Iceless Hoshiko (2nd @ Turin CO)

This is the deck I took to our CO in Turin yesterday. It was a small event, but I only came 2nd by 0.04 eSoS so I think the results are pretty good. I won against Glacier Azmari, Glacier Issuaq and FA Azmari, then lost to koga's R+ in our little top2 showmatch.

(My corp was my Holo Asa list, which I think can use some improvements but still feels absurdly strong despite a couple challenged matchups and a tendency to flood)

This Runner came about as part of QtM's general fascination with OF15-15's Crew Hoshiko deck. Two things we identified pretty early were that:

• The virus package makes you more vulnerable to Mavirus in a way that feels unnecessary.
• As a consequence, influence feels almost entirely free.

Therefore, we had a lot of room to experiment. Olive from chord gang took her version to the London CO a week ago and came 3rd with it. I made some very different choices which resulted in a much more sadistic deck.

Let's talk about a bunch of cards, you nerd

Core

• 3x Arruaceiras Crew, 3x Devil Charm: this is the essential combo that makes the deck work. If you have these in your deck, glacier is basically a done deal
• 3x Patchwork: I don't think it's reasonable to go with any other console (Keiko could be a possibility if Working Prototype wasn't so hot right now, maybe). But Patchwork gives you so much tempo over the course of the game that I really don't feel like having anything else.
• 2x Aumakua, 2x Leech: exploit holes once you've poked them. Remember Leech is very useful even before turtle's out, for crew reasons. You actually don't need your squirtle anytime early, crew can handle most things first.

Support

This is where the juicy bits come in.

• 2x Stargate: this is the best multiaccess you can have in here. The MU feels just right for it, and you can remove either economy or ice depending on what your opponent's board is looking like. There are a lot of hard choices here, but only because all of them are very good. Stargate plus Doof means you have a lot of room for flipping Hoshiko back, which I think i maybe overdo but is a very good ability to have since the deck is so poor.
• 2x Diversion of Funds: you can land this because the Corp doesn't expect it but also just because you trashed their ice. Once you establish control you can pretty reliably expect to land four or five of these per game, which means rush decks have absolutely no chance of winning. All inf spends feel luxurious, so one that wins seems great.
• 2x Bahia Bands: Having ways to remove your crew tags while you do other stuff is great, as is help trashing assets (the deck is too poor). I don't enjoy BB much in general but it's definitely felt at its best in here. This is still sort of a flexible slot: you could have Pinhole Threading, Boomerang or Miss Bones in this spot.
• 1x DJ Fenris, 2x Labor Rights: Recursion ensures that your crews and doofs actually completely wreck your opponent's ability to build anything. Bury them into the ground harder, and harder, and harder. You can sometimes play a LR early on if you really need to recur powerful cards.
• 2x Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra: these are absolutely necessary against wide yellow decks, but they do a lot against other archetypes as well. The tag removal is something you actually want, and because the deck wants to Stargate every turn and also get constant Steve Cambridge: Master Grifter value and sometimes Doof, everything feels very click intensive. When to pop this is actually a super difficult call to make, there are games you win because you remember to double doof + run the remote.

Optional

• 2x Fermenter: These are here just for extra money. Games feel like they go too fast for you to properly profit from them, and I'm not a fan of dying harder to purges. However Liberated Account felt too intensive for the deck, and I'm not a fan of Dirty Laundry not being a The Price target, though the latter may ultimately be the best slot in here.
• 1x Hippo: This is decent and it helps to have some extra ice destruction on top of our crews, but is also too much sometimes. It should probably be an extra econ card, or maybe a more regular breaker so we don't always have to deal with everything the punchy way.

Thank you!

Thanks to people from QtM for helping develop things in this archetype more broadly, and especially to Meryu for very dedicated support for this one. Thanks to theo, cableCarnage and AlPi also for helping with testing.

Thanks to wowarlok for stepping up to organize our local tournaments, you've done an amazing job. Thanks to millenomi for offering some foil alt art Zer0es as prizing. Always be MILANOMALEing.