Bikini Bottom Testing Facility (3rd, 8th CoS, 2nd Startup)

Testrunning 1257

Deep under the Sea

This is the deck I brought to Worlds for the Crown of Servers and Startup Championship. I went 8-2 over both day loosing only to Pinsel playing my own Runner deck and Startup- Champion Tradon on Zahya. I convinced lostgeek to play it at CoS as well were he also went 4-1 with the deck getting 3rd place with his team.

Preparing for Startup I made a few observations:

  • Boat is legal -> Ice is bad, scoring agendas in a remote is bad
  • Drago is legal, but every Runner techs heavily for him, so it is much less impactful
  • This generally felt like a Runner favoured Meta to me
  • Clot is legal, but no SimulChip or SMC. Despite this there are no good FA Strategies
  • There are no defensive Agendas, making Centrals incredibly soft
  • People have no idea how to play against Thule

These observations let me to this list. It is a bit cheesy and would probably loose a bunch of its power in an open-decklist-cut against prepared opponents, but it is very good in Swiss against unprepared runners (and is much less of a known entity like Kill-NEH).

The deck essentially presents a very simple Fork for the runner: Buttons

Early game you can leave centrals very light (against run-econ crim some ice to keep them from getting value is important) as Thule and Nightmare make running Centrals very unattractive. Build a remote with Hendriks and Skunkworks and ice it either with Pulse to tax clicks further or some gear check. Try to score a Salvo in there asap. Most runners won't even contest (especially if you don't advance because you have two Seamless in Hand) and when they do they hopefully take 2 core damage in the process.

After that ice up Centrals and dig for Elivagar for the 2nd core and then more Elivagar or Ontos to close out the game. The ice suite here is not designed to keep the runner out but to be cheap and as annoying as possible.

Huge shoutout to all the folks at NSG who made the whole Worlds Weekend possible.

Also thanks to the NWE folks for being amazing people.

3 comments
22 Oct 2023 lostgeek

Thanks for creating this monster that got us to a 3rd place at CoS as well.

10/10 list, would "step 1: score 5/3" again.

22 Oct 2023 Anzekay

This is the sort of Xanatos Gambit deck I adore. 10/10. Love it.

22 Oct 2023 Jakuza

This list makes me want to play Startup.