Argus Ops - Titan Takeover! - 4th Place Corp, Sheffield SC

Some people asked me to post the lists that me and my Sheffield Meta teammate Andy brought to the back to back Store Championships in Sheffield this weekend; so here goes:-

Concept

The deck was designed around the idea of having play against both the prevalence of Tag-me Siphon decks that have been dominating the runner-side meta recently, while having play against more traditional runners, and the opportunity to not only win through Meat Damage flatlines, but also to be able to score out 7 points while threatening the kill.

The first question I asked when building this deck was ‘can I manufacture a kill on a Tag-me runner from 0 credits’, which is a situation I considered to be likely to arise. Also, I was conscious of the fact that many decks are running I’ve Had Worse as their meat damage protection. This lead me to the following 3 cards:-

Beanstalk Royalties Traffic Accident Scorched Earth

All in faction, against a Tag-me runner this can manufacture a kill from 0 credits and has a 60% chance of being successful against a single #I’ve Had Worse in hand as well if you sequence the kill with #Traffic Accident first.

Against players not willing to help you out and tag themselves multiple times, you need to manufacture the means of landing more than one tag in one operation. This meant Midseason Replacements; something which worked nicely with the low credit count kill, because you can Midseasons and throw all your cash into the Trace. As long as the runner can’t or will not clear down to less than 2 tags on your turn, you are still live to land the TA>Beanstalk>SE setup for the win on a subsequent turn.

ID

Originally, this deck was run out of Argus Protection; it wasn’t until I discussed the deck with another local (and very successful) player that he suggested the switch to Titan, which came with several advantages. The Argus ID ability was often either redundant (people rarely care about taking tags if you have Midseasoned them already or they are playing Tag-me) or ineffective (two meat damage at the control of the Runner doesn’t bite very hard, and good runners won’t discard Plascrete tokens to them).

The advantages of running the list out of Titan are: 2 Extra Influence (Important when the original 15 was used with the 3xMidseasons, 3x Jackson setup), which let me add 2 Wraparounds for extra play against Eater/Keyhole; The ability to score Project Atlas with an automatic token, meaning you have instant access to either Midseasons or a part of the kill combo if you can score it), and the fact that the ID somewhat disguises what your intentions are, unlike Argus which immediately tells the runner ‘Find your Plascretes against this deck’.

I think the switch to Titan was a big improvement, but if you wanted to run the original Argus version, it switched the 3 Project Atlas for 1 Glenn Station, 1 more Hostile Takeover, and 1 Government Contracts.

ICE

The ICE in this deck went through a bunch of revisions, and its still not exactly where I want it I don’t think. The ICE in this deck is not intended to be Glacial in nature, just provide enough of an early game speedbump to make runners build their rig (originally the deck had no Code Gates, but I think the 4 that are in this list are effective enough in their own right).

Hive carries a lot of the burden of this deck on its shoulders. As a deck that loves to play passively, let the runner come to it, Hive can be a huge cost to chew through, shoring up the defenses of a central, or creating an early game scoring server to force through an overscored Atlas. I often found myself asking the question of whether scoring a Hostile Takeover was worth the cost of defanging my Hive’s slightly.

The Hives, along with Checkpoint and Wraparound, are also pulling duty as anti-Eater tech, allowing relatively cheap ICE to punch way above its weight in taxing Eater runners who didn’t bring a Corroder in their list as well.

Playstyle

ICE up your centrals, take credits. You want your credit pool to be high enough to threaten a Midseasons to land at any time; unless your runner opponent is Siphoning and taking tags, in which case, the hard part is done for you, and you should be digging for the TA>Beanstalk>SE combo to land ASAP. If you have the Hive and an Atlas, and your opponent is slow in setting up, using the Hive to score it early means your Kill Combo or Midseasons potential is way better.

Crisium Grid priority should probably be R&D first, then HQ. With Government Takeover in your deck, an unprotected Maker’s Eye or repeated Keyhole runs could give up the 6 pointer.

With the Midseasons available, and a decent credit pool, a naked or deliberately poorly protected NAPD Contracts can be the bait used to pull in a runner and get them to steal and eat their credit pool at the same time. If your opponent is refusing to bite on your installed agendas, just start scoring them; being on 4 agenda points pressures your opponent far more, but be aware about how much value in your Hives you are losing in doing so.

Some Notes on Government Takeover

Some people asked about the thought process of running it in the deck, and sure, its a scary proposition. However, like everything in Netrunner, its a risk you can manage if you are aware of it, and you can turn its existence into a benefit.

As well as the obvious advantage of lowering your agenda density, it can set up another few plays. The Takeover/Punitive Counterstrike combo is real, and scored me a game win this weekend. An overscored Atlas with 2 token already in play, my opponent scores Takeover off the top of my deck. Two Atlas tokens fetch me Punitive and Beanstalk, and the game is over on turn 5.

In addition, it can be a gamewinning threat even if you just have a single scored Hostile in hand. Especially against decks which struggle to break through Hive/Wraparound combos, an early scoring server with a Takeover in can be massive pressure. In addition, with just a single point scored, relentlessly advancing a Shattered Remains can guarantee the runner has to check the remote for fear of you landing the two-agenda victory, providing a convenient leverage for destroying Plascrete’s already in play.

It will lose you a percentage of your games by being in your deck and available to be stolen. However, I think it has the potential to win you a higher percentage of your game than the variance it introduces, so personally I was happy running it all weekend.

The Kill

With the runner tagged, either through their own choice, or via Midseasons, its time to focus on the kill, The addition of Traffic Accident here is what makes the decks kill far more robust than traditional Scorched combos. Because TA into SE is generally as effective a kill as double Scorch, but a) doesn’t put two of your Scorches into Archive if it fails, b) isn’t negated by Plascretes to a large degree because you have much more meat damage available, it allows your deck to be more of a threat.

In a situation without an in-play Plascrete on the runner side, you should be digging for a Traffic Accident and a Scorch, and playing them in that order. There’s literally no value to playing the Scorch first, as you are actively trying to miss any I’ve Had Worse they have in hand before playing the Scorch for lethal.

Against resolved Plascretes, you have a couple of options; the first is simply to chew through them. This weekend I saw Andy playing the Argus version of this list land 3 point Punitive, Accident, Accident, Scorch, Scorch across two successive turns to eat through 2 Plascrete and still land the kill; The other option is the Shattered Remains bait, and my record over the weekend was 5 fully charged Plascretes (and a Clone Chip and a Grimoire) eaten by Shattered Remains.

Things to look out for

Utopia Shard did a great job saving people from death against me this weekend. This, more than Account Siphon, is probably the reason you want a Crisium on HQ; at the very least, don’t let runners get free runs into HQ because you aren’t holding anything of value to them; Wanton Destruction and Utopia Shards are cards that can really impact your ability to land the MSR/TA/SE combo when you need it.

Results

I played the Argus version of the deck 5 times on Saturday, and landed 2 clean kills, but lost to two different MaxX decks due to either hitting I’ve Had Worse with my killing combo, or being Utopia Sharded out of the kill, as well as to a Valencia deck which I just couldn’t land the kill combo on before her Blackmail’s grabbed the winning agendas.

On Sunday, I got another two kills, badly messed up a kill in game 3 by playing my Scorch before my Traffic Accident against a CT opponent I didn’t think was running I’ve Had Worse and was (just a boneheaded mistake), and having my killing Scorch Utopia’ed out of my hand against a MaxX who refused to play Tagme in round 4.

Overall, I think this deck can be competitive; It can definitely put pressure on opposing runners and land kills despite their best efforts. The Eater/Keyhole MaxX deck continues to be its worse matchup because of the low strength of its ETR Ice, but its hard to find additional ways to improve that matchup without warping the deck beyond measure.