Illegal BS (2nd London Regionals)

Okkdoko 1119

Went 3-2 in swiss and 1-1 in cut at London Regionals (33 people) with vegan Blue Sun. Got carried by whizz to 2nd place, but definitely had a lot of fun playing this deck. Wins vs Lock hayley, Maxx DLR, Parasifr hayley (somehow) and reg Val, with losses against the same parasifr hayley, another Maxx DLR and Andy.

Didn't practice a lot lately so didn't feel comfortable bringing moons without trying it first, hence I stuck to Blue Sun which I have been playing on and off for a while now. Definitely had some lucky games with it, but it's pretty ok in the current meta I believe. Best way to play this deck is to rush pretty hard; most of your ICE is hard to break for runners early on, and you can gain quite some tempo with arms factory or OAI on big ICE. Caprice is there mainly to score your last agenda; if you wait too long to start installing agenda's runners will lock your remote and you'll feel miserable.

Quick rundown of cardchoices:

  • 3 chiyashi: <3 this thing. While it is very sad weyland needs to spend 6 inf importing some decent barriers, it's just such a good piece of ICE in this deck. The AI clause is actually pretty relevant given all the faust and eater nowadays, and facechecking this is pretty rough. Curtain wall is an inf free alternative, but it sucks if not on the outside and just etr means they can bounce off and follow up with strike to wreck you.

  • 3 spiderweb: works well enough vs clippy, eater and faust for it's cost and there isn't much alternative. I suppose you could play battlement as well ...

  • 2 wormhole: people stopped playing david for a long time already, and all other breakers are pretty crap against it. Definitely over-performed for me during the day. There's enough ETR in this deck to ensure it's always live, but you still have to be careful with ICE placement to ensure this does something. An early spiderweb into wormhole remote for example is super strong against most runners.

  • 2 hortum: kinda disappointed with this, you never advance this so the AI part is irrelevant. Probably should be enigma so you can protect an early OAI on chiyashi more easily.

  • Mausolus: didn't see this all day, but I actually don't like this ICE too much. The subs are pretty mediocre and you never advance this, so it doesn't actually do a whole lot most of the time.

  • 2 colossus, 2 veritas: just generally strong vs mimic, trash program on colossus is pretty good to copy with wormhole as well. Alternatively you can play sapper to give RnD some teeth and have a cheaper ICE to rush behind.

  • 3 Illegal arms factory: gives a deceptive amount of tempo, and bouncing it with blue sun means the runner can likely never trash this for the BP. Remember you can trigger this for the cred and card first, and then if you find eg an agenda for in the remote bounce this back to hand with Blue Sun. It also needs to be rezzed and trashed by the runner to give the BP, so it's very safe.

  • 1 caprice: as said, mainly there to score your last points with. If you can get an early GFI scored, this makes NA plays with atlas very strong assuming you have a taxing remote already. If they do play rumor mill, at least it's not strike! I was on 2 first but changed last minute to 3 chiyashi since there is so many AI around; getting an atlas counter early for it becomes that much more important. You can replace the chiyashi with bulwark perhaps, but that makes a very poor OAI target.

  • 2 scarcity: mainly there to clear strikes, which do tend to ruin your day. It might be worthwhile to play 2 hostile takeover iso the CST, likely cutting 1 restructure? I just don't like giving BP so I haven't tested it, but seeing how popular strikes are it probably makes sense. Scarcity is imo the best cheap current around, having this early slows down a lot of runner decks.

  • No kill package: it's just too slow and durdly to mess around with midseasons and MCA, and it takes a lot of slots in your deck and your hand. You can gain some edge against people who don't know your deck, and I had multiple people installing NACH/critic/plas. They might even give you an early agenda if you have a credit lead out of fear of midseasons, so again remember to push those agenda's early.

Deck is pretty ok against most anarch and probably crim, but a lot of the shapers can get you remote locked very quickly. Your best bet against them is to just rush asap and hope to find crisium early to stop their deep data mining. Once they are setup, you have approx 0 outs vs rumor mill + faust.

2 comments
25 Jun 2017 clercqie

Congrats on the fantastic performance buddy :) Shame about the anticlimactic final game -- and of course very well played by Dave.

This deck is super fun to play.

26 Jun 2017 Slowriffs

Awesome job! Blue Sun forever! <3