The Art of Trolling 2.0

anr_marsellus 1336

@Four_Leaf had the most evil though ever. Heinlein Grid. 'Nuff said.

EDIT: Alright, given the temporary popularity of this, I feel obliged to go a little deeper :)

Surveillance Sweep makes a lot of stuff here absolutely terrible. Information Overload's on-encounter trace turns it on immediately, Data Ravens trace cannot be ignored anymore, Data Hound is an absolute beast and Resistor is a great tax, too. However, your MVP ICE is Troll. On encounter trace and if the runner cannot afford to lose a click, its end the run.

Ash is a huge thing, too and the funniest thing is Heinlein Grid. Put it into a server with Ash and an agenda and the trolling begins. Of course you should be about equal with the runner (I promise, I will do some detailed spreadsheet maths on all the tracing stuff). What happens is that the runner cannot really beat the trace of troll and if he decides to lose a click, Heinlein triggers and he loses all his credits, such that he not only will lose the Ash trace - he cannot even trash him. So this setup makes Troll a hard ETR, provided you got the money. Speaking of which: Sweeps Week and Hedge Fund are your go-to operation eco. Melange is often sticking thanks to your trolling and will allow for some more sustainable eco. Caduceus can give you something as well, however, mostly your ICE is cheap to rez (most expensive piece being Information Overload). You might be required to click for creds, but that is fine.

A lot of your stuff is giving out tags. If the runner ignores that, Keegan Lane, Closed Accounts, Resistor, Information Overload and Psychographics punish that. Your agenda suite allows the runner to steal some stuff without you losing directly - thanks to GFI and 15 minutes. Sometimes it is still the Astrotrain that wins you the game very fast (after all, you are still yellow). But fairly often, you will score GFI or a 3-point Beale.

Anyhow, the deck is a lot of fun to play and I particularly like the weird scoring server. Breaker-wise no answer to this but Femme, but she is expensive and doesnt see too much play. So far the deck did very well in testing. Admittedly, it did not face any Kates or Val DLR, so take it with a grain of salt. But it does what it is supposed to do and poses serious problems to the runner, because it is so different.

Thanks for the Likes and Favourites, please feel free to comment and critisize :)

Discussion: http://forum.stimhack.com/t/new-angeles-sol-the-art-of-trolling/6102/40

18 comments
2 Dec 2015 SyntaxLost

Runner can always choose to end the run rather than lose a click and their credit pool.

2 Dec 2015 anr_marsellus

Sure. But that is what an ICE is supposed to do in a scoring server, right? :D

2 Dec 2015 FourLeaf

Thank you for the reference Marsellus!

here is the location of the original concept for Heinlein. forum.stimhack.com

2 Dec 2015 FarCryFromHuman

I'm trying to find two slots that I'd cut for dropping a GFI and taking 3x Improved Tracers but I can't seem to make it work. This is just nasty, and I love the Surveillance Sweep + Heinlein Grid + Troll synergy.

The only downside I see is when Troll is on the inside of a server. I'm just going to work up exactly the I need to get through everything in front of it, then lose the and take my access. He really wants to be as close to the outside of the server as possible. Ash mitigates this wonderfully, enough so that I wonder if he needs to have three copies. You'd have to lose a Caduceus though.

2 Dec 2015 FourLeaf

Interns sir. Interns.

2 Dec 2015 Sanjay

I love this deck and this concept.

I would be tempted to cut a Pyschographics or an Archangel to make room for an extra current, either Targeted Marketing (for Siphon protection) or Predictive Algorithm (which is funny with Troll + Heinlein Grid in its own right).

Having a zero cost current can be nice when you don't want to pony up the cash to replay Surveillance Sweep, and I've found with other Sol decks I really how quickly 4 currents in the deck lets me turn on News Hound.

Anyway, thanks for posting!

2 Dec 2015 FarCryFromHuman

@Four_Leaf: I guess I feel insecure about a single Interns being enough to stop this problem, but that's probably confirmation bias from my first 6 test draws including 1-2 Troll, and never seeing the Interns. I'll have to play it and try.

2 Dec 2015 anr_marsellus

As soon as I see a Troll, I install it on the inside of a server. The trick is either a second troll or Ash+Heinlein. That keeps them out and it is a nice scoring remote as soon as Surveillance Sweep hits the table (and never leaves) :)

2 Dec 2015 mat

Viper instead of Caduceus, maybe?

3 Dec 2015 anr_marsellus

I like that Caduceus can make me money. Viper has a nice interaction in front or Trolls though. I think those are the tiny decisions that are tweaked to each players preference.

3 Dec 2015 Krams

@mat As much as I love Viper, I wouldn't add it here, for Atman reasons.

@anr_marsellus Great deck! I love how you've turned a weird little 1 ICE like Troll into a real problem for the runner.
Time to include some random Hunting Grounds into my runner decks xD

3 Dec 2015 anr_marsellus

One card (that luckily sees little to no play) that lost me the game against MaxX is Singularity (that is if you only have 2 Trolls). Just had a great game against koichinakano's Timmy Whizzard. He couldn't get his str4-Atman and therefore News Hound became the beast it is. Keegan Lane also doing some nice work trashing Medium and at one point D4v1ds are out as well and Archangels make your servers impenetrable, too.

3 Dec 2015 CodeDigger

How about a Troll with a Pop-up Window just after it. If they lose the trace then they have to lose the click and there 's to the Heinlein Grid or ETR. If they lose their 's then they can't break the Pop-up Window and ETR anyways. LOL, Pop-up Window is so OP.

3 Dec 2015 anr_marsellus

That could be a thing, indeed. It does sound a little win more though, because Ash in the remote does more or less the very same thing, but cannot be parasited once rezzed :) Pop-Up would help with economy though, which is nice. On the other hand: Deckslots xD Good thought, though!

4 Dec 2015 anr_marsellus

Maybe ChiLo City Grid could be a brutal thing here....

4 Dec 2015 LynxMegaCorp

Considered swapping Caduceus for Paywall Implementations? Having more currents to use never hurts and Paywall guarantees credits against aggressive runners. Pretty solid otherwise. Going to be painful against IDs not named Sunny!

5 Dec 2015 Metaphorazine

Given that this deck revolves around Surveillance Sweep, wouldn't this deck work well with NBN: Making News? Seems to me you're trying more to out-threaten the runner on traces, not tags.

22 Jan 2016 Foxtrott

Thanks for this GNK-winning decklist :D