@hhooo Let Lab Dogs Out??!? - Madison, WI Regional 2nd place

I wanted to fully name this deck like those cheesy political scare books. The true deck title is "Unleashed: The Real Life Story of the Baja Men, Their Dogs, and Who Really Let Them Out".

Inspired by Daine's Clicking Hell deck, Niles Stanley, a master deckbuilder, and myself have been trying to get an H-B glacier deck off the ground. We let it sit for a minute, and, since I won a Regional already, I decided it was time to unearth some gems. Hence, I dusted off this, and decided to tune it up. One of my goals was to add cards from the new pack to both of my decks for the Madison, WI Regional. In this one, there was one obvious choice: Lab Dogs. Niles is quite against NRE, and I expected to see it a bit, as well. In it went.

This deck only went 4-2 in Swiss, and 1-1 in Elims, but was quite fun. 2 of the games were lost by literally giving up 5-6 card accesses in R&D, which, with 8 Agendas, doesn't make sense. I do feel that if you use Howard to keep your HQ clean, the only weak link is R&D, and it needs to be protected desperately. The amount of Upgrades in the deck isn't ridiculous, but it's enough to have them over HQ, R&D, and in the scoring remote, and the opponent may have a difficult time putting you on what exactly you have. Crisiums are for centrals, and Caprice usually goes on HQ and the scoring remote. ASH can go on R&D and the scoring remote.

The deck has a lot of flexibility, and Archived Memories helps with that. I've used it on everything from Biotic to Adonis, Caprice to Snatch & Grab. It turns your singleton tools into extra copies. Fantastic card in glacier.

The ICE is pretty straight forward, and when layered properly causes many headaches. Having 20 is nice, as it allowed me to layer all 3 Centrals and the scoring remote with 2-3+ ICE each. I have always liked that style of glacier in H-B, giving very few easy choices. I had more Siphons and Dirty Laundries hit the bin voluntarily than landed against me.

3 Project Wotan seems excessive, but I didn't see an Agenda that would be as impactful. PriReq is nice, but is very time-sensitive. Wotan, once scored, makes math hard, which is not to be underestimated in a long tourney. Plus, it has the added benefit of being a surprise, as hardly anyone plays it. Almost every time I scored it, my opponent would start a run, then ask, "What does that do again?", and then just read the one they stole from me (went down 3-0 almost every game, strangely). Quite humourous to me.

Finally, let's talk some Lab Dogs. It's a joke card, and is instantly killed by Parasite. Why would I play it? Well, like anything, it's about timing. Most Runners can't easily break Trap ICE, and almost every Runner has a target. Sure, they get to choose, which I didn't realize until I started the tourney. However, there usually aren't many choices, and it's usually always hard. The only time they didn't hit hard was Round 1, v. Hayley Stealth Replicator. By the time he started to run, he had 9 Hardware out. :\

Had a fun tourney. 71 players, and faced a variety of Runners: Hayley, Andy, Leela, Kate, Valencia, Noise. Really did well v. all of them. Snatch & Grab had major impact v. Kati decks. First round of elim, I was able to choose, and it was a no-brainer v. Noise. The filthy amount of recursion here didn't give Noise much of a chance. Against Crim, once the 'shields are up', and all servers are 2-3 ICE deep, they have a brutally difficult time, as the Upgrades really hamper any Run events. With a little better luck on R&D accesses, this deck could've done much better. Give it a shot!