Greed Tastes Like Sin

jan tuno 2500

spikes spikes spikes spikes spikes spikes

This is the first deck that came to my mind as soon as I saw Pravdivost. Reeducation Neurospike has been an interesting (but quite not good enough) deck for a while now, and Pravdivost + Vladisibirsk City Grid looked like a good way to pull that off.

What I built overall is a fun glacier/combo crossover, that plays according to the cards you're dealt. I think more than half my wins come from scoring out, but the spike is also a very real threat.

Your basic plan is to get a Vlad Grid in the remote as soon as possible, advancing it with triggers from your ID or Vasilisa, and install 5/3s and Bio Vault once you're rich enough to protect the remote well. With enough counters on the Grid, you can move 4 counters between your opponent's turn and yours, then advance, score, and draw+spike if it was Reeducation (with Bellona you can rarely double spike).

The best way for runners to play against this is to ignore centrals as much as possible and focus on sniping the remote. If all the crims and the boat riders focus on getting value out of central run, you can leverage the tempo you get from your triggers into a win.

Let's go through some card choices:

  • Agenda suite: self-explanatory. Reeducation is not the best agenda if you're not comboing, but the tempo + card selection is a decent payoff to get. I used to play a Tomorrow's Headline here, but I'm partial to these cute semi-fake 1-pointers.
  • Daily Quest: the deck is not that rich so it's important to get this going and keep it safe. You don't need to hold it for as many turns as a classic Azmari glacier (the ice is definitely cheaper), but also you can advance upgrades while this ticks so that's a nice bonus.
  • NAPD Cordon: this is the latest addition. I haven't tested it much, but this deck is able to push an agenda and have this tax the runner for 10/12 credits if you have Vlad Grid going.
  • Subliminal Messaging: this looks a bit janky, but the best strategy against this deck is often to run as little as possible, and you want to profit from that. Potentially having extra cards in hand helps you land spike sometimes.
  • Bio Vault: this is really good here. Sometimes you will advance it, but usually you'll just move the counters from Vlad grid last minute, so you can be flexible about how to use them. Saves you from ton of stuff.
  • Ice: Akhet is definitely a flex slot but it looks cute and makes a central server taxing if you dedicate some triggers to it. IP Block and Endless EULA just look great in this meta; Jua is also very decent. Vasilisa is one of your best central ice, although installing the 3rd is usually uninteresting.

If you want to make changes, the influence spent on ice could easily be moved elsewhere. A Border Control can protect you from Light the Fire! (the single card that hates this deck the most). A third Neurospike gives you extra consistency (allowing you to sometimes double spike with Bellona, too). A surprise Urtica Cipher can net you some wins or scare an opponent away (maybe Chekist Scion also makes sense, but requires you to spend even more slots on tag punishment).

You can also play a Psychographics if you see opponents going tag-me too often.

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