Like a Rolling Stone

turkishvancat 212

I have been seeing great success with this deck and wanted to put it up for review.

The game typically breaks into the following phases:

  1. Set up the rig and econ engine
  2. Midgame siphons to drain the corp dry
  3. Keyhole away!

Early Game:

I love starting with Motivation in my opening hand because I can hostage into Oracle May; drawing a card and getting two credits for a single click is awesome! If I start with different cards though, I'm just as happy to get the Underworld Contact engine going by using Hostage for The Helpful AI. Basically, Hostage makes this deck shine by getting a clickless economy up and running as soon as possible. It's important to get Logos out quickly as well to grab Keyhole or breakers for the next phase. It's also good to apply light pressure to keep the corp wary and slow them down, though I usually don't take big risks since I don't have a way to resurrect programs.

Midgame:

While I apply light pressure in the early game, it really picks up in the midgame. By now, the corp should have an agenda scored, and ideally I'll have Motivation/Oracle and one or two Underworld Contacts. The corporation is likely sitting on a nice pile of cash, which is problematic since that will let them rez ice and score the remaining agendas they need to win. Fortunately, I'll have an Account Siphon or two in hand, central breakers, and Same Old Things on the table. New Angeles City Hall helps ensure that each siphon only takes one click. It is very possible to Siphon two or three times in a single turn without gaining any tags, which makes the corporation very sad. This is also a great time to play Emergency Shutdown on any costly ice they might have rezzed. Once they're more or less drained, we move to the endgame.

Endgame:

With the corporation drained, it's time to keyhole through R&D. In my last game, the corp had two ice on R&D but couldn't rez either after being siphoned to death, leaving me to keyhole 3-4 times every turn for the last 3 turns until I won. I trash Jacksons no matter what, then anything that helps them make a comeback, like cheap money or cheap taxing ice. Otherwise, I trash agendas until there are 7 points in archives. Then all it takes is one final run on archives for the win!

Observations:

Once set up, the amount of money Iain gets is sickening. In one game, I had my entire engine going, so I got 5 credits at the start of every turn and had the Motivation/Oracle out to get two more for a click. With the ice I was up against, that let me use Keyhole 2-3 times every turn.

Crypsis is an OK replacement in case you don't find the last breaker, but more importantly, he threatens the remotes to keep the corp from scoring too fast. As an added bonus, if the corp is scared to put down agendas, Legwork is a nice surprise that can reduce the number of agendas you need to mill in the end game.

S&W is mainly for Jackson and Caprice; but it's a recent addition and I haven't tested it yet.

So far this deck has performed really well, but it did lose to an NBN FA deck; They had 3 Pop Up Windows on R&D, greatly mitigating Keyhole. I'm not entire sure how to deal with the FA archetype.

Thoughts and suggestions are appreciated!

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