[Nerdrunners] D.R.U.G.S. v1.0

markusfriend 571

Overview

5th place at Leisure Games August GNK

Destroy

The deck started out as a fairly standard Blue Sun build, with Data Raven and SEA Source to tag the runner, and Scorched Earth for a flatline victory.

Rebuild

Aside from a few instances, if Weyland installs something in a server and advances it, it's an agenda. So why not just be honest about it - after all, think of all the good the renovations are doing for the community.

Oaktown Renovation is brilliant and I've been running it since it came out. Getting credits back for advancing an agenda is awesome, especially when it can give you the money to rez the ice protecting it.

Underway Renovation is also pretty darn good. As a long time Anarch player I know how much disrupting the corp can put them on the back foot. Being able to trash cards before the runner can draw into them is a great ability - maybe you'll hit something valuable, maybe not - either way, disrupting the runner is a great ability and you can force the runner in to running a dangerous server just to stop you from trashing more cards, and it will only cost you 1 point.

Hollywood Renovation works similarly to Oaktown Renovation, but with the Space ice. Obviously it's a bit more situational than Oaktown Renovation, but the Space ice is great and is the next major part of the deck. Also, if you get Hollywood Renovation to 5 advancements you can start fast advancing out the other agendas, which allows you to close out the game incredibly fast.

Until God Shows

A lot of players don't rate the Space ice out of Blue Sun because once you've advanced it you lose out on the credits if you want to pick it back up. The solution - don't worry about picking it up. The only time the Blue Sun ability should matter is if you desperately need to move a piece of ice to protect another server, you want to remove a piece of ice that's no longer taxing, the runner is about to destroy that piece of ice, or you need cold hard cash right now (probably so you can flatline the runner).

The Space ice is really great both early game and late. Early on you can install advance advance to rez something beefy for 3 credits. Late game it's high strength makes it taxing. Throughout the game it also makes a good target for Oversight AI (especially Orion). Also, being able to rez strong ice for 3 advancements rather than 9 credits means it actually saves you money in the long run and keeps your credit pool high.

The Space ice also has the benefit of making runners think you aren't running Scorch. I'm still not 100% sure why, but a lot of runners tend to think they are safe floating tags / discarding their Plascrete when they see the Space ice.

Let me know if you have any thoughts and feedback, and check out Episode 15 of Nerdrunners for more on this deck.

4 comments
24 Aug 2015 spectronizer

This looks like a lot of fun. I love the galaxy ice and have have been wanting to try Underway Renovation. I'm curious as to how that ice density has been treating you. With Blue Sun: Powering the Future and the galaxy ice, Parasite isn't much of a threat and the deck would still be quite taxing with 2 or 3 ice cut out in favor of a few tech cards like Snatch and Grab, Cyberdex Virus Suite, or Shattered Remains

24 Aug 2015 tiedyedvortex

I like it, but like you mentioned the Blue Sun ability isn't really doing much in this deck. It does let you reposition ICE, I suppose, and the OAI/Curtain Wall trick is always lucrative, but I think this might be worth trying out of core set Weyland, Building a Better World, since you're already running 3 Hedge Funds and 3 Restructures. If you replace the Oversight AIs with Beanstalk Royalties you're pretty much there already.

25 Aug 2015 markusfriend

@spectronizer Underway Renovation is a lot of fun, especially when you play against Noise - they find it pretty hard to mill you when you are milling them!

So far I've not had any issues regarding the number of ice in the deck. The deck can be a little bit vulnerable in the early game, so seeing plenty of ice early helps out a lot. But I guess you could maybe cut a couple of pieces for cards like the ones you mentioned - especially if they will really kick ass in your meta. I did have 2x Crisium Grid in for a while before Old Hollywood was released. Maybe I'll try and squeeze that back in again.

25 Aug 2015 markusfriend

@tiedyedvortex It's funny you should mention Building a Better World. A little while ago I tried moving the shell for this deck into the Core Weyland ID, I even had Oversight AI switched out for Beanstalk Royalties too! I never got round to playtesting it as I was gearing up for a tournament at the time, but the thought did cross my mind.

The reason I stuck with Blue Sun however, is that the credit swing and flexibility you get from bouncing ice is just awesome, especially when it can instantly turn on SEA Source and Scorched Earth. Also, Parasite is still a huge deal and basically having an ID that turns it off is pretty sweet.

And really, with this deck, the Blue Sun ability only becomes less good once you've advanced the space ice more than once (at which point you've effectively saved 5 or so credits anyway). And bouncing an Asteroid Belt at the start of your turn to replace it with a Nebula or Wormhole (whether or not you advance the newly installed space ice) leads to a lot of mind games. You can even reinstall the same piece of space ice and make the runner think that they need to go and get another breaker. Personally, I still think the ID ability does enough to warrant keeping this deck in Blue Sun.

If you do get round to trying this deck out of Building a Better World let me know how you get on with it, I'd definitely be interested to know how it worked for you.