The Black Knight - BABW York winner

Outstanding! I've been playing something similar for a while, but I was stuck on the OAI Curtain Wall combo. Slimming down the ice mix really speeds it up in a great way. I also had three pointers that ended up being a huge liability.

One card I've had success with in this type of deck is Housekeeping. It really keeps all those annoying little cards that block your shutdowns to a minimum and makes it terrifying for runners to check potential grails early. I also enjoy Cyberdex Virus Suite to help those archers hit hard when they need to and blow out any parasite datasucker shenanigans.

I wanted to ask about a few of your choices if possible as well. Why private contracts over capital investors, melange or adonis? I've tried them all in various Blue Sun builds and would like to see which fits best here. How has patch been for you? Has the swordsman pulled his weight? Finally, how has subliminal messaging helped bait the runner into bad grail hits?

Great list!

@DarlingSensei I hadn't thought about Housekeeping keeping things clear for Power Shutdown but I really like the idea! Will test. Cyberdex is also worth thinking about as one more way to screw datasuckers if you can't get through to shut them down.

PC over Investors/Melange was due to safety in R&D (and on the board, for that matter) and not usually needing to use it for long enough that the everlasting nature becomes a benefit. You don't tend to hang around, one burst of using PC down to 4-6 creds and pulling it back is generally enough, it often gets discarded from hand later on.

Patch should probably be replaced, the original theory was Atman protection but Kate always seems to discard the Atman early and get it stuck in archives, and the only other matchup where it has any value is Stealth.

Swordsman has been great, I only put it in this week after deciding the Lotus Field I had in that slot before was unnecessary and it singehandedly won me a game in York where Noise managed to get about a million credits and Crypsis out depressingly quickly, and it should have won me another when I got it on HQ Vs Headlock, but that was the game I couldn't find a single ETR :(

I don't think Subliminal has forced any bad runs, most players are sensible enough not to be forced into runs just to stop me making a single credit, but most games where I've drawn it early it's netted me a bunch of credits. With so much Kate around, who has a tendency to spend a lot of turns digging and setting up and run in bursts, I think it should be seeing a lot more play than it is generally.

Seeing how Marcus Batty is the thing to worry about now, would that be a reasonable include with all the program trashing (or net damage for that matter) subs? Not sure what to swap out for influence though, barring the Grail suite.

nice, will have to try your build, ive been tooling around with a housekeeping/shutdown/blacklist deck out of gagarin, blue sun might be the better id but was trying to avoid it :P

@kollapse I can't see a way to fit Marcus in along with grails unfortunately, or I'd definitely be trying him out! Blacklist and Jackson are just too important. I think those 'NEXT gold + Marcus' decks that everyone is trying out right now could certainly take a lesson or two from this list though, Blacklist seems an obvious include for them, and extra destroyers to compound the misery can't hurt.

@Talism I know the feeling! I tried Titan and BABW for this deck but eventually had to accept that Parasite immunity is simply better value than bonus money or Atlas tokens.

How do you deal with blackmail / Valencia? I tried this deck out and had a really hard time getting around it (albeit it was very nice in other runs :) ). Oaktown starts being a dead card and there's no ash/caprice to end the run.

@Drchatter This is all going to be theoretical as I haven't faced Valencia in a long time, nobody playing her locally and not getting enough time on OCTGN at the moment to see everything. Luckily I played with her a lot when first released so I know what she's about.

Here's what I think should work:

Basic advice vs Blackmail - They only have 3. Go fast and you can probably score quicker than they draw them. Build a 2nd remote and get a Blacklist in it, this will suck out one of the Blackmails for sure or leave them only having access to 3 all game no matter how much recursion they have, which is just not enough to win. If you can manage to score atlas with token (go for an Oaktown first to see if they're holding Blackmail, if possible) fetch the EBC. Not only do they have to blackmail EBC that turn or you can start forcing out breakers, you can still fire it to fetch a Blacklist, which will require another Blackmail!

If they're doing more than just Blackmail recursion there's some other options:

Vs the common full rig types - take advantage of the fact that most of them aren't running the full Blackmail recursion package and just rush. They suffer even worse than most from #Anarchproblems due to the increased deck size.

Vs Grim Feast - Crisium (or Swordsman + ETR) on HQ so they can't Vamp, shut down those Suckers and keep pulling ice back so they can't Parasite, and try to avoid taking extra BP early on so you can tax them out on Keyhole runs until you can find another Crisium/Swordsman to go there.

@Vapo Hey thanks I tried that out and it worked a lot better. I didn't win every game (sometimes they just had the blackmails / same old in hand) but I was definitely punishing hard if they didn't have multiple copies.

Another question what do you think about Taurus over Grim or 1/1. While both can be a dead card, Taurus can get 2 hardwares out esp if they have a console + recursion -> can reach power shutdown targets or they have to break the trace so you gain a credit swing and still trash one hardware. You also don't have to deal with the BP as a small but sometimes annoyingly significant bonus early on.

@Drchatter Glad it helped! :)

I hadn't considered Taurus, it's a nice idea but I think it might struggle because of the economics of it. Repeatedly pumping traces will bankrupt you very quickly, and given that it's mostly PPVP Kate that runs cheap hardware you can't hope to get more than 1 even if you pump the trace, they're just so much richer than you they'll be able to afford to match it most of the time. If more Stealth Hayley decks turn up it could have a place though, they seem to run quite poor and clearing away the chaff to enable a Refractor Shutdown seems strong.

If you were going to try one I'd lose a Patch or Subliminal rather than one of the existing ice, Grim is crucial for locking out Shapers and Crims who rely on non-reusable methods to break it.

Excellent write up, I'm glad to see someone being creative with blue sun after getting wrecked by multiple punitive/scorch kill versions. Program trashing and "heap lock" is a fresh approach and a smart tech call against PPVP. Thanks for all the tips, looking forward to testing this deck a bit in my local meta (and likely to their sheer disapproval :D).

This is it. Damn. Absolutely love this.

I've been playing Argus Grail for a while, and even though it's been fun for me and annoyingly difficult for runners, it's never quite been good.

But this? @Vapo this is gorgeous.

The Blue Sun ID ability as anti-Parasite and to play Grail mind games: Perfect.

Two questions:

Have you not found Patch useful? I love it. Just because it's way easier to shutdown a Datasucker than an Atman-4.

Did you ever try The Twins in this deck? The times I've spent an Atlas counter to get the third Merlin... Beautiful.

So I tried it. Fucking Snitch goes down turn one. What do you do then, resign?

Ended up stacked five deep on R&D and HQ, plus a six-deep protecting Blacklist and no other ice on the board. He was still hitting HQ and R&D at will using his five bad pub and a standard (high cost) breaker suite/drip econ. If every piece of ice gets exposed on the run I don't see how you can ever wear down the runner's econ. I was way ahead of him with nothing to spend it on, and Clone Chips crushed my Power Shutdowns and my Blacklist, which sat on the board the entire game, did virtually nothing except make him play even more cautiously. Decoyed Howard Jacksons and Executive Retreat and just couldn't open a window. Final score was 0-9 after 27 turns (I had sacked two agendas for Archers). Game never felt winnable.

@belbo Thanks man :) Patch isn't horrible but I find it's relatively rare that I really need it. Following a suggestion on Stimhack that slot is likely to become an Interns, I always forget how nicely that plays with Power Shutdown. I haven't tried The Twins but it's something I have considered, deck space is just so tight... Could be justifiable in place of Patch or Subliminal, and will probably cause the odd fun blow-out but I'm not sold on it being reliable enough.

@bondmonger Rush! While he's dicking around digging through half his deck to find his stupid 4 MU econ engine you score 7 points behind an enigma :P Why are you trying to wear down a runner's econ? That's not what this deck does. It doesn't matter if the runner has 50 credits if they can't get in, and if he's sitting back you keep scoring til he has to run. Also how do Clone Chips crush Power Shutdowns if you had a Blacklist on the board?

So I know its a lot of influence but why no Sagittarius for the basically guaranteed program trashing? Obviously NRE mimic is a thing so its not promised, but you could grab some serious trashing with it.

@Narbalicious Absolutely no way to fit it in alongside grails, and grails do a far better job of trashing stuff. It could work in the similar Marcus Batty/more destroyers version that other people are testing out but has the same problem as Taurus which someone suggested over on Stimhack - you just don't have the econ to be pumping traces repeatedly. You also do need a certain amount of ice that actually ends the run and Changeling fills the strength 4 sentry niche there nicely.

Have you considered putting in a singleton IT Department? It's only 1 influence and you can search it up with Executive Boot Camp. It's pretty much a must-trash a lot of the time and can force runners into some really awful situations if you follow it up with Blacklist.

@Isvan IT dept. could probably do good work but i'm no expert on it and with influence being so tight after grails, you'd have to lose Swordsman which I'm not gonna do cuz I just got the alt-arts for winning York :P

I just tried a 1 Blacklist 2 EBC version to save an extra pip but I didn't like it, EBC is sometimes too clumsy for Blacklist but seems fine for IT dept, so worth testing for sure. Might want Datapike over Enigma for that version? And probably a 2nd Subliminal over Private Contracts.

Woah! I've been playing this style of deck since Grail&Blue Sun came out. It's incredibly strong, but the inclusion of Blacklist is absolutely brilliant.

GJ on the win!

Played this deck at a local GNK, changed -1 Patch +1 Interns. Went 4-0 with the deck and love it. I have been working on Weyland program destruction since I started playing (8 weeks ago) and have had mixed success. I really dislike playing Blue Sun Oversight combo but this deck is really fun.

I won one game with it because someone face checked an ICE with only a D4v1d in play and it was Merlin w/ Merlin in hand. Turn 4 flatline. I also won a game against Maxx that I was super agenda flooded because I top decked a blacklist the turn he intended on playing Levy.

I'm going to try this in some version, how do you think I must play against Faust? A simple 2-3 deep server and blacklist in it?

Looks really cool. Have you ever considered to include 1-2 mother goddess?

@Vapo Been playing this deck for weeks. I love grail and this just feels so good. The only change I made was adding a Cyberdex and I replaced Grim with 2x Wormhole. Its helped cut back on Bad Pub, just takes some set up. I usually only advance it once, 6 credits ain't much for a 7 strength code gate and I can use it for ETR or Trashing if need be.

@Vapo this could well be my favourite ever corp deck, so thanks! A couple of questions, why no Will o the Wisp? I've found it useful in a variety of situations, and putting it in the server with blacklist to punish them for daring to trash it is funny.

I'm also wondering how best to deal with Faust... It can sometimes take a while to get a couple of grail ice deep on the scoring server, with some in hand, to make all of them have 3 subroutines. I think I'm going to change enigma to spiderweb mainly because of this.

Lastly, a friend suggested putting in two chronos projects and taking out 1 fracking and another card. What are your thoughts on this? I could see it working, especially as they probably won't run your scoring server if it has an unadvanced card in it, and with this deck it could straight up win you the game.

Anyway, thanks again for the great deck, it's amazing as you built it, I'm just trying to give it my own twist!

@chiefyk cheers man!

@DannyGlad you've been doing well with it :) Merlin flatlines are awesome, my favourite was when I managed to sneak out a Blacklist pretending to be a Jackson (EBC'd the jackson first) and caught a Kate player relying on Clone chip to find a gate breaker for a full triple merlin kill

@crackIt's not something I'd thought about, but it's not a bad idea. I'm just not sure if it's useful life is long enough, tho it would definitely be great the first few turns

@blackb1rdCyberdex is definitely a good include with all the Noise around now. Wormhole seems like it has some potential too, but replacing the grims seems like it'd leave you a bit light on other trashing subs to fire off it?

@matthopkins Thanks, it's great to hear that people like the deck a lot! Will O is something I've tried to get to work in a lot of different decks but always found in the end the cost and the fact they still get the successful run make me take it out again, but I like the idea of putting it in the same server as blacklist so when they finally do force their way in you can lock 'em back out again!

Faust is definitely a problem. Enigma to Spiderweb seems like a reasonable start for tackling it, along with the usual anti-noise advice of just go faster than him. I was running 2x Swordsman with just 1 Blacklist (and an extra EBC to find it) for a little bit, that setup is definitely better against Noise but loses something vs Kate where you absolutely need Blacklist, EBC is an awkward tutor.

There's one big problem with Chronos Project - it doesn't work if you have a Blacklist out! (Removing cards from the game involves them leaving the heap so CP just fails to fire if blacklist is out) If it wasn't for that they would absolutely deserve a couple of slots