Sunspear's Viper (1st Place @ Enchanted Grounds)

CrimsonWraith 3643

Here it is folks, the spiritual successor to the Doran's Blades deck. I went 3-1 with this deck and won the Enchanted Grounds Store Championship in Denver with it. This deck has gone through many, many tweaks over the past six months, to which I had a dozen variants spun off of my original Cerebral Imaging deck.

The first evolution occurred in December, where paddosan's Next Gen Fast Advance deck (http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/748/next-gen-fast-advance-v1-0) inspired me to drop the one-turn win combo (the Trick of Light, Kaguya, MirrorMorph version) for a four-turn win combo with Celebrity Gifts and Shipment from SanSans; aiming for a scored Efficiency Committee and capable of scoring 8 of the remaining 10 agendas in the deck out-of-hand for one credit each. It proved to be much more consistent than Doran's Blades in practice, but stumbled and did poorly in tournaments.

The next revelation occurred with PeekaySK's Cerebral Giraffes decks (http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/3381/cerebral-giraffes-vienna-store-champs-first-place- and http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/4182/cerebral-hive-of-giraffes-chronos-bratislava-first-place-) which used the same strategy as paddosan, but put the 3-point agendas back in, essentially making it a three-turn win combo. It seemed I was most vulnerable after scoring the Priority Requisition, so this change brought in more ice (and bigger ice!) to take advantage of the Priority Requisition and survive the last couple of turns before scoring out.

One of the reasons I did so strongly with one of the older versions in testing was that runners were leaving the Jackson Howards on the table and letting me card draw away to victory. When it came to a more competitive level, Jackson was run as soon as possible and nobody let it sit on the table. That being the case... The final touch, as PeekaySK also did, was dropping Jackson Howard. This gave me the influence room necessary for two Hives and Tollbooth. What about card draw? I have tested versions with Anonymous Tip (as I replaced Jackson in all of my Weyland decks with Tips), but found I have plenty of card draw from Blue Level Clearance and Green Level Clearance without Tips and preferred the extra ice instead. What about recursion? Archived Memories and Reclamation Order work absolutely splendidly in that regard.

Alright, at this point, I suppose some folks are wondering what this three-turn combo are. First, you should check out the decks of the two gentlemen above, since they inspired the direction this deck took; a stark departure from the one-turn combo. That said... here's what you're looking for:

12 credits to spare without dumping your hand, 2 x Biotic Labors, 1 x Efficiency Committee.

There's enough strong ice in the deck to score the Efficiency Committee traditionally in a remote server deck; but by the time you've shored up the central servers, you normally have these three cards in hand and a stockpile of extra money anyway.

Your next step, on a future turn after scoring EC, is to install Priority Requisition, advance once, spend all your counters on EC, and double Shipment from SanSan to score Priority Req out of hand. You typically want Wotan, Heimdall 1.0, or Tollbooth on the table to rez on HQ at this point and protect your hand until you nab the final two points. It's also worth noting that your Hives are blank at this point.

From there, if you have 7 credits, a Project Vitruvius, and the third Biotic Labor in hand, you win. Otherwise, you can use Archived Memories or Reclamation order to pull a Biotic out of Archives and win on your next turn.

And that's how it's done. The one game I lost in the tournament, I drew 8 of 9 agendas in the deck in the first 15 cards. I can sometimes get away with those odds, but the player I was up against just put too much pressure on HQ and I was stomped.

Holler at me if you have any questions about the deck, feel free to discuss anything you think might make it better, and have fun trying it out!

7 comments
20 Apr 2014 PeekaySK

Congratulations on the win!

One comment, thought - why Quandary over Viktor 2.0? It's not like you actually need to save on the rez cost, and Quandary is just a (rather inefficient) gear check, while Viktor is a pretty taxing piece.

20 Apr 2014 CrimsonWraith

It's there for the gear check primarily. They used to be Enigmas and I just began trying out Quandary. I like having a few hard ETR ice to force out breakers and set the runner up for the program destruction ice. Plus, there's plenty of other big ice in the deck to tax the runner. =)

21 Apr 2014 hypomodern

Heya, and congrats on the win! @PeekaySK has converted another to the cause of the "devil CI" :).

Reclamation Order has been bananas for this build in my testing: last time I played I reclamed 3x Restructure, then 3x Biotic, and my opponent (playing Gabe) nearly ragequit. It survives siphon like a champ.

I love the tollbooth; that's worth testing for sure :). I think I like the "maximum tax" approach, at least until someone shows me a strong counter (early, reliable Nerve Agent maybe?) that gets played a lot. Ironically, I've dropped Wotan, but kept Viktor 2.0.

21 Apr 2014 Ozvaldo

Do you need heimdall, Wotan & tollbooth. Surely after scoring PR, you just need 1 more turn to score a 2 point agenda .....

21 Apr 2014 CrimsonWraith

Thanks hypomodern. =) I've been playing Cerebral Imaging for a very long time, including a top five Plugged-In finish with my 7-points-in-1-turn deck back in October. Though Paddosan and PeekaySK totally opened me up to the benefits of taking Cerebral Imaging and going more traditional fast advance with Celebrity Gifts to fund everything.

I remember back in October/November, everybody was dismissal of the deck and how Siphon owns it; and even back then (with significantly fewer economic options) I insisted that Siphon rarely even phases Cerebral Imaging. The only Siphons that prove crippling against this deck are normally turn one or turn two. That said.. Vamp still terrifies me. I played (and beat) a Siphon Vamp deck in this tournament; but that may have had something to do with playing Restructure 7 times over the course of the game (Thanks Reclamation Order!).

I'll experiment with the Viktor 2.0s, sounds like it's worth trying out at least. Heimdall 1.0 and/or Tollbooth normally get rezzed during the game, pre-PR score. There's enough money with this build that it's not entirely uncommon for me to rez Wotan as well. After scoring PR, I normally need just one turn to pull Biotic(s) back out of Archives to win, however, as I said earlier, I feel most vulnerable in those scant few turns after I score PR where my Hives are blank.

21 Apr 2014 hypomodern

I've changed my scoring algorithm to try to score the PR last with the Hives so at least they're still Wall-of-Static-ish for that last runner turn :). Biotic a vitruvius whenever / if jammed, double-biotic efficiency committee, reclaim anything you want, EC into PR.

I'd built a c-c-c-combo CI last year too, but this is so much more robust!

21 Apr 2014 CrimsonWraith

I noticed that PeekaySK mentioned doing the same thing (scoring PR third/last) as well in his most recent Chronos first place deck. If I tried that in this deck, I'd drop the Wotan for another Heimdall. In fact, I think I'd throw in more bioroids... I figure if you have enough of them on the field, it turns them all into the hard ETR that I'm looking for. I think I'll start experimenting with going for scoring PR last and make these changes: - 1 Wotan, - 2 Grim, - 2 Quandary for + 1 Heimdall 1.0, +1 Ichi 1.0, +1 Ichi 2.0, and + 2 Viktor 2.0.