Shoot/Spike - Top Worlds Neurospiker (6-1, 33rd overall)

Solomir 214

When you give the option to play both Rigshooter AND Neurospike, who am I to say no?

This deck started off as a big offshoot of a BOOM! / Neurospike deck that Sokka234 had been testing. While that deck was strong and could catch many runners off-guard, I felt that it didn't have the taxing power to win a long game against runners that were rich and aggressive. EcoWar + HHN only goes so far, and the ice suite wasn't sufficiently taxing on its own. So I figured I'd attack at the runner's ability to win the game in a different way than just killing them.

The deck did surprisingly well on day 1B, carrying me by spiking out 5 anarchs and 1 Adam. The one loss is from a sneaky PolOp slipping through the turn before the spike and shooting my chance at saving agendas from archives.

Some individual card notes:

Consulting Visit - I valued having more copies of this than Neurospike, as I could use it to tutor various toolbox operations like Retribution or Ark Lockdown.
Best Defense - key targets are No One Home, Progenitor, or Find the Truth. Was not used at all during the event but helpful as a security blanket card.
Retribution - only as a 1x because there are limited ways to tag the runner during the Corp turn. Also, runners get a real big clue when they see this so the fewer copies in the deck, the more mystery.
Magnet - sucks up Botulus and also acts as a 4th EtR code gate once decoders are locked out.
Sapper - just a little bit of spice for runners that are too aggressive at checking centrals before fully rigging up. Can also punish runners that contest servers without their killer.
Wraparound - a hard EtR barrier is better in rigshooter over the porous taxing IP Block.

Against Criminal, you can rush behind double EtR, or hang back and wait to trash the single decoder/lockdown the Clip.

Against Anarch, Jua -> EtR will keep them frantically digging for more copies of their breakers. Take care to not rez other barriers (or code gates if using Enigma) on other servers to give them another outlet to reinstall from the bin.

Against Shaper... is that an actual faction???

Big thanks to the House Hippos for helping me with this deck and encouraging me to play it even though it would probably have been bad in the top cut. Also huge thanks to the NISEI team and volunteers for organizing a second (and better and smoother) online Worlds this year.

3 comments
23 Nov 2021 Berzelius

Very nice, I've been playing a similar concept lately (without the kill). Keegan Lane and Retribution are completely underrated cards.

24 Nov 2021 Diogene

I see Jua, I like the deck! Congrats on your games at World 2021!

7 Jun 2022 swearyprincess

Just took this for a spin, and murdered someone in my first game.

A++, will jua their hopper into the bin again :D