Titan Evolution v0.2

Here's my current list for the rush -> fast advance -> glacier Titan deck I've been working on for a few weeks. The biggest change has been losing Jackson Howard and Tollbooth to fit in another Biotic Labor. This is a great trade for this deck.

This deck aims to evolve its strategy throughout the game and depending on board state. It sometimes works! It's a lot of fun and provides really interesting and interactive matches in my experience. A friend of mine described it as "like fast advance, but fair." I'll take it!

The Game Plan

Phase 1: Rush.

In the early game, you rush agendas behind gear-check ice and build econ. IAA Hostile Takeover, score Oaktown Renovation behind Vanilla, Profiteering, whatever. Get to a few points and build up some money while you do it. Once you have scored your first Project Atlas (frequently Fast Tracked, installed, advanced), we enter phase 2. You don't care about bad pub, your ice is easily broken with just about any breaker.

Phase 2: Atlas Train

Great, ideally you are at 3 or 4 points with at least one atlas token available. If you have the econ for it (through some combination of econ agendas, operations, using Mark Yale to burn counters from your phase-1 agendas, and clicking for credits), then you'll want to start windmilling atlases at SanSan City Grid. If you can't make that happen DO NOT WORRY. EVERYTHING IS COOL.

Phase 3: Glacier (wut)

Drop a Sandburg in your scoring remote and money up for safety. This normally slows the runner down enough that you can get scores with Biotic Labor, or put an SSCG in your scoring remote alongside Sandburg to over-install/score out. Or, build a second server with one or two beast-level ice and score out there. Or create a new server for sandburg with one or two ice in it. Whatever seems workable. Figuring out how to fit the pieces together here is the fun part :)

Some notes on card choices:

Agendas

Agendas either make you money, win the game, or lower density. I'm still not convinced about profiteering, but it makes you so much money and having another agenda in the deck that takes <4 advancements helps to close out the game.

Assets

Sandburg is instrumental to the late game plan. Mark Yale is an all-star: bait runs when you're not sure if you have a scoring window, squeeze more cash out of your rush agendas, cash in Geothermal Fracking credits without spending clicks, and pull money out of your hat for surprise rezzes. Both FA and Sandburg require a lot of money, and he makes it.

Corporate Town could be swapped for an Executive Boot Camp depending on whether blackmail spam or any of the current resource-based runner builds are more obnoxious in your meta. You could also put in Elizabeth Mills, but more for the trashing ability than the BP removal.

Upgrades

SanSan City Grid is amazing. Crisium Grid helps deal with siphon and can be used to bait runs by masquerading as SSCG or an agenda. Cyberdex Virus Suite deals with clot sometimes, but more often I find it's just really useful for preventing medium digs or surprise purging datasucker tokens to get game-winning plays with Archer or Cobra.

Operations

The econ is primarily geared towards going from the 0-4 credit range up to the 10-15 credit range. If you start off with an atlas, you need to bounce back up pretty quickly or you're toast. Stock Buy-Back is a cool and fun card that I like to play with. It can swing the needle from "about to lose" to "about to win" really quickly if a game goes late.

Fast Track is there to start the atlas train or squeeze out late hostiles. Interns primarily is used to replace SSCG or Sandburg, but it's super flexible and can also be used to fetch agendas that got milled or that you discarded while flooded. If you are on the late game plan, it's also good to avoid the install cost of ice when you are stacking them deep (using the "install from HQ" ability).

Biotic Labor is super good for obvious reasons.

ICE:

The ICE is basically all gear-check early game ice, and you rely on sandburg to turn it into late game ICE that's relevant when the runner has a full rig.

Changeling is kind of expensive, but it is out of mimic range and requires two breakers. Guard is great for dealing with inside job, and a sentry with a straight-up ETR is helpful for rushing.

Vanilla, Enigma, and Chimera do what you expect them to do. Rush behind them. Chimera is much better on the inside of a server (where you don't have to pay the rez cost so often).

Archer, Cobra, and Caduceus are in here to make face-checking dangerous. Think hard before firing off the archer, you don't want to get jammed up on 6 points.