Ayla "Test Run" Rahim (1st @ Starlit Citadel SC)

aDumbBrick 670

Ayla "Test Run" Rahim, named uncreatively by how heavily this deck relies on Test Running Femme Fatale for early indexings and steals.

This is the deck that more or less I played through the SC season and it probably went 9-4 over 3 SCs, but failed 0-4 in the cuts of 2 of them. It had to undergo a pretty dramatic revision following the restricting of Tapworm as previous versions ran the Saccon+Tap+Clot package which gave shaper so much power before. After 2 SC where clot & Info sifting were dead cards I decided to more aggressively tech for the glacier & CTM matchups by going all in on extra econ.

The game plan with this deck is straight forward, steal most of your points through Indexing + an extra point (Mad dash or Freedom), Steal the remaining ones when they think they are safe to score with your tricks.

With that in mind lets go to Card Choices.

The Programs:

2x Femme Fatale -- This is the all star of the deck. I've won many games installing no breaker other than a Femme. Test Run, Scavenge, SoT, and extra econ all help in making the most out of these. Move them around a lot and use them aggressively to enable indexing & Remote checking.

1x Ankusa 1x Lady -- The Fracters, Previously it was 2x Lady but I find having a easy answer for Kakugo & a permanant one if you need to break barriers over and over is almost needed. Only use Lady if you can get away with it, it is so much cheaper.

1x Gordian Blade -- Boring Decoder, I've tried having Cyber Cypher as a main plan with this as a backup but I rarely found myself using it & my Scavenges are already pretty taxed.

1x Self Modifying Code -- Probably too few to be honest. I'd cut to 1 this just before the event, but I think it would be worthwhile to get this back to at least 2x

The Events

1x Freedom 1x Mad Dash -- Extra points are really good right now, you really only want to steal 3 agendas , 3 is even better. This was 2x Mad Dash but Freedom clears scarcity better in a pinch.

3x Indexing -- The workhorse of the deck, you can win some games with just 2 of these. Femme helps prevent it from getting stuffed. 3x because you want to find one early

1x Legwork -- I would really like to find room for a second to be honest but it does it's job as a 1x.

3x Test Run & 3x Scavenge -- These are your main tools for exploiting Femme Fatale. Test run gets you a cheap Femme when you need it. Scavenge moves your installed femmes around, and together they combine to install a femme for 3, a pretty good discount.

1x Interdiction -- Pretty much only to fight scarcity

1x Stimhack -- I think a better version of the deck might have more of these

3x Same Old Thing -- This might secretly be the best card in the deck. It is an extra copy of any of the important events, and as you can see above there are a lot of them.

The Tech

2x Film Critic -- Really good against Jinteki, More and more 5/3s are coming out that you don't want to steal. It is a bit of an anti synergy with the main gameplan of Mad Dash & Freedom Points though so still plan on stealing the hard way if you are able to.

1x Guru Davinder -- Tech against Snare, Urban Renewals, and many other issues. I really like this card right now and even though it costs more if you are taking single net\meat hits it really is handy against bigger chunks. An important note though, When this card is out you cannot steal Obokata Protocol directly. On your first access you can attempt to pay the cost and then let davinder get trashed, (and hopefully access a second time to steal). Be careful of that interaction

1x Misdirection -- HHN sucks , this card makes it suck less. Also really good vs sync.

1x Astrolabe -- Rarely need it these days but getting it early against a horizontal deck makes a big difference.

The Econ:

3x Liberated Account -- Given the lack of Tapworm I felt that I needed to change the econ package from PioT & Tapworms to something more active. I've been pretty happy with Liberated overall but it is a lot of influence.

3x Professional Contacts -- I still Really like this card. This deck wants to draw a lot & this card helps with that so much. Career Fair also really helps the tempo hit from installing it.

3x Career Fair -- Really fantastic, this deck is packed with resources that give value with this card

Conclusions:

With this version of the deck I feel like I have a lot of econ to play with. I was regularly hard installing femmes without too much pain, but it is clearly lacking tech for CI & FA in general. Indexing + Mad Dash is still fantastic, & Cheap Femmes are very powerful for getting in while getting setup & for skipping big ice.

This deck probably isn't the best but It has served me well this season and I hope you enjoy it.

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