Bull Shop (Museum FA Glacier) [1st GNK]

Pushover 101

This deck won a GNK, dropping a single game where a total of 10 R&D accesses scored 7 points. After a few weak turns, this deck is incredibly tough to fight, as it creates an incredibly strong and resilient economy, has large pieces of ICE, and fast advances most of its agendas.

This took inspiration from TheJeff's Blue Sun museum deck, but has been heavy reworked, specifically in economy and ICE, to make it much faster, and stronger against the Dumblefork matchup.

The core of this deck is building a super resilient economic engine using Mumbad City Hall, keeping everything flowing with Museum of History, and making tons of credits with Mumba Temple. With that board, any time you rez anything, trash anything, or lose anything, you can replace it in your deck, to be tutored out at a later time. To set this up, you generally want to get a City Hall using either Executive Boot Camp or Tech Startup, and place it behind a reasonable piece of ICE. Find 2 temples, or a museum and temple if the runner can get at your City Hall. Next turn, you can lock things up by pulling the temples and museums. As long as you can keep 1 museum alive, the runner cannot disrupt your economy, and must keep trying to trash a museum that you bring back. Once you have your economy set up, you just need to abuse it to win the game. Encryption Protocol works to overwork Whizzard's trashing abilities, allowing you to get everything rolling.

The deck wins by using a protected Mumbad Construction Co. to fast advance some public agendas. If there is no Clot installed, you can install the agenda, and move all advancements and score before the runner has a chance to act in the paid ability window. It's usually better to advance the card with clicks when able, though. The Project Atlas' can generally be snuck out, since after you install 10 remotes, the runner typically doesn't want to check the next one. Mostly, I did not want to play an extra Hollywood Renovation when the meta is filled with Turntable.

Hostile Infrastructure serves as both asset protection and economy. If the runner refuses to let you spend your Temple credits, just rez the Infrastructure and pick it up. At worst you get 5 credits per turn, for a click to install. It's not as good as the original list's econ with space ICE and Constellation Protocol, but it is much easier to set up, and makes the deck much more resistant to D4v1d, since Dumblefork could really put the hurt on this deck by trashing the ice while digging with Medium. One can also rez a Construction Co for 4 credits if you do not have an Infrastructure handy.

Dedication Ceremony is an all-star in this deck. With any of Reversed Accounts, GRNDL Refinery, or Contract Killer, you can install and fire them to good effect in a single turn. Either you spend 1 credit and 3 clicks for the runner to lose 12 credits, you gain 11 credits, or you trash a Kati who has been stacking up money, or in the case of 1 game, flatline a runner who had used Faust a bit too much on the previous turn. It can also be used on Construction Co to fast advance an agenda, especially if the runner is threatening Clot.

Heritage Committee is tutorable using City Hall. It helps you find your agendas when you want them, and put them away when you don't. It's good to note that when you use City Hall, you first look at your deck. If you like the top 3 cards of your deck, you can play Committee to draw them. You then put a card from your hand on top of your deck, and THEN you shuffle from City Hall. You are not required to pick a card to play/install City Hall before you pick up your deck and look at the top 3 cards. If the top 3 cards are bad (2+ agendas in the earlygame), just find a Museum. Then shuffle and try again. You can also use it when trying to score, it's like having Anonymous Tip available when you want it.

If you ever lose a part of your board, between 2 Tech Startups and 3 Executive Boot Camps, it's easy to find them again after the Museums shuffle them back in.

ICE Choices: The ICE in this list takes a lot of inspiration from bblum's Bootcamp Glacier with some tweaks for space and how this deck plays. I did not like the space ICE much in TheJeff's list, as the combo took too long to set up, was very vulnerable earlygame with a total of 1 rezzable ICE turn 1, and vulnerable to utensils and D4v1d later in the game.

  • 2 Orion: This card is inconvenient for anyone not running E3 and D4v1d, or named Quetzal. Faust takes 5-6 cards, even a Cyber-Cypher takes 6-7 credits. Despite the fact that they are unique, you won't really be in a situation where you can rez a second on the same turn that you rez the first.
  • 2 Tour Guide: I hear I have assets. Without a parasite, it's a fairly expensive piece of ICE to handle. It's also a binary ETR early on in the game.
  • 2 Caduceus: Another earlygame piece of ICE, without a Mimic, it's difficult for Anarch to handle all game.
  • 2 Assassin: A strong midsize piece of ICE, this card punishes facechecking, and is still taxing even with a breaker.
  • 2 Enigma: Standard lightly punishing earlygame piece of ETR ICE. Excellent for defending City Hall early.
  • 1 Wormhole: I'm not a huge fan of Wormhole, but I wanted a high strength code gate. If I had infinite influence, it would be a Tollbooth.
  • 2 Hive: This deck does not score agendas early, but once it starts scoring, it can end the game very quickly. Hive is super taxing until you have scored some agendas. Excellent vs Faust and Lady.
  • 1 Spiderweb: A reasonable barrier all game. I am not exceptionally happy with this card, but I don't really want a 3rd Hive, and I want a decent barrier.

Cards that would be nice to have, but did not make the cut:

  • Cyberdex Virus Suite: This card is good if people are spamming Clot several turns in a row, or if there is a lot of Datasucker/Parasite floating around. However, with no way to tutor for it, it does not make the cut.
  • Clone Suffrage Movement: As strange as this card looks, it can recur Dedication Ceremony, and with an Interns, means that you can effectively lock the runner down with Reversed Accounts. Ultimately, this takes too many pieces, and at the end of the day, Suffrage Movement is still trashable, although you could play Interns to get it back, or tutor for it.
  • Crisium Grid: This card stops some rude things like Account Siphon, and delays some things like Medium, but with no way to find it or recur it easily, it does not make the cut.
  • Interns: I tried this, but it ultimately seemed worse than just playing an EBC. Instead of playing the same card, you can find an asset. It's a reasonable choice if the meta is heavy on trashing ICE, but otherwise is unimpressive.
  • Public Support: Reasonable to score an extra point, but you lack Archer, and you are not about to take Bad Pub with Hostile Takeover. Not good enough to play in this list.
  • Elizabeth Mills: Reasonable tech if you are dealing with a Noise heavy meta, but Contract Killer hits almost the same set of targets, missing only Wyldside (which is a big one admittedly) and Off Campus Apartment
  • Commercial Bankers Group Is 5-6 credits a turn not enough or something? Ultimately, even if you can keep these alive, you can't search these up with City Hall, and it's hard to claim that any of the cards in the deck are worse than the Bankers.

The deck is moderately weak to D4v1d E3 Medium with Parasite. It's pretty specific to Whizzard, so he remains the major threat. A fast Keyhole can also do damage out of MaxX. However, after a few turns of setup, the deck is incredibly powerful. Archives Interface early is also a problem, as it is with many Museum decks.

Otherwise, it would take a large amount of Clot spam to really scare this deck, so maybe Pitchfork can try to fight the FA plan by installing a clot every turn while pressuring R&D. Employee Strike is also a little bit awkward, but sneaking an Atlas or just getting enough credits to score the old fashioned way works fine. Most runners are simply not equipped to fight the large ICE, the asset spam, nor the single click FA, backed by Dedication Ceremony disruption.

8 comments
17 Apr 2016 enk

The bull is not here, where is the bull?

17 Apr 2016 Pushover

I remembered that there was a bull, but only after I posted this. I love bull, but unfortunately he's just not very good here :(

I was more thinking about the sheer amount of bull that you can pull with this deck. Also, you just aggressively pursue your plan of setting up econ, even if the runner tries to stop you.

18 Apr 2016 say200426

I tweaked your deck a little bit.

And I found my version being super disgusting...

18 Apr 2016 Pushover

@say200426: Glad to see you liked it. What changes did you make?

18 Apr 2016 TheJeff

Thanks for the shout-out, and congrats on winning with it! I really like your changes too, I'll have to try them myself.

18 Apr 2016 say200426

@Pushover I published. You could check it :)

18 Apr 2016 lukifer

Love it! One question: what's the advantage of Blue Sun over Gagarin? I have a vaguely-similar Blue Sun Construction build, but it leans on tricks like Oversight/Curtain, and bouncing Errand Boys to build early cash; the only card in this list with Blue Sun synergy is Hive, and maybe EBC.

18 Apr 2016 Pushover

@lukifer: Blue sun offers better economy since you can spend temple credits to rez assets. A very common play if the runner did not make you rez anything is to rez a Hostile Infrastructure and then pick it up for 5c. Then reinstall, it's basically a click for 5 credits.

As well, if the runner hits a piece of ice, you can pick it up and swap it for something else. Criminal is especially vulnerable. I've nailed several players by swapping something like enigma for assassin, they install passport and get destroyed when they try to siphon.

As well, when defending an important card like city hall, blue sun can be useful. If the runner gets through, instead of having an empty server that waits for another asset, you can just move that ice to the next most important card on the board, taxing the runner.

Blue sun also offers parasite resistance on ice with the exception of tour guide. The bouncing ice also makes using utensils more difficult.

Lastly, the stronger even translates into stronger ICE. Gagarin generally plays cheaper ICE, the largest of which is either tollbooth or archer. Orion is unique but synergizes with blue sun. Both archer and orion take 6 cards for Faust, or a full d4v1d. Archer requires hostile takeover and/or public support, which takes a lot of deck slots. Orion can be broken for cash, but it's never cheap.

Tl;dr, Blue sun makes ice better and more resilient. Blue sun offers bigger ice and better econ by converting recurring temple credits into hard cash. Gagarin offers a slightly stronger early remote game if playing without ice, but I find it does not have enough econ/big ice to keep the runner out of r&d.