[startup] Advance! Retreat! (top Wayland at Worlds 2022??)

Trillian416 10

Better late then never! I figured I should publish this deck before rotation.

This deck is my janky little baby. A variation helped me clinch 193rd at worlds 2021, so you can imagine my surprise when I made 30th in start up! Apparently, this was the top Wayland startup deck. Shame on everyone else for that one, quite frankly.

You've heard of the element of surprise, this deck provides the element of confusion. It's not a good deck, but I got to flatline someone with Urtica Cipher and that's what matters to me.

This deck implements the small brain strategy. At worlds, I played more then 24 games in a 48 hour span, so unless you're planning on making the cut, endurance is key. This deck takes the Jinteki classic "install, advance, advance" and makes it credit neutral, meaning you can get away with way more BS then you deserve to.

THE ONE BRAIN CELL GAME PLAN

  • You want econ or a trap in your opening hand, it doesn't matter if there is no ice. If you want ice, use a deck that works properly.
  • Install, advance, advance
  • Pay attention to what your opponent is focusing on, are they afraid of your traps? Curious? Not wanting to play your silly cup game and hammering your centrals? This will define what you hold back and what you install, advance, advance. You can score out or kill. The cards you draw and the runner's boldness will tell you which to do. Are they not running your traps? Sneak out an agenda to teach them a lesson. Are they checking every card you install? Grab a Cerebral Overwriter and get advancing.
  • This deck scores naked agendas! Sometimes you can even leave a Azef Protocol fully advanced and nude for when that 2 meat will actually matter. Score a Divested Trust or two to unlock takebacksies. "Oops, haha, did I leave my SDS Drone Deployment out? I'll just take that back, thanks."
  • Ice HQ with Afshar and or Winchester. Ice R&D and Archives with Akhet and Ice Wall. If you can, manually give the first advancement of each ice to trigger Built to Last. The rest of the advancements will come from Akhet and Wall to Wall. Ice Wall is good anti-boat tec, which was much needed in the worlds meta. If you understand ICE, feel free to change up this list. Our main ICE is fear.

THIS DECK FOLDS TO

  • Cowardice. If you don't want to install a naked agenda, go play a deck that works.
  • People who are good at Netrunner and not exhausted from the 10 other games they played.
  • R&D runs. The Snare!s provide some protection, but Deep Dive and especially Stargate are hard to deal with. Ice up with Akhet to get value from their runs, and start slamming agendas and Clearinghouses if they are ignoring your remotes.

REVISIONS

  • This deck could use better ICE. Some may say it need more ICE, but those people don't know the joy of scoring an Azef that the runner (and maybe you) forgot about.
  • NAPD Cordon provides some fun bluffing opportunities, and wastes the runners time and money, but it may not be worth the deck slots.
  • Subliminal Messaging is great fun, but most runners are running at least once per turn in this meta, so I'll probably be taking it out in my next revision.
  • You can adjust the proportions of Cerebral Overwriter, Urtica Cipher, and Snare! to your content. Personally, I prefer two of each, so the runner never knows if they have trashed all the threats, particularly in the case of Snare!. Yes, you could cut the Urtica Cipher for 3 Cerebral Overwriter and 3 Snare!, but the variety makes the risk assessment more difficult for the runner.
  • I'd love to be able to run something like Trick of Light or Red Planet Couriers for when a trap fails, but it's just not in the cards right now. (haha)

TIPS FOR WHEN YOUR TOO TIRED TO THINK

  • Install, advance, advance. Doesn't matter what. Forget what card you installed. Your opponent can't read you if you don't know what your doing. Just double check what your rezing before you reveal it.
  • Make sure you have 4 credits so Snare! and Urtica Cipher are active.
  • Over advance your Project Atlas then use it to grab something fun. A personal favorite of mine is adding a Cerebral Overwriter to HQ then install, advance, advance something else.
  • This tip works especially well if you're not a cis guy: Before your opponent accesses your first trap, if they mention something about traps, pretend you don't understand or say something like, "oh yeah, that would be cool." A well placed "Hm?" can be devastating.

Good luck (you'll need it), and have fun!

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