Out of Time

amightyrobot 75

Stronger Together has always lived in the shadow of its economic powerhouse older brother, Engineering the Future. But a few recent cards made me want to give ST another go, so this is the list I've been playing around with.

Basically, you just want to set up very taxing servers with Bioroids, Heinlein Grid and Troll. Your main scoring remote is pretty damn secure once you get two bioroids, a Troll in front, and Heinlein grid behind. This is the dream, and this will let you score Wotan.

Early on, sometimes I've found it's good to fake out an ABT as an econ Asset and triple-advance it the following turn. Particularly if you have a Jackson ready, that extra Bioroid or two can lock things down beautifully.

After that it's waiting for scoring windows, but again, Troll and Heinlein can make those windows open up pretty damn wide.

Now, about some of my choices:

The economy here is heavily asset-based. PAD campaigns can ride unprotected if you don't have spare Ice handy, but Adonis is best protected by one piece, and Sundew has to be. The latter is a weird splash but I kind of really like it. If you get them early game, the Runner is either going to waste a whole turn and some money trashing them, which is fine with you, or she's going to leave 'em and you're going to get very rich very fast. Same goes for all of your assets, but Sundew applies its own peculiar kind of pressure and, hey, I had the influence.

Brain-Taping Warehouse is best dropped early on, and rezzed when the Runner's at 3 clicks, obviously. Getting to rez that discounted Viktor 2 or Heimdall feels great - or, hell, an Eli for free. I've found so far that Runners often don't rush to trash it if it's protected, they just avoid facechecking Ice on first or second click. This should be fine by you, since you don't want them to have clicks to spend anyway, right??

A word about Troll + Heinlein Grid: Wow. You're typically going to be pretty flush with cash in this deck, in my experience, and as long as you're ahead of the Runner this combo just stops them dead in their tracks. As long as there are two Bioroids behind the Troll - or one Heimdall - you've made the server basically impossible to break that turn. This opens up windows pretty effectively and consistently, or at least it's worked so far.

Ash is a utility player here, just as an alternate for creating scoring windows. He can help in the early game because Eli + Ash is far easier to set up than the superserver detailed above, and if the Runner has no Fracter out yet it can be almost as impossible to break. Still might switch him out, if I can find something more worthwhile to run in his place.

Pretty much all the ICE is Bioroid, obviously because of ST's ability. The only exceptions are Troll (duh) and Viper. Viper is just so I have one hard ETR in the deck, which can help protect HQ early on. Might think about replacing that with Architect for consistency, but I'm not sure. ST means the Bioroids are brutally taxing if you're breaking them the traditional way - nothing here is below STR-4, the average is more like STR-6, and pretty much everything has multiple subs. If the Runner doesn't run, you get rich, and if they do, they find themselves out of money and out of time.

14 comments
14 May 2015 seeds34

Nice deck and looks fun. I've got a mate who has being trying to make a Haas-Bioroid: Stronger Together deck and I think he'd like this. I like the use of Troll with Heinlein Grid. I would be tempted to swap a Project Wotan for an Eden Fragment. You can't rely on getting Eden Fragment scored but its a nice boost when you do.

14 May 2015 Jashay

Viper is not a hard ETR; a runner with base link can pay through it for 2. But it is decently taxing.

Something I never tire of telling people is to watch out for Account Siphons and stuff like that in these type of decks. There is no ICE that a determined, breakerless runner couldn't saunter through.

Sundew is an interesting one; I tried Capital Investors for a while but the porosity of the ICE combined with the 2 trash cost made it too easy to deal with.

Have you faced many -bearing runners? It would only take 2 to mess up a lot of your ICE, but I appreciate that is not exactly common.

14 May 2015 amightyrobot

@Jashay great call on Viper, I don't know what I was thinking. If it's just taxing the Runner I might as well switch it out for that Architect, right? Who needs hard ETR when you can just stack Bioroids 2-deep?

Account Siphon and Vamp are a concern, but so far I've been okay just stacking HQ 2-deep as fast as possible against Criminals and certain Anarchs. Most Runners aren't going to blindly throw a precious Account Siphon at a facecheck, even against ST, which is how I hope to have the time to do that.

Sundew is one part economy, two parts tax. The ideal is to have it behind an unrezzed Eli or Viktor 1.0 with Brain-Taping Warehouse elsewhere. If the Corp wants to stop Sundew from firing they have to spend three clicks just to let you rez a Bioroid for free. Still playing around with it; if I replace it it will probably be with Private Contracts for exactly the trash-cost reason you gave.

I've beaten a few Andy/Underworld Contacts decks with this, actually. Troll is way, way less threatening against those decks, but they also tend to have a little more setup time - so far, it's been enough to let me ice down before they can click all the way through anyway. Ash definitely sees more play against those decks, though, since link really takes the teeth out of Troll+Heinlein.

14 May 2015 amightyrobot

@seeds34 An earlier version ran Eden, Utopia, and 1x Wotan, but I like the consistency of this and scoring the Wotan is actually super helpful in scoring out the last agenda.

14 May 2015 Jashay

@amightyrobot "Account Siphon and Vamp are a concern, but so far I've been okay just stacking HQ 2-deep as fast as possible against Criminals and certain Anarchs. " - Spot on. I play a hell of a lot of ST, and that's certainly the way to go.

Architect should be fine, too. It has a place in just about any HB deck, to be honest!

Your deck is a lot more horizontal than how I tend to play with HB:ST; (here, for reference). Do you run into any issues getting enough ICE to cover everything whilst double-stacking centrals?

14 May 2015 amightyrobot

@Jashay "Do you run into any issues getting enough ICE to cover everything whilst double-stacking centrals?"

Not so far, actually. Early game I'm happy with two on the "problem central" (HQ against Crim, Valencia, Reina, R&D against Shaper/all other Anarchs) and one on the other important Central (Archives can stay open against most decks 'til later on) before I start going horizontal. Early ABT is ideal, plugging any holes I do have and/or beefing up my scoring remote before I cap it with Troll. There are 19 pieces here, so I've drawn more Ice than I've needed every game so far. Architect will only up the consistency, though.

14 May 2015 whirrun

Nice deck, I was running something like this before brain taping warehouse came out. Have you looked at Hudson? My version ran a few more upgrades, and the value you get from Hudson is crazy.

Also backing the Architect include, people will facecheck.

14 May 2015 vor_lord

What about fitting in Turing? Fantastic on any remote server. I don't love Viper except in NBN: Making News.

14 May 2015 juliandark

What is so great on the Troll+Heinlein combo that you spend 6 influence on it? I seem to be missing it, at best, you are trading credits almost 1:1 with the runner. Worst case you've spent tons of money on simple ETR. Basically the same thing Ash does, and that is in faction and you are not even running a full suite of them.

Also how are you flush with cash? Not that many economy cards, and with porous ice, if they want to trash your assets, they can unless you at least doubleICE - but then you better roll all 3 campaigns there. Sundew is a weird choice, they might leave it be, but if they don't, you've spent a lot as well. Perhaps Marked Accounts?

With Brain Tapping warehouse, you might try Strongbox, it has a decent synergy.

15 May 2015 federicolatini

Troll let you lose a click, heilein require the runner to spend a clic in order to trigger, I can't see the combo but may be it triggers and it's a problem of wording

15 May 2015 federicolatini

My bad, italian translation got me confused. :-)

15 May 2015 Glitch29

@juliandark You're not missing anything. Troll is an abyssmal card, even in front of a Heinlein Grid.

16 May 2015 slakker

I'm playing around with a similar deck and it's a lot of fun. Lag time and Caprice work really well in it too.

16 Jun 2015 Ghost Runner

I really like this deck and @slakker's idea using Caprice :)