Impatience- 6-1 Weyland at Atomic Empire SC, Durham, NC

bloth 194

This Argus rush deck, along with my fairly ordinary Eater MaxX, placed 1st in Swiss and 2nd after the cut at a 21-player SC yesterday. 5 wins were flatlines (2 by Snares during Medium digs, 3 by SEA/Scorch), one was AP. The only loss of the day was to Leela, which is a matchup this deck will rarely win unless the Leela player makes a mistake. Fortunately, this deck gives the runner many, many opportunities to make mistakes.

This deck moves very fast and is good at killing Faust Anarchs. I flatlined one Noise, two Whizzards, and one MaxX during the SC. It also performs well against any other runner who has a significant setup time. Problem matchups aside from Leela include Eater aggro decks and probably Jesminder, although I haven't tested much against her yet.

You may have noticed that Jackson is conspicuously absent here. I found after a while of playing this deck that all I'd ever do with Jackson is throw him in my remote to bait a run, and I'd rather have Snare or News Team for that. I'd never want to pitch agendas to Jackson anyway- if the runner Legworks three agendas out of my hand on turn two, I'm usually pretty OK with that, even if it doesn't get me the kill right away. Noise is the only matchup I miss him in.

Other meta choices include Casting Call (I only saw one Film Critic all day), Liz Mills (trashed 3 Wyldsides), Swordsman (probably worth keeping even in a less AI-heavy meta), and Chronos Project. The Chronos Projects could be Posted Bounties (for killing runners who don't have much early pressure but will be set up before you get to 7- Nexus Kate, Iain, Sunny), or False Leads. The other influence could be News Team (if there are a lot of runners around who are fast enough to actually get close to 7 points as quickly as you), Blue Level Clearance, or maybe Komainu.

If you're playing a Faust Anarch and want to do better against this sort of deck, one or two Brain Cage/Public Sympathy will go a long way, and I think those would help in glacier matchups too.

4 comments
21 Feb 2016 atomic

good games yesterday. that Snare is the bane of my existence. serves me right, digging into R&D with no cards in hand though. :)

23 Feb 2016 skydivingninja

Nice job coming in second! Glad I didn't have to play against this. Geist was demoralized enough getting killed twice on Saturday.

26 Feb 2016 MisterLovejoy

How did Cortex Lock work for you? Is it worth the 2 influence as opposed to another ice or another News Team/Casting Call?

26 Feb 2016 bloth

I wouldn't want to run a third Casting Call- that's just stacking up too much vulnerability to Film Critic. I like Cortex Lock (and I want to try out Komainu) because I want an ice that has some teeth on facecheck before Archer becomes relevant. I tried Errand Boy for a while but didn't like it much. I've never gotten a kill outright with Cortex Lock, but it did win me one game in the SC when Noise kept running through it on R&D for 1 net damage on a Medium dig only to die to a Snare.

I'm still undecided about News Team overall, even though it was the card that inspired me to make the deck in the first place. I feel like the main runners who will outpace this deck on points in the early game are ones who will float News Team's tags anyway. But it's nice to see a runner just get discouraged from running my centrals after they see I'm running both Snare and News Team.