BuildTeki (making the old school fun again)

This is a deck I've been brewing for some time - taking an under represented ID and splashing in lots of old cards. It's almost like building a deck for a meta that existed 3 years ago, except it really hurts a large swath of current runner decks!

Basically, you play as though you're playing Jinteki, but make it look like you're just being reckless. Leave HQ open and stack it with Snare!s, double advance NGO, Junebug and SSL all without protection - letting the runner steal an unprotected SSL early alsmost guarantees they'll run the next card you do the same with - Junebug!

It takes a few games to know when and what to do, but the mind games of this deck are great. The ID damage is excellent at helping ping stuff like Levy and Apoc, which seems to be back in force, and helps to chip away at the runners deck to allow the traps to do their job.

Wins are about half from agenda scores after the runner tries to call my bluff thinking I slotted a Snare! instead of an Atlas, and half caused by suicide runs.

Not much in the deck needs introduction, but the MVPs are...

Oduduwa - Always on R&D. Never even consider it anywhere else. We are in the meta of R&D lock and that server is getting run ALOT. I've had this create me a 20+ strength Ice Wall off the back of it. Let Oduduwa stack up your ice for Mass Commercialization and meat damage. Also, both this and Masvingo have the impression of ice with no advancement tokens on it, which means the runner will often factcheck them thinking they can get away without the meat damage. Yay.

Wormhole - I dropped this card after a while in favour of other ice, but it came back. It has some old school nostalgia for me, as I ran it at the Euros to great success in my Government Takeover Skorpios deck, but the fact is that it's just great right now. Costs 5 for Engolo to get though, which is easily the most common Decoder you'll face, it's painfully expensive for Black Orchestra and it's not too hard to advance 2-3 times due to how long the runner usually stalls against running vs this deck.

Under The Bus - Anti Kati Jones splash. Nothing better than nuking a Kati with 15 credits on it just because the runner looked at a card last turn. The bad pub isn't an issue in this deck as often you're very happy for the runner to run. Also fun to destroy a ProCo shortly after install, slowing the runner drastically.

Why so much money? Firstly, its surprisingly easy to run low early game, advancing and rezzing ice and firing Snares, so the density of economy is not to get rich, but to have enough to set up your board state without delay. Also, psychology plays a part. When you drop few Mass Comm' late game and hit 40 credits, the runner often starts to think you have something nasty waiting to happen - HHN or Punitive and starts to play accordingly. This can open up more windows for you to score. I did originally run Punitive for late game punishment, but rarely found I actually got to land it. If you wanted to do so, I would cut the Prisec (another card that started as a 3-of, but space is tight). My experience says that your opponent thinking you're doing something is almost as good as you actually doing it.

Why no Cleaners? It's a great card wth synergy here, but scoring 5/3's is not the aim of the deck, and having the SSL stolen can often be the thing that gives you the energy (wee, cash) to change the game around. Feel free to slot it and give it a whirl though. I ran with 1 for a while but found I was too tempted to try and set up a scoring remove to protect it. It detracted from the game plan of making your opponent think you're vulnerable.

This deck has 32 wins and 12 losses on Jnet, and is undefeated in 8 games on tabletop where the psychology of the big money and the constant flow of damage is much easy to work up (maybe it helps that I'm a hypnotherapist... not that I use those mind games during play... honest).

This is a pretty fun old school deck, which sits really nicely in the new meta. Give it a whirl!