Stinky In Archives [8-1 & 1st @ NY Showdown]

runners after accessing my archives

Why this deck

For the past ∼2 months I'd been playing R+ on jnet and at my local meetups to uhhh decent resluts . So I was really confident with the deck and planning to take it to New Years Showdown. Then of course R+ got banned. Which is good because I find this ID so overpowered, but that meant finding a new deck.

Or did it ? I played a bit of Reaper Function NEH, but wasn't as comfortable with it, so what if I just put the R+ deck into NEH ? Obviously I had to include some more econ, because no more refunds, and mess with the ice suite a little bit, but really it's the exact same game plan.

I played it a bunch on jnet and the deck seemed "good enough", clearly not as dominant as the R+ was, but that's to be expected, and since R+ and Trick Shot were now banned, I figured runners would be on Arruaceiras Crew. Those decks tend to struggle against assets, so I decided this was still a safe deck to bring to the event. This was also a deck I was expecting to do well in a high stress environment, it punishes small mistakes HARD.

Some card choices and thoughts

• No Public Trail or SIU : Getting the kill on a single tag is way harder without Reaper Function, so we should not be wasting slots/credits on that. We want to create lose/lose situations, not get a specific asset to stick.

• Oracle Stinktank : Some R+ lists were cutting it... I strongly believe that's a mistake. This allows you to protect archives, meaning you can dump your agendas in there (as long as you have a Spin Doctor on the table). The runner then has to either bite the bullet and run archives, taking at least one tag and activating Oppo Research, or run all your remotes to hunt for the Spin Doctor. This is one of the most important cards in the deck imo and should absolutely not be cut, this card wins games.

• Econ events : 2 Predictive Planograms and 1 Attitude Adjustment (which is both a little bit of econ and hand fixing). Planogram is to recover from low credits situations, for example after a Diversion of Funds, unlike R+ you can't get by on low credits because no refunds, can also be used for draw if necessary. Attitude Adjustment should really be a 2 of, the games I lose are because I get a bricked hand with Degree Mills and Project Beales and nothing to fix it, I'm just unsure if I'm willing to swap a Planogram for it, or what card should be cut.

How the tournament went

• Swiss

  • Round 1 : Win vs ginkgo on Alice. I had good tempo early and I saw 2 cleavers got trashed by lago / moshing, so I pushed behind a double iced server with ping innermost (to beat bankhar) and scored out. Out of the I would say aprox 80 games I've played split between this deck and the R+ version, this is the only game I have ever scored out.

  • Round 4 : Win vs Toron on Reg Hosh. He stole a degree mill and kept 2 tags after a big oppo, I had rashida on the board and plano in hand to draw for kill pieces, so he got shot.

  • Round 5 : Win vs Baa Ram Wu on 419. That was a scary matchup, but Baa kept a single tag with three cards in hand and got shot.

  • Round 7 : Win vs marasmia on Deep Dive Sable. I had a really good draw, dumped 2 stinkies in archives, which xe ran with 1 click left, and got shot.

• Cut

  • Round 1 : Loss vs tzeentchling on Swift Lat. Had to use a first false lead to trash 2 stoneships and the dj. After that I kept drawing degree mills and 2 pointers, and that made me impatient so I installed 2 pointers naked on the board, that's a big mistake don't do this, try to draw for something to fix your hand. Up on 4 points he ran archives where I'd dumped 2 degree mills with no way to bring them back. I think if I took my time a little bit I can have a game, but got a rough draw that I handled terribly. One thing about this game is that it really made me wish I had 2 attitude adjustments in the deck.

  • Round 3 : Win vs Chonky Seal on Mulch Hosh. Had a bad start full of agendas, but he couldn't find an imp so didn't get punished and managed to still get an alright econ. After scoring a false lead and tomorrowʼs headline, I put another false lead down. If he steals it he gets big oppo'd and I get a shot at the win (2 eotl in hand), and if he doesn't I have 2 false leads and the game is cooked. He stole it, got big oppo'd, and now needed to run hq to trash my kill pieces with imp (or hold 2 steelskins and both get hit by the first shot), but missed on both runs. Got shot twice, only 1 steelskin.

  • Round 5 : Win vs Ollie on Zombie Freedom. I was super scared of this matchup, but I drew 2 mindscapings and and eotl early. A tag stuck for a turn and I was credit perfect, so he got shot on turn 6.

  • Round 6 : Win vs cobrabubbles on Mulch Hosh. This is the round where I started being really anxious. After losing in round 1 of the cut I didn't think I had much of a shot so I wasn't feeling the nerves too much, but that changed this round. But I'm pretty sure stress just makes me play better, as long as it's not too overwhelming. I had my kill pieces and they hit a behold on turn 7, so I went for the kill but hit 2 steelskins. From there I had to shuffle back 2 mindscapings while cobra went tag-me and tried to imp the kill pieces from my hand. I end up drawing a mindscaping with 2 clicks and 5 credits left, just perfect. They got shot. stream link

  • Round 9 : The true final, vs OF15-15 on Aniccam Reg Hosh. Honestly just a hell of a good game, and I feel like too much stuff happened that game for me to really describe it in text, I recommend just watching it. stream link

How to beat this deck

Now some advice if you are playing against this deck.

• Tech cards that wreck this deck : multiple Miss Bones, Mining Accident, Hijacked Router, or Maw could all be enough to deny this deck the early econ it needs and disrupt it's gameplan. Multiple Stoneships or multiple No Free Lunches can also make you survive the first kill attempt, forcing the corp to trash ressources instead and delaying the game enough for you to have a good shot at the win.

• Or more interestingly, how to beat it if you don't have / draw the tech cards :

  • Find a timing to run archives, don't let the corp use archives as a safe space to dump agendas otherwise they will always have room in hand for all the pieces they need. This is hard, you need to find a moment where you can run early in the turn to both clear tags, and still have money to potentially clear Oppo tags on the following turn. This only works if the corp isn't on double scored False Leads obviously, if they are honestly the game is kinda cooked, just try to get lucky on singles or to remove kill pieces from hq if you are on Imp/Burner/Cupellation.

  • Run most cards on the table, if you have a good economic start, contest all the econ, it might feel reckless to run every remote because of traps, but if the corp spends money to trigger traps, and you also trash their econ, there is no more money to play the kill cards. Early in the game you can safely keep 1 tag if you have 5 cards in hand, this makes the corp need 3 of the 4 kill pieces. Make em have it. This is not R+, they are not favored if both of you are poor. Running everything also forces the use of the Spin Doctors. Of course this is dependent on you managing to keep enough econ to trash the econ on the table.

Those are the 2 main advice I would give against this deck. Of course this won't magically make the matchup free, playing against this will always be painful if you don't have a lot of asset hate in your deck, but it's stuff to look out for.

I also published my Ken List on the runner side if you'd like to check that out !