The Horseman of Cayembe

They are less than worms, these corporations. I have judged them, and found them wanting.

This was my regionals deck this last weekend. It worked really well. Went 4-1 on the day (stayed out of the cut because I made some really poor decisions playing my Blue Sun deck.) My only loss a combination of moving too fast and getting terrible luck hitting net damage on every single central run against IG. This deck has been treating me really well, and I look forward to refining it further.

The Deck

1. Apocalypse
2. Keyhole your way to victory

It's really that simple. Okay, so I've glossed over how to make that happen, but you have a few major tools:

Eater: Your bread. You have the econ engine to make it work for you. Getting into centrals a few times might be expensive, but it'll do the trick if you're not blowing all your credits on runs every turn.

Keyhole: Your butter. It's the win condition of the deck. Use it before the apocalypse to make your opponent ice R&D more. Use it after the apocalypse to win.

Wanton Destruction: It's such a good card for keeping the corp off balance. Get a few turns of DBS in, and Wanton them out of the blue. Save it until after you apocalypse, and suck all those cards they've been saving for after the apoc out of their hand. Pull that SEA Scorch away from them when they think they have you. Force the corp to ice HQ better.

Blackmail: Use it everywhere. Pretend you're vanilla Val and snipe agendas. Make them ice remotes with assets they want. Make them bait your blackmails out. Use it after the corp overcommits to icing R&D to get your successful run for free. Use it to sneak into a Crisium Gridded server.

The Staples

I've Had Worse/Inject/Diesel: You need card draw to get the right tools. These cards will cycle through 24 cards in your deck, leaving you with only 21 cards you need to click to draw. The deck could use more draw, but the slots were hard to come by.

Amped Up: This card gets you there, whatever there has to be. Sometimes, you need to Keyhole a couple more times to seal the deal. Sometimes, you need to go hit Hostile Infrastructure or Crisium Grid before you can Apocalypse. And sometimes, you just need an old-fashioned 5-card Wanton Destruction. This card will get you to that goal.

Retrieval Run: Between Inject, Apocalypse, and the power draw, you need a way to save your silver bullets from the bin.

Queen's Gambit: It's a really good card. You have to be careful about using it, but with so much asset spam in the current meta, it can't be beat. If you run it, you have to be willing to accept it will lose you a game every once in a while. But the benefit far outweighs the cost, to me. (Plus, it combos REALLY, REALLY well with Hacktivist Meeting. People aren't willing to prerez everything if you have Hacktivist out.)

The Tech

Hacktivist Meeting: Again, asset spam is so popular right now, this is a no-brainer. But even if it wasn't, this card makes the corp think twice about that Jackson, or the Crisium, or even the Caprice.

Levy AR Lab Access: I go back and forth on this card. At the end of the day, if Jinteki thousand cuts wasn't so popular, I don't think I'd need it. But it is, so I do.

Mimic/Yog.0/D4v1d: For dealing with AI hate. Mimic hits Swordsman, Yog hits Turing on centrals, and D4vid hits whatever massive thing you need to get through to apoc and/or Wraparound.

Parasite: I added it because of Tour Guide. I added a second one because it keeps the pressure on after the apocalypse, and combos nicely with Deja Vu.

Councilman: It's in the deck to stop Crisium/Hostile Infrastructure from ruining your day when you're ready to apocalypse. But it works for so much more. He deals with Caprices and Jacksons emergency rescuing agendas from archives. He makes Fast Advance take longer. He can even make Hacktivist hurt just a little more.

Notoriety: I added it as a joke, and I will likely never cut it, it's won me so many games. Since GFI has come out, every deck is "I play GFI, and you need to score one less thing than me." Notoriety turns that back in your favor. Just get to 6 points, get back in to every central (which this deck is designed to do,) and win.

Chop Bot 3000: Sometimes, you need to rescue one of your one-ofs from the table. It's quite rare, but it happens, so Chop Bot is there for you if you need him.

Play Advice

This deck has a lot of matchup-dependent math you have to do, and a bit of bookkeeping that isn't obvious until you've played some apocalypse. Don't have more than one Councilman/Same Old Thing installed, unless you know for a fact that you'll need it. Getting them trapped face down can be a game-ender. Don't install Yog/Mimic/D4vid unless you're sure they'll come in handy. You can always recover them, and the tempo hit can be big (especially from Yog.) If you need one click to trash Crisium or Hostile Infrastructure, and have Same Old Thing installed, don't be afraid to Amped Up - even if you lose Apoc from hand, you have the clicks to do everything. Wait to Apocalypse until the corp has whatever it is they need on the table. Sometimes that's Museum, other times it's a glacier deck with a 5/3 on board, sometimes it's just "9 or 10 ice." The more the corp loses, the more you win, and you usually only get one chance. Make it count.

It's also important to remember that you're not vanilla Valencia. Executive Boot Camp doesn't mean you lose. Let them spend a couple of turns icing their remote you "can't get into," and when they jam the agenda down, hit apocalypse. Hit centrals - make the corp rez ice. Sometimes, you can let ice sit on the board if the corp overcommits, but you always want to be applying pressure where the corp isn't concentrating. Hit HQ when there's one ice on it. Retrieval run your rig on the board if the corp doesn't put ice on Archives. Keyhole a bunch. Use your bad pub to trash stuff, and make the corp think about putting ice on assets. This deck plays more like MaxX than it does Valencia - be everywhere, and be relentless until the corp moves to stop you.

So that's my deck! I really, really like it, and I hope you do too. Feel free to leave your comments, I'm happy to tweak it more, and will be constantly improving it. Thanks for reading!