Hands of Blue (1st Place @ Petrie's Winter Series 3)

CrimsonWraith 3643

"Two by two, hands of blue."

I followed up winning the second Winter Series Qualifier with NEH and Noise at Petrie's in Colorado Springs by winning the third one as well on March 24th, this time with Blue Sun and Leela.

This has been one my favorite Corp decks throughout Store Championship season, as I went 7-1 with a close variant of this list at The Yellow King Store Championship. If you throw in casual games both in-person and over OCTGN leading up to these two tournaments, I was sitting at 23-2 with this list at the conclusion of the tournament. I don't know how objectively good it is, but it certainly meshes with my playstyle very well.

It started out as a carbon copy of @tmoiynmwg 's Lanri deck, but the more I play it and tweak the list, the closer it grows to @bblum 's Boot Camp Glacier builds. Huh, just noticed bblum had a Blue Sun deck named Hands of Blue from six months ago, never knew that existed. Oh well, I've been calling mine that for months, I'm not changing it now. =P The Firefly connection with Blue Sun and Hands of Blue with Scorch is perhaps more obvious than I initially thought. =D

The agenda distribution is much closer to Timmy's list than Ben's, though this is something I've since changed and am experimenting with in my latest variant. Atlas is obviously good, and it's not uncommon for me to start a game out in Supermodernism fashion by rushing out an Atlas with 1-2 counters. The strength of this deck lies in its flexibility and ability to threaten multiple paths to victory. Atlas with a counter can pull Midseason Replacements and threaten tag punishment if the Runner's beating down your servers and yanking agendas, or it can pull Priority Requisition and go for the score if you have a scoring window. Priority Requisition has obvious benefits with Blue Sun's ability. Posted Bounty gives you another method of tagging the Runner outside of Midseason, and offers a fantastic lose-lose situation for the Runner when you have Posted Bounty on the table and a Midseason in hand. Corporate War is incredible and actually one of my favorite agendas in Blue Sun, the ability to bounce rezzed cards back to hand usually assuring that you will gain 7 credits from a scored Corporate War. Hostile Takeover is the most questionable include here, as you don't need the burst economy and you don't want the bad publicity. It's only here as Archer fuel and to close out the game when you're at 5-6 points with an Atlas counter or two.

You've got what's become a pretty standard economy package with 3x Hedge, 3x OAI, and 1x each of Adonis and Private Contracts. Archived Memories is there primarily to pull back Adonis, but I've gone with Archived Memories over Interns to also pull back things like Scorched Earth for when the Runner gets tagged early and you don't have multiple copies of Scorch in hand. Admittedly, the more I play bblum's builds, the more I lean towards Interns here.

On the utility side of things, you've got 3x Jackson Howard, 1x Midseason Replacements, 2x Power Shutdown, 3x Scorched Earth, and 1x Snatch and Grab. Power Shutdown's really only particularly strong against Criminals at the moment, and is one of the flex spots I'm looking at in my current build. It can nail an SMC or Clone Chip, but it's gotten to the point of making little to no impact on Anarchs and Shapers with the popularity of Levy in MaxX and PPVP Kate. Snatch and Grab is lovely on paper, but skilled Runners have seen it as a common splash in Corp decks and are not dropping low on credits when they've got Kati loaded with a significant amount of credits, so this slot is also pretty flexible. A lot of players are down on Scorched Earth in Blue Sun, but I think it's a necessary evil. I feel like Blue Sun Glacier's weakest matchup is PPVP Kate, particularly now with players tweaking for a more glacier-heavy meta, and I don't know that PPVP Kate has ever been more popular than it is now. However, most PPVP Kate decks have dropped Plascrete entirely, which makes Scorch a vital addition to defeating them. I think a viable alternate victory condition is completely worth the four card slots and four influence it takes up.

On to the ice suite... The Lotus Fields and Tollbooth are pure gold in this deck. Hive is ideal for the early game, and greatly complements Blue Sun's ability to bounce it back once you've scored 4-5 points. Caduceus is one of the best ice in the deck until the Runner digs for Mimic, and should probably be bumped to a 3x of. I've already taken Orion out of the build, it's too easy for Runners to pull their most efficient breaker and kill it when Oversight'd. The 1x of Taurus is great, and R&D Interface makes an excellent target if you're not going after Plascrete to set up the meat damage kill. I'm pretty down on Archer right now, seems too easy to blank it with Sharpshooter or even to recur the lost programs when it is face-checked. It doesn't seem worth giving up scored agendas to rez these days. It's probably right to cut the Hostile Takeovers and Archer for a second Priority Req and different ice.

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