An ode to Fiddy: Get Rich or Die Tryin’ - Mox Ballard SC19

This deck went 3-1 in four rounds of swiss at Mox Boarding House Ballard SC on 3/30/2019 to place 7th overall:

• Win against Freedom (flatline)
• Loss against Quetzal (Yolo run on 3 deep scoring remote with fully loaded Reduced Service)
• Win against Leela (flatline)
• Win against Null (flatline)

How to use!

You will acquire a lot of bad publicity. A lot. Bulwark is your friend. It costs Corroder 9 credits to break, Paperclip costs 7, Laamb still costs 5 credits, Gauss costs 7 credits (if freshly installed). Bulwark can capitalize on the runner's poorness or their inadequate rig. It can also use to safely hold an early SDS if they cannot afford to break the subs. Its sole porousness can be simply due to a bypass or Nexus trace, which will often feel really bad.

Normally The Outfit kept the bad pub just to be super rich and score out before the runner could capitalize on it. But! With Downfall, there are two key cards that I think make the Outfit very very scary (if you're not able to rush):

• Increased Drop Rates
• Roughneck Repair Squad

Increased Drop Rates can function the same way as Prisec in a rushy Supermodernism deck if you're trying to threaten speed: If you rush out a Hostile Takeover Early, you can naked install this to likely get the runner to hit it and remove one of your bad pub. I also think its best functionality is that it works from the bin! The wording on it also seems to imply that if you have no bad pub, the runner doesn't need to take a tag. But don't worry; You'll get some more bad pub soon!

Roughneck Repair Squad fits so fantastically into this deck it's hysterical. It's fun watching the runner feel good about having 3 bad pub only to drop it down to 0 and you get 18 credits after 3 turns.

SDS Drone Deployment helps a lot for tempo. If you score it out, you can choose a program to trash or if they score it, they must choose something. It's a decent tempo swing either way, depending on the situation. I had a game where I Install-Advance-Advanced a naked SDS early in the game where they had no programs to install (and thus unable to steal) and I was able to go up to 4 points by turn 3.

This deck's original idea was borne out of some serious anti-Aumakua hate. Radically different, it originally had Chiyashi, Zealous Judge, 2x Forced Connection and 2x Prisec to force the runner to get tagged fast and to be punished by brazen facechecks. However, I found this to be fairly reliant on the runner to be extremely aggressive but also for my nasty ice to show up fairly quickly. This was not optimal.

After some testing, while it was fairly scary, it was very prone to econ denial and if it couldn't quite swing up to be rich enough to land the critical ice rezzes it would be extremely porous. It was definitely very skill intensive of just being able to rez the right ice at the right time to rig shoot the pieces.

My biggest concerns in the meta were 419 and any kind of Good Stuff criminal decks. I decided then that I had to include so much money in the deck that it was able to swing back up after key Diversion of Funds or any Emergency Shutdowns.

Key deck changes last minute:

• The deck used to run a lot of denial NBN ice to land tags, however I figured that both Crowdfunding or the bin breakers would be rampant so dropping that influence to splash a one-off Ark Lockdown was very worth it. Anarch runners who ran R&D and saw it would immediately stop running to start installing their rig once they saw it, which opened a couple scoring windows.

I toiled over having 2 Data Ravens but Thoth is a really really nasty surprise for two reasons: 1) They are tagged with no choice 2) If they decide that the trace is worth it for them to beat, the credit dip usually helped to land a Hard-Hitting News within reach and an HPT not far off.

• Reduced Service is a ludicrous card. If you have centrals locked with taxing, taggy ice then you can force the runner to try and dig the centrals for an agenda. The entire goal is to drain the runner until they dip below the 8 credits for a sure and easy kill. The game can definitely allow you to have a lot of money and rush out, but it also has other variant options, like murder.

Changes that I would make now:

• Game Over was an include I sincerely wanted due to all the Criminal decks I saw during testing. I wanted to be able to delete a huge amount of Resources from Criminals or at least have them sink a ton of money into saving them. However, in practice I felt like it maybe deleted 2-3 cards and possibly forced the runner to spend 3-6 credits. As a one-off, it didn't do much work.
• Alternatives I would consider include: Underway Grid (hard counters 419 Nexus/Inside Job/Spear Phishing), another Increased Drop Rates (I had 2x originally, but Reduced Service is so important that I had to drop one), a second Data Raven (for savings!), a second Thoth or even another Ark Lockdown. It really depends on how you feel the deck is running. The tools can feel kind of limited and perhaps leaning into one thing or another (i.e. dropping Game Over allows 2x Ark an additional Prisec) would be helpful. It really depends on how you feel, but the deck is plenty scary on its own. Runners are quite trepidatious to begin running! I had an opponent merely see the amount of ice I had on the board and declared "seems like you're going pretty glaciery, you probably don't have murder" -- he took 12 meat damage a few turns later.

Weyland has never felt better.