Red Dead Recoats, Undefeated at Cascadia

crossbrainedfool 207

Historically, there have been two reasons to play all 5/3s. Those are a) Punitive, or b) a grindy glacier deck that is trying to score twice and get a 7th point from somewhere nonstandard.

Of course, why not both?

Plan a) Murder. The Runner accesses a 5/3 or two, you play Punitive Counterstrike(s). This requires money, and ways to keep the runner poor. To support this plan we have taxing ice, must trash cards, NGO bait, and a broad suite of economy. Yes I cut a Rashida for a third Regolith. I’m more convinced of that every time I play the deck.

Plan b) Score. This is why this is an Issuaq deck. Using some combination of La Costa Grid and Seamless Launches we can score once for (effectively) 4 points, and then score once for 3 normally (although these tools can also help there).

These plans complement each other. If they push to fast, the runner runs a serious risk of being shot. If they let the Glacier deck do what it wants, they give you a scoring window. And you only need two.

Specific card callouts:

Anansi: The keystone of the ice suite. No one wants to play the cards that are actually good against the god of stories, like Carmen (partially, because they only do slightly better that the competition) or Slap Vandal + Poison Vial. Bane of Boomerangs, Eater of Hopes and Dreams, this deck doesn’t work without this card.

Bathynomus: Both an early gearcheck, and archives security late game, thanks to Thimblerig moving things around.

Fuji Asset Retrieval: Obvious murder support agenda. Best when the runner isn’t being completely paranoid.

Bacterial Programming: More subtle Murder support card. It can dig for Punitive, Econ Ops, or, if you feeling mean, be dumped in Archives with the hope of putting a second agenda in there while doing the above.

Adrian Seis: Awesome, and cheap, defensive upgrade.

Hansei Review: I love the five credits, hate the discard. You have a lot of specific cards hanging out in hand.

My 3 kills and two scores out meant I clean swept Cascadia on corp side.

4 comments
17 Aug 2023 Saan

Hey I recognize this kinda thing!

I love the fact that good ol' Punitive Jinteki is still murdering people, and I love putting it in Issuaq, an ID that has otherwise had trouble finding a deck. My most annoying bit of trying to get the deck to work was trying to sneak out that 7th point, which you've just gone and removed the need for altogether with the ID.

I'll have to throw it together and mess around =)

18 Aug 2023 CephalopodWizard

It is quite on-brand for you to name Regolith a stronger card than Rashida! Keep the glacier dream alive!

31 Aug 2023 crossbrainedfool

I guess I should've checked to see if someone else got there first on the name front.

Zoe put together the original, pre-Liberation list that used Obokatas and was purely defensive (The Saisentan doing the Shinobi impression was certainly a Zoe-esque touch). I added the punative package after Liberation+Obo ban, which resulted in this monster. I swear, this deck seems to come from bizzaro land.

8 Sep 2023 Pokerface

Congrats on excellent performance! Quick questions regarding the ICE suite : why no 3x Anansi, and also I am a bit puzzled by the inclusion of ELI versus a second Magnet. Did you not expect a lot of Trojan / Botulus? Also Tatu-Bola does seem quite strong, would it make sense to replace one of the Thimblerig with one of those in your opinion?