Turtlepads Grail

I posted this deck up on Reddit yesterday and it sparked some discussion, so I figured I would share here too! Here is the link to the discussion, and the introduction I wrote there.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/comments/2zc4uf/grailicein_turtlepads/

"So, over the past few weeks I've been experimenting with Grail ice in NBN. I started off with an 'Arthur's World is Yours*' deck, which I quite enjoyed. It took me a few games to realise what the purpose of the Grail ice was in this context; you use it to force the runner into attacking before they have their rig set up, and then you can use the dangerous subs to hit their hand (with Merlin) or their rig (with Lancelot). Lots of players still throw down a Faerie and assume it will keep them safe from harm, Grail can punish that.

"Of course, if they take a step back and start to rig build, you've got a window to rush through a couple of early agendas!

"I think The Foundry often suffers as it's not quite set up to rush those agendas, not in the way that NBN is, and often once you see the Foundry you have a good idea they're running Grail and you start trying to find your breakers early. They can't capitalise on that slower runner start, and the late game stage arrives sooner.

"Once I came to this realisation about Grail ice, I decided to try it in a bunch more decks. I had previously been running an NEH Turtlebacks deck, broadly inspired by one on BGG from gumOnShoe . It took me to second before the cut in our ~30 player Store Champ and then to 5th in the cut, going 5 wins out of 7 games (including one very close call!). It is a great deck, and is the deck that will make your meta go from 'Turtlebacks? What does that do? Oh... Why not just use PAD?' to 'Man, fuck Turtlebacks, kill it now'.

"Most of the issues with the deck come from early RnD agenda leaks. Sometimes I plug the hole quick enough, sometimes I drop a couple of Astros off the top and that is pretty hard to come back from. So, I thought I would try Grail with the 'slow the runner down' philosophy last night. And it worked pretty well!"

After that discussion, I changed the deck with: -2 Cerebral Static -1 Swordsman -2 Pop-up Window -2 Tollbooth

and added: +2 Architect +2 Will-o'-the-Wisp and either +1 IT Crowd or +1 Corporate Troubleshooter, haven't decided yet.

Troubleshooter is a surprise and can make a Grail or Architect the runner thinks they can break suddenly stick (turning a Lancelot pretty much into an Archer, or boosting an Architect ridiculously high, and reinstalling the Troubleshooter), IT Crowd gives you more of a taxing approach, meaning you can turn spare clicks on your turn into a tax on the runner later when you're trying to score.