On The 'Roids

ocelotwildly 16

This was the deck I built for the Charity Gift 2016 ID Auction tournament, which along with my runner Khan took me to a creditable 4th place. It went 4-1 on the day, losing only to a spycam Geist deck.

The deck is a fairly standard foodcoats style build, although tweaked a bit to work with the new ID. I found that it suits a slightly rushier playstyle, never advancing early agendas behind a single piece of ice. Even though your ice isn’t hard etr, a runner paying through a Fairchild and giving you a discount rez is a swing worthy of leaking an agenda or two. Its ability also puts it in a very good spot with a meta where everyone and their grandmother is running Temujin contracts. The worst match up for this deck is a runner that can develop their board state to give them late game inevitability without having to run too much, so I was lucky on the day that I didn’t run into any shaper stealth.

The ice suite is 100% bioroids, as I found myself too often in situations where there wasn’t anything to rez, and you really need to be getting 20+ credits out of this ID to justify playing it over EtF. The mix of large and small ice also felt quite good, although if it comes out in the wrong order having to hard rez a Heimdall to protect from early central pressure can be pretty rough. Fairchild 3.0 is an absolute monster, but I found having 3 in the deck made Atman at 5 and Gordian Blade such good value for the runner that I would get diminishing returns.

I went for Batty over Caprice as I thought the program trashing would be helpful, especially in a tournament where I knew I would be facing at least 1/3 criminals. If FFG see sense and take Eli off the MWL, then another would be a no brainer. This ID has been really fun to play around with, and there’s a lot of depth in the ice placement and mind games needed to get its ability to fire as many times as possible. More pieces of bioroid ice (and non-ice) cards released will open up its options even further.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea1yUUVEBWI

4 comments
22 Nov 2016 Pilltechre

I know what you mean about the ice, all the best stuff you want in are 4-5 strength. Atman with suckers is miserable to play against!

The 2.0 ice are much more resistant to cutlery. My list has gravitated towards 2.0's for this reason, even though as you point out it can be a major headache if it comes in the wrong order.

How do you feel about switching one of the food for a Sales team? It would leave you an inf for Crisium. With expensive ice I'd be worried about getting Siphoned to death.

How come you went Interns over Archived? Was it for the free install of stacked ice, and if so, did it prove usefull in that regard?

Sorry to ask so many questions, I've been trying to put a good AoT list together for months since it was spoiled. Theres so many subtle pitfalls you have to watch out for. I'm heartened by your good finish. Well done!

22 Nov 2016 gumonshoe

I've found Heinlin Grid on HQ to be a deterrent to crim decks and other decks which would click through your ice to gain access. It's pretty awful if you can rez it as the same time as an ichi they can't break.

22 Nov 2016 ocelotwildly

@Pilltechre Food for a Sales team is definitely something I was on the fence about - In the end I went with the extra GFI because I realised most of the games I was winning were when I had managed to get one scored. I generally tried to score one as early as possible, as by late game sometimes you just don't have an out, so three increases the chances of it showing up when needed.

I've not had too many problems with siphon, probably not enough to warrant a Crisium. This deck has a little bit of built in siphon protection in that you can leave a big piece of ice unrezzed to dump credits into if needs be. Between that and the campaigns, you can generally make sure that if you're going broke then at least they're not getting rich in the process. I haven't come up against much hyper-aggressive Anarch siphon spam though, so it would certainly be something to consider if that's a big problem in your meta.

Interns was indeed included for the free install option, as I found its most common target was Batty anyway so you're not losing anything on the Archived there. With this ID, it can be really useful if you can get a cheap piece of ICE on the outside of a server to get discounts on a more expensive piece further in, which can make the maths on the free install even more favorable. I had also included a Preemptive Action as well, but swapped it for a Cyberdex on the day as I got scared about Medium digs. I'm now tempted to put it back in, as I found it really helpful sometimes for lategame if I needed to get back my Biotics. I know some folks have been cool on it's potential as a Jackson replacement, but just on its own terms it's a pretty solid bit of recursion.

24 Nov 2016 Pilltechre

@ocelotwildly Thanks for your reply.

I like Preemptive too. Just because its not Jackson, doesn't mean its not a good card.

I think its a mistake to compare it to jackson anyway. Jackson fixes agenda density in HQ, Preemptive fixes agenda density in R&D by putting things like econ and ice back in.

In a more glacier orientated deck I think theres a reasonable argument for running both, deck slots permitting.

@gumonshoe I include Heinlein in my list, and it does a lot of work, but I miss BBG/Campaign money. Very tempted to try 2 of each but I imagine that it would be problematic to say the least.