Little Shop of Horrors

The Origin

I've had some requests for my Biotech list since I posted about it here in my regional winning butcher list. Originally it was a straight Greenhouse list that relied heavily on rushing out the first Nisei MK II and then Fast Tracking your way to victory with a remote consisting of one cheap ETR ice and a caprice with Susano/Excalibur to take care of those pesky Kate's that can get access anywhere. This was highly effective for awhile and I went 3-2 with it at the Tulsa regional against a very strong field.

A couple things led to some drastic revamping of this deck. First was the release of Net Ready Eyes. Lotus Field was being heavily leaned on before that and now with Faust out, it's easier then ever for the runner to break through a Lotus remote.

I gave up on the deck for awhile because it was becoming increasingly difficult to score out the first MK II. Then came Marcus Batty.

From the beginning of Biotech testing, most people have found that you have to go all-in on one of the IDs. Batty shakes thing up a little as it can serve two purposes in this deck.

1) End the run

2) Kill them or set up the kill

With this in mind I made some adjustments so that I could utilize both the Greenhouse and the Brewery.

The Deck

The strategy behind this deck is that if your opponent has not scouted your deck at all, you play Brewery and try to land an easy flatline. If your opponent knows that you are a murdering sonofabitch, then you play Greenhouse and try to rush out agenda while your opponent tip toes around. For tournaments this is especially good since you can play Brewery during swiss and then possibly switch it up to Greenhouse in bracket play. I also tend to pick Greenhouse against Noise since rushing out against him is almost always the better play.

Some notable plays/synergies:

1) Early game if you have Kitsune and 2 snares you can set up an incredibly easy kill by installing the Kitsune in a new remote and then putting a snare behind it. Most smart players are aware of the numerous Greenhouse lists and how they will try to rush out the first MK II in the first couple turns. They are then forced to run. If they break the Kitsune they still hit a snare. If they don't, they hit a snare and if they continue, they likely die. The downside is you will need 11 credits to pull it off. Even if they just hit one, there is a chance they end their turn with 1 card and you can fire The Brewery for the win.

2) Batty remote with Gyri Labrynth. This is another one that works extremely well early game and becomes strong again later with Corporate Troubleshooter in the same server. If they facecheck the Gyri and are unable to break it (and once again, they SHOULD be running because of the Greenhouse MK II threat) and you win a psi game with Batty, the game is over when you flip the Brewery next turn and kill them (unless they have a way to increase their hand size which most runners don't at the moment).

3) Batty with Neural Katana. Pretty self explanatory. If they let it fire, you can possibly just kill them. Once again, if you are in a position to bait them into a remote with these two and snare at the end, the runner is gonna have a bad time.

4) Burst econ. Because of the nature of this deck, it's pretty impossible to set up and defend drip econ such as Sundew and PAD. Mental Health Clinic is completely out of the question due to the increase in hand size. Some people will suggest that Medical Research Fundraiser is a better choice due to the stabby pieces that you might not want to advertise but I have found that while there are some times you don't want to show your hand, it's not frequent enough to warrant the switch.

5) Tollbooth, Eli, and Lotus are there to protect your centrals. Generally the best way to beat this deck is with steady RnD pressure. You can still pull off some Batty shenanigans on RnD if they do go that route.

6) If you suspect that your opponent will not be respecting the Greenhouse rush (usually because they have seen your deck already) then you pick Greenhouse and rush out an MK II ASAP.

7) Don't be afraid to score! Runners who have hit a few stabby things will start to play defensively. Make sure you punish that by forcing them to challenge remotes. Plus you have 3x Caprice so scoring is easy!

Considerations

This one is still a work in progress and will likely have some changes made to it in the near future despite performing well in testing on OCTGN and with a trusted partner. I need to consider Valley Grid as an option as it works well with Gyri Labrynth and the Brewery. -1 Batty, +1 Valley Grid is totally reasonable. I might instead consider adding more ETR ice for those times when I do choose Greenhouse. 15 ice is probably a little less than what I want so -1 Batty, +1 Bako would probably also make some sense.