Uncorrodable

CrimsonWraith 3643

This is the GRNDL's Wisps deck that Azeltir posted on BoardGameGeek last week. I ended up taking it to a tournament yesterday and only lost one game with it. In that one game, I was sitting at 5 points with a scored Atlas counter when the Runner desperately installed Crypsis as his only breaker (after losing both of his Corroders in the first two turns and clicking for credits most of the game), then proceeded to run through Archer and Wall of Static for 14 credits to access one card and grabbed the only 3-pointer left in a 25-card R&D for the win. Doh!

Anyway, this deck's goal is to kill the Runner's fracters, typically Corroder. You install barriers everywhere, with some program destruction ice thrown in here and there. Throw Will-o (which is not unique!) into the servers you think the Runner wants into the most to send their fracter to the bottom of the deck. I often had Runners get cocky after seeing 5-6 barriers and no other ice, and start running servers without upgrades with impunity - typically leading to a fatal face-plant into Archer, Grim, or Ichi 2.0. You also have Power Shutdown, which is particularly handy for wiping out Self-Modifying Code, Clone Chips, Inti, and Corroder.

Parasite recursion decks can be a challenge, but the Power Shutdowns can take out a lot of their utility programs and Wraparound will prove a major obstacle for those decks.

The Root is a fantastic card when it's up and running, but you want a light defense of it - throw a cheap barrier over it and save your better ice to secure a remote or central server. You should have a ton of credits even without the Root, it's not critical to your economy here at all, though it does give it a nice boost.

Interns is primarily there for Will-o, but I played a couple of mill decks and it was particularly effective in those games for retrieving milled agendas and putting them into a secure remote. Jackson Howard is also a good Interns target when you need card draw and/or have had multiple agendas milled into Archives. Interns/Jackson Howard are also effective at retrieving cards via self-inflicted wounds (Power Shutdown mills gone wrong).

Subliminal Messaging is a very potent and profitable card here. After the first Power Shutdown and/or Will-o went off, Runners tended to sit back and turtle while they tried to find tools to deal with what I had going on. In those circumstances, Subliminal became a free credit every turn. It may be worth cutting The Root to add in a second Subliminal.

21 comments
25 Aug 2014 wswan

This deck looks awesome. Some people seem to think 1 Sub Messaging is enough and you don't need to run two but I heartily disagree. Having your hand refill and give you cards you can throw away without regret is great.

25 Aug 2014 x3r0h0ur

I'd want corporate troubleshooter to boost up your breaker breaker on the remote.

25 Aug 2014 x3r0h0ur

Wait, you don't have superior cyberwalls on the schedule?

25 Aug 2014 CrimsonWraith

A second Subliminal would be ideal, I don't like just one of it, I'm just not sure what to cut at this point.

The problem I see with Corporate Troubleshooter and Superior Cyberwalls in this deck is that, if the deck is doing its job, the strength increases won't matter a bit because the Runner has no breaker to get through the server regardless of strength.

25 Aug 2014 x3r0h0ur

Well, do you really think wiley runners are going to just have their breaker snapped off by rezzing an archer or grim on them? Any smart runner will have sharpshooter, faerie or mimic out to protect their fractor, troubleshooter works to boost over anything other than maybe sharpshooter

25 Aug 2014 CrimsonWraith

Sharpshooter and Faerie are one use breakers and the Runner tutoring/recurring anything other than a fracter is good news with this deck. Faerie is also susceptible to Power Shutdown, and if the Runner uses any regular sentry breaker to break subroutines they'll often lose it to Will-o at the end of the run.

25 Aug 2014 slevin38

How well does it do against decks based around AIs like Overmind?

26 Aug 2014 Fjord

Best use of the several new cards that I've seen. I think it would catch most runners. I wonder how well they would be able to deal with it if they knew the list.

26 Aug 2014 CrimsonWraith

slevin, I was worried about AI-based breaker suites and how I would fare against them myself. Turns out, my easiest tournament game of the day was against an Overmind deck. I saw Overmind early and played Targeted Marketing, naming Overmind. Most dedicated Overmind decks rely on Scavenging them in and out of the game to reload counters - I set it up so that I would gain 10 credits every time he did so, and it really messed up his tempo. Furthermore, without a fracter in the rig, Wraparound wrecks Overmind/Crypsis decks.

Fjord, it'll be interesting to see. One benefit right off that bat is that Runners see GRNDL and immediately waste time drawing for and installing Plascrete. I had one Runner admit to me afterwards that he kept a bad starting hand solely because it had Plascrete in it, heh. I played against a friend tonight while he had my decklist in front of him and he absolutely pummeled me, so we'll see, but early returns indicate the deck doesn't work all that great without the element of surprise.

1 Sep 2014 mabool

How much work do the Paper Walls do? Do they get trashed easy? What if you have a server with a destroyer in front of a Paper Wall? Can you reliably destroy their fracter for the Paper Wall to stay relevant?

1 Sep 2014 CrimsonWraith

On multiple occasions in the tournament I kept Runners out by having Archer/Grim in front of a Paper Wall. It has a nice synergy where if they break the subroutine to trash Paper Wall, you know you're getting to fire off the Will-O on a successful run. Trading a cheap Paper Wall for their fracter is a great deal when it works out that way. It was also entertaining to see a few people host Knight on an unrezzed Paper Wall, heh.

6 Sep 2014 jeibel

I understand the logic behind paper wall but isn't it dead meat in most situations ? Would it be possible to fit Hive in this deck ? It seems very well suited, and i fear the ICE count is a little low. Does Ichi pull it's weight ? It's influence could be used for a reclamation order

7 Sep 2014 Pazuzu

I could see hive in here as a replacement for bastion

10 Sep 2014 voltorocks

slotted a very similar deck to this a few days ago (a few econ changes, one or two tweaks to ICE count, but basically the same exact strategy). went 7-1 in the last 2 days against a lot of big-name decks, I LOVE the way it plays, very nasty and rich and Weyland.

It definitely suffers outside of a surprise element; I will say though, just a general idea of the deck concept was not enough for people to wreck me (of the 8 games, only three were truly unspoiled). with the list in hand, yeah, people can play around its complete lack of damage and gimmiky ICE setup (though one of my additions was Ash 2X3ZB9CY (instead of Targeted Marketing) who has been a total killer; makes Will-o'-the-Wisp even more brutal and reliable in your scoring remote.

my one loss was to a turbo-rig CT deck; the fact that will-o adds to the stack instead of trashing meant that Self-modifying Code and Test Run kept corrode-a-saurus up and running quite easily, while knights took apart my sentries. Might have had a better chance if the all-barriers thing had been a surprise to that player; even so, the deck performed very admirably.

15 Oct 2014 hypno_beam

I love this way this looks. Has this been played against Quetzal: Free Spirit and e3 Feedback Implants yet?

12 Dec 2014 Exo

I would like to see how would you do a Blue Sun Uncorrodable deck :)

8 Mar 2015 ttsgosadow

Would love to see this archtype updated for O&C, this was wonderful to play! Not sure if focussing (solely) on barriers is the way to go anymore, given the rise of lady (too high to power shutdown) and refractor (also a deterrant for power shutdown).

9 Mar 2015 voltorocks

@ttsgosadow I think this deck (or rather, this style - this particular list is pretty dated) has a definite spot these days, especially with blue sun shenanigans and O&C shenanigans. the rise of lady is actually a great reason to play this type of weyland (imo) given that the stupid large number of barriers can quickly tax most decks' recursion tools to the limit. Will o' is also a great tool against eater decks, imo. for maximum cruelty, give The Twins a try with this archetype - 2x archer in a row can bury some decks.

11 Mar 2015 vor_lord

@ttsgosadow and @voltorocks, I tried to put together a Blue Sun version here.

Let me know what you think. I didn't think of The Twins when I made the list, but did wish for another upgrade to use once the gig is up and the runner will assume it's a Wisp.

13 Jan 2016 ChairmanHiro

I'm curious why you went with GRNDL as your ID for this deck instead of a different weyland ID. GRNDL is just.......not very good and doesn't seem to sync with the theme of the deck at all.

24 Jan 2016 CrimsonWraith

@metafoxx Keep in mind this list is 17 months old. Believe it or not, there was a brief time when GRNDL had the highest win percentage of any Weyland identity. ;)

At the time this deck was published, there were only 3 Weyland identities to choose from (BABW, BWBI, and GRNDL), and GRNDL was easily the best of the 3 for this particular archetype.

The influence hit doesn't hurt because most of the best barriers are Weyland or Neutral, and that starting flush of cash enables you to repeatedly rez Willow without breaking a sweat.