notes:

1) Councilman is probably a mistake. The situations where it matters, especially with glacier dying out of the meta, are too few and far between to justify its inclusion. Probably worth swapping it for a third quality time, or a plascrete.

2) Sports hopper is really nice when you struggle to find rabbit hole (which happened in like 5 games in New York), and when dealing with net damage decks. It is definitely not a sufficient replacement for plascrete. If you are seeing lots of meat damage, plascrete is better! Play plascrete instead!

3) Shrike. This was purely a meta call against Gagarin, and was a Mongoose in Philly (don't play Mongoose). I installed it twice: once against HB (it was awful, paying 4 to break Architect is the worst), and once against Hot Tubs (it was fine but insufficient given everything else that went wrong in that game). I think it's an okay meta call if you expect gagarin, maybe against Komainu as well. But, mimic is just all-around better, and unless you're making a gamble on the meta, you should just play mimic instead. In Durham this influence was spent on Vamp, and I didn't bother running a sentry breaker. It was fine in most games, but a major gear check rush deck made me regret that choice.

4) Trade-In. Probably the most common question I get about the deck is whether or not you really need the Trade-In. In short, you do. Don't cut it. It may only matter in 10-15% of games, but in those games it saves you.

5) Deus X. Probably not necessary in the current meta, but I knew @zeromus would be around and I wanted to stuff his IG :D

Final Thoughts

This deck is a blast to play, and can definitely catch people off guard. A surprising number of players will rez Assassin against you even after you're set up, and then have an "oh... shit" look when they realize they vamped themselves for 7. Give it a shot, and look like some kind of cool kid unique deck hipster even as you netdeck!

Props to DC and NYC metas for listening to me variously complain about or praise this deck constantly, and for helping me stay motivated to keep playing it as the meta has shifted away from glacier.

:fried_shrimp: