Rutherfordless (1-3 Seattle CO)

I ran a version of this deck in the previous rotation, but there were a couple problems bringing it forward: no more Turnpike, no more Rutherford Grid, and no more IP Block. GameNET is truly dead in the ground, so Reality Plus felt like a successor; why muck around with letting the runner decide when you get money when you can just tag them for guaranteed credits?

Set up a scoring window in the mid game turns and grind out a few agendas- it’s okay if the runner gets one or two, they were probably Oracle Thinktanks anyway- and when they finally give up and go tag me you can score out of hand with Shipment.

I took this to the recent Seattle CO, and while I was way more confident in this than my Runner deck, the results were kind of the opposite. I never consistently set up the Thimblerig-Eavesdrop combo, but I did get to fire Hydra a few times at least. Still, it was great getting to play in person for the first time in like 7 years.

Card thoughts:

Jua: Filled the hole of a cheap face check Sentry that can really throw a turn’s tempo off, and late game (in theory) it’s another Thimblerig-Eavesdrop swap target. Overperformed?

Hydra: I really wanted a big hard to break ice that someone wouldn’t expect in a deck of really porous ice. Glad to say it fired twice the day of and was just as brutal as expected.

Gatekeeper: I used to hate this card but it’s actually really annoying to break for most of the game, and getting to play a YDL for 10 the turn after a runner bounces off it is inspiring.