End of the Line

"There is no escape. There is no salvation. There is only death."

This is an updated Blue Sun Government Takeover deck I've been running for the past month after regionals, and it has performed quite admirably, having a combined record of 21-2 online and at my FLGS, against a variety of runners. The main reasons I love this deck are due to the flexibility of how you can build it, as well as the numerous choices it offers to you in any game. While you will win through flatlines most of the time, don't be hesitant to score agendas once you're properly set up. In this write-up, I intend to cover certain card choices and how to play this deck, so be warned that it gets a bit lengthy.

The deck runs a standard 6 card Government Takeover agenda setup, in order to minimise agenda density as well as to always threaten the runner with a double punitive counterstrike. The economy is the usual Blue Sun operation driven burst economy, in order to rez your ICE and play your kill pieces. This deck can also get away with running a bigger, more expensive and taxing ICE suite than usual as there is little need to defend your servers early in most cases. There are certain card choices that do need to be highlighted:

Bastion: Not really an interesting choice, this is more of a flex slot, and you can slot in whatever you feel will benefit you most. If you're looking for something a bit bulkier, throw in Hive, Hadrian's Wall or a couple Fire Walls. Cerberus "Lady" H1 and 4tman giving you headaches? Swap in a couple of those shiny new Spiderwebs.

EDIT: Upon reflection, spiderweb is probably the superior choice as it better taxes lady, atman and faust and as Blue Sun you are resistant to most parasite attempts.

Run Bait: Cards such as Cerebral Overwriter, Shattered Remains and Cyberdex Virus Suite fall into this category. These are basically the cards that you will use to bait the runner into wasting their credits on a pointless run and opening themselves to potential flatlines. The cards here are simply those that I have found to have the greatest effect, but you can also try out Aggressive Secretary, GRNDL Refinery, Project Junebug, a second Contract Killer or even Snatch and Grab. Feel free to experiment and choose whatever works best for you.

Contract Killer: Now you may have noticed that this card is not in the above list. That's because he is 100% mandatory. This guy means business. I threw him in when The Underway came out and I have never looked back. He is so important as he lets you choose one of 3 potent effects: First, he gently reminds the public that they are discouraged from associating or assisting cyber terrorists. Ms. Jones doing a cash run? Nope. The Supplier getting orders? Lights out. A group of Professional Contacts? Hope they all had insurance.

Second, he lets you play around I've Had Worse. One issue with previous iterations of this deck was that the smallest amount of damage it ever did was three, making it likely to hit an I've Had Worse if the runner was holding one. Now, you can instead choose to pop Contract Killer first. If you hit it, save your kill cards for later. Otherwise, flatline that pesky anarch who was running everywhere willy-nilly thinking that he was safe with this in hand.

Lastly, while this is quite rare, there are cases when this card can outright execute the runner. Sometimes, a runner just sets up all game and refuses to run out of fear of SeaSourceScorch and Punitives. They may also get a false sense of security and forget to top up their hand. In such cases, I usually have a copy of The Cleaners scored, and if they just happen to ever end with 2 cards or less, then it's game over. So yea. This card is pretty sweet.

Targeted Marketing: This card is my personal favorite, as it just offers you so much control over the game. Also, by having only 6 agendas, you reduce the main flaw of currents, which is them turning off when the runner gets a lucky access. One common mistake I see is people usually just call out Plascrete Carapace. The problem is that it immediately tips your hand (there could always be a chance that you're a different bootcamp glacier right?) and it simply isn't profitable as most people play only 1, or at most 2 copies. Instead, choose cards which people will consistently play throughout the game or will severely hurt you game plan such as SMC, Account Siphon, Street Peddler, D4v1d, Cache, Imp and Daily Casts. Turns out Prepaid Kate isn't so scary when she's hesistant to even play her SMCs.

But Fox, there have to be better choices than this. The runner could be playing their own currents, or they could still get a lucky access or whine whine whine

(>.<) Fiiiiiiiiine. If you really don't want to play it, you could alternatively choose to run a pair of Daily Business Shows (to filter you agendas and find those kill pieces), Blacklists (to further stomp on shapers) or Executive Boot Camp and Adonis Campaign.

In order to pilot this deck to victory, you simply have to do 3 things:

1) Outpace the runner's credits. Your cards mean nothing if the runner has more money than you. You can't threaten kills with Scorch or Punitive. Thankfully, this entire deck is built to tax the runner if they make any run while bursting you own credit pool like it's going out of fashion.

2) Properly manage your cards. Early on, you probably just want to setup a bit of ICE and get to work on your credits straight away. However, later on, you need to keep careful track of your agendas and kill pieces. For example, if I'm holding 2 punitives in hand, I wouldn't mind leaving 6 points in archives for the runner, but I also wouldn't want them to luck out and find the last card in HQ and win. Likewise, if I haven't seen a single agenda I'd start shoring up R&D, and then the scoring remote in order to push something out the moment it arrives in HQ.

3) Force the runner into no-win situations. Targeted Marketing is a card which does this perfectly. It either turns the runner's cards into dead draws or provides me with a massive economy burst. Likewise, once you have cash and kill cards in hand, feel free to start advancing traps and agendas in your main remote. They can either hide and let you score, or run and get blown to tiny little pieces. Damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

And that's all I have to say about this deck. It is extremely fun and satisfying to play, and every game is always packed with action and tense moments. Feel free to drop any feedback and questions down below. Good hunting everyone! ^.^