Museum of Giraffes (1st place Florida Regionals Dogs of War)

maestro 804

"I think you celebrity gifted 10 times that game." -Bewildered Jinteki Opponent

Are you sick of not playing hedge fund 8 times every game? Are you sick of having all of your caprice niseis trashed with nothing to do about it? Are you sick of Whizzard trashing your stuff and having nothing that you can do about it? Or are you just still salty about FFG even printing Noise? If so, Nothing will beat the sweet relief of being more cancerous and annoying than the dumblefork decks currently stomping your meta. You may be asking "Why don't I just play IG and have all of my opponents hate playing me so much that I win when they commit seppuku." Its simple, IG loses to an early archives interface and attrition. Meanwhile in Museum RP you can win both with and without all that sweet sweet archives recursion because even without it, you are still a glacier RP.

This deck ended up winning me all of my games past swiss where my opponents were almost exclusively anarchs with the exception of one apocalypse kate deck. This deck really shines at the anarch matchup because the deck is very good at effectively blanking anarch runner IDs and can effectively outlast wyldside levys until your opponent has no reserves. The ice is also very anti-faust teched because the card is too powerful now that architect and eli have been sent to the shadow realm. Ichi is incredible against faust, especially in a jinteki deck because they have to install breakers to not run into cortex lock and komainu. This means that Ichi is almost always online, even from the very beginning of the game when it used to be almost worthless. The Snares! and Fetal AIs are also to make them think twice about fausting there way through ashigaru. Plus nothing is better than getting a kill with Fetal AI. Its just brutal.

But that's the boring stuff. Why should you run this deck? Simple, no deck makes you as a player feel as powerful as a corp. In the current meta of ice destruction and mills, runners almost always feel in control of the tempo of the gamestate. Corps, for the most part, have to be exploitative in order to win games. Whether that is through kill options, auto win one turn combos or playing a broken ID (Haarpsichord Studios: Entertainment Unleashed, Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future). Museum RP however just bogs the runner down in a bog that they are not equipped to get out of. By recurring economy, they can't stop you from protecting servers, by recurring ice you make all the ice destruction pointless, by recurring upgrades you keep all of your servers healthy and by passing off agendas between archives and RnD, you keep yourself from losing to random noise mills.

All of this simply comes from getting a museum of history to stick. If it stays around for long enough, nobody can really stop it from making there win conditions more and more of a pipe dream. Then the game just becomes about building servers, building money and scoring niseis in your free time.

I don't think this deck is optimal in its current state. The ice is not as strong as it could be and the deck probably needs more tech slots. However, I think that the archetype itself is certainly very strong. So, if you have a player in your local meta you don't mind giving an aneurysm to, sleeve up this deck and become everyone's least favorite player for a couple of meet ups.

Finally again, I want to thank everyone from the Gainseville meta for helping me test this deck. Thank you dogs of war gaming for hosting a great event. I want to apologize to my parents for becoming a jinteki playing scum and thank Bob and Tomothy for getting me on the RP lifestyle. I'll always remember you Tampa Rush.

15 comments
14 Apr 2016 djc6535

So, question: How do you score agendas? I'm counting 4 pieces of ice that hard stop the run (ashigaru, 2x Enigma, 1x lotus field) and 3 Elis.

What do you build your scoring server out of?

14 Apr 2016 maestro

People don't run servers with 2 ice and a Batty Caprice. I won a game with a swordsman excalibur scoring remote at the regionals. ice doesn't really end runs in the world of faust. It just taxes cards and time. Caprice and nisei end runs. That is what I build my servers out of

14 Apr 2016 kollapse

Have gotten a couple of jnet games with this, and I must say I like it. As you mentioned, the ICE are mostly fine for scoring agendas with the 2x Marcus Batty and 3x Caprice Nisei. I have yet to play against Whizzard though, how do you feel the asset economy works in that match-up?

Above all else, this deck is really fun to play.

14 Apr 2016 maestro

@kollapse For the most part, I don't really play many assets down against a whizzard deck. I may stick a sundew down in a protected remote but I usually just stick with the operation economy and a protected museum of history. that is of course unless I cerebral static them. Then I just drop the assets and accelerate.

14 Apr 2016 kollapse

Yeah the Static is a really good include, both for Whizzard and for getting rid och Employee Strike.

14 Apr 2016 Andannius

Can confirm, played the deck and committed sudoku afterwards

14 Apr 2016 sruman

Thanks for posting. I ran a similar deck in a few Store Championships. Eventually I cut the MHC's for restructures in a Faust-heavy meta ( to keep the card count lower for Faust and help a bit with Snare/Fetal danger ). What do you think of that change?

14 Apr 2016 thesm17

I got a lucky win on this deck during the last round of swiss with a lucky Political Operative to trash Jackson and steal 3 agendas from archives. If I hadn't gotten the points there, I was out of juice. Excellent deck, excellent player.

14 Apr 2016 maestro

@sruman I was actually agonizing over that change for a long time before the tournament. In the end I decided against it for the non-whizzard matchup but I think that it is a very valid switch if you are playing nothing but whizzard. Again, operation economy is really strong with the museums.

@thesm17 don't sell yourself short. It definitely was not lucky and it also was by far my biggest misplay at the tournament. It was a good game that you outplayed me in.

15 Apr 2016 MrMint

How does it deal against Crim packing Film Critic and Political Operative ?

From my point of view (as runner) all games were basically determined by a single psi game on Marcus Batty since Caprice Niseiice was always dealt with by Polop. Is it reliable enough against that kind of deck (our meta is mostly Blue in top table at the moment) ?

16 Apr 2016 maestro

@MrMint It usually does really well against aggressive crim because it recovers well, is difficult to siphon out and it can be difficult to polop. Midrange criminal is a bit more difficult due to their increased sustain. for the most part, a caprice on hq against crim is the right choice in the early game. Stopping the early polop is very important. However, batty ichi is absolutely nasty against crim so its definitely not a bad matchup. But yes, this deck is dependent on strong psi-skills

16 Apr 2016 MrMint

It makes sense thanks. :)

21 Apr 2016 LSK

How did this list do against Apoc Kate? It seems like an interesting matchup and one that could go either way.

21 Apr 2016 maestro

@LSK While apocalysping this deck is devastating, as long as you know what is coming and plan accordingly it is almost impossible for them to get an apocalypse off with all of the scoring upgrades you have. Not only that, but if you snipe a key card with a snare or a fetal, the game is pretty much over. Once that is done, the deck is basically just a weak kate decklist and is fairly easy to beat. So I would say the matchup is pretty favorable against kate no matter how devastating the apocalypse can be.

1 May 2016 VixinXiviir

I like the way this deck works, but I think a 3rd Komainu would be really good for this. With all the Faust running around, putting this in front of a Swordsman creates an unbreakable server for a lot of decks.