Staying Classy - Off the Grid

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Off the Grid (SA Regionals) 1.1
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primeape 143

I liked the look of the other off the grid deck I saw on here and gave this modified build a go at a local store tournament. Seemed good, only went 2-2 but I had chances in the two losses even with a poor no ice opening hand against Gabriel. it didn't feel gimmicky to me; the off the grid is just a nice thing you have in your back pocket but really it's just about building up your defences and pushing out into a scoring remote, and waiting until you see the chance to use it. Nothing says, please take your siphons elsewhere, like a beefy hq with Caprice at its root.

My changes were to drop Project Atlas and focus only on the 3 point agendas. I'd have to play more to know if this is a good idea or not, but I know that with atlas in, I always try to double over advance, and if I am already going to go for that, then why not just go for the extra point. I also squeezed in 2 melanges to drop into that fat scoring remote if you are low on credits, gives you a way to close the gap on a big pile of Kati or Opus money without being forced to wait for the runner to do something. I varied the ice mix, the original had 3 quandary and 2 inazuma, I love those ice, but parasite is just so present everywhere in our meta that I went with a Tollbooth, 2 lotus fields, 2 enigmas and only one quandary instead. Also I reduced the number of huge ice, although after playing, I might boost that up again, although it would be better if there was another big sentry other than archer instead of all barriers. With only barriers it's easy for a runner to get through with just corroder.

Wins were a flatline via two punitives and an agenda win where I got off the grid and caprice set up in the perfect configuration. Even then, the runner came very close to winning off of r&d.

Losses were both to runners with sneakdoor beta. I got a very rough start, without ice against Gabe and though I did build impressively defended centrals, I never even got started trying to score an agenda. In the other loss against Reina, I was actually doing quite well, I'd melanged 4-5 times, had big ice rezzed on hq, r&d, and a remote and he had no breakers to speak of, and then he dropped sneakdoor beta and won the game immediately, lesson learned, always ice archives.

4 comments
3 Aug 2014 nbove

Perhaps try to find room for Interns? Being able to recur Caprice Nisei or Off the Grid seems like it would be strong here.

Punitive Counterstrike seems a bit out of place. People playing against Weyland are going to assume you are packing meat damage. Once a Plascrete Carapace hits the table those Punitive Counterstrikes become pretty much dead cards. You might be able to sneak in a win here and there against an inexperienced runner. However, a card that requires your opponent to play poorly in order to to anything doesn't seem like it is worth a deck slot.

3 Aug 2014 primeape

Good idea on interns, I will definitely try that. And your point about punitives is dead on, that was exactly what people were doing. Even the one flatline was very edge case, it was only because I had all 3 in hand very early in the game. My only hesitation is that the punitives can act as a brake on the opponents game, in that while they are digging for plascrete, they have to sit on a stack of credits to feel safe doing anything. I'm not sure how much is the punitives or just weyland fear though.

I will probably try replacing the punitives with 2 interns and either an extra ice or closed accounts, since people will float tags once they figure out you aren't tag and bag.

The other card I am less sure about is the oversight ai, as I would often not play it, because I knew the runner would be able to break it at least once, using their overmind, knight, or faerie for archer, and just corroder plus credits for a curtain wall. With caprice, I think you really want the ice tax to stay high, not just buy a turn or two. So I may try experimenting with slotting something else in there as well, not sure what yet though.

I think the ice mix isn't quite right yet too, it needs early etr because with all the 3 point agendas and cheap assets you can't tolerate the early free accesses as much as in other decks, however you also need really big ice. Not sure what I will try yet, ideas are welcome.

3 Aug 2014 nbove

I agree with your assessment on Oversight AI. It does not belong in this deck. I suspect you would get quite a bit of mileage out of Grim over HQ. Especially if you can place it in front of a hard end-the-run ICE.

I thought about making a deck somewhat similar to this but I found a particular vulnerability to be completely unacceptable. This deck archetype gets completely wrecked by Sneakdoor Beta. It allows them to bypass your tower of nasty HQ ice, destroy Caprice Nisei without needing a Psi game, Emergency Shutdown your expensive ice, and trash your Off the Grid for free. It is completely devastating. Thus far I have not been able to find a way to make the archetype work once the runner drops a Sneakdoor Beta, but perhaps I'm just not playing it correctly.

3 Aug 2014 primeape

Yeah Grim would be nice, and there is room for it in there, for instance guard is pretty weak here it seems to me. The room from Oversight could be used interestingly as well, maybe power shutdown to complement the program trashing, or if we could free up some influence somehow, corporate trouble shooter or aggressive secretary could make their way in.

I totally agree on sneakdoor, it's a direct counter to the OtG and caprice play and yeah combined with emergency shutdown it counters big ice pretty hard. I actually try really hard to rez my archers using priority req for that reason, so even if it gets shutdown, I can still always hard rez again.

Not really sure what can be done about the sneakdoor vulnerability, too bad you can't put OtG on archives. I'm also still figuring out how best to pilot a deck like this, in the games I played, I was never depending totally on OtG, I would still build a scoring remote, and then only if the opportunity presented itself, use OtG instead of rezzing all the ice on the remote. With sneakdoor out, that opportunity will never present itself so OtG is pretty much a dead card and you just play a 47 card deck. So maybe that is the cost-benefit decision to make; you can just drop OtG and play some other useful card or keep it in and know that against a deck with sneakdoor it's probably going to be useless.