As Garfield Intended (6th Accelerated Meta Test)

WildSam 2.0 54

When creating glorious Netrunner, Richard Garfield had a vision: fair game, where Corps try to score out and Runners break in servers, trying to steal agendas. Where Corp installs ICE and Runner breaks it.

Garfield definitely never had in mind forcing runner to faceplant unbreakable killing ICE via ID ability or accessing half of deck because you piled up negative stat and getting money back via ID ability. They didn't even had ID abilities in the 90s. Probably. I never played OG Netrunner.

After getting tired of playing 50-minute long matches with dragoless kill Ob I tried to reinvent Weyland Glacier. Fast money and big ICE usually make us think of Outfit, but I felt that bad pub is not really glaciery.

Aren't the best part about big ICE is you pay a lot once, but Runner pays and pays and pays again? And doesn't get free Overclock on every run. To fuel that big ICE we need big money. BABW enables operation based economy, which protects centrals and gives explosive noninteractive starts (which are kinda necessary, when our ICE costs 5 on average). Play operations, get money/cards, install ICE and score.

The deck ended up fun to play, but then I noticed it has stable 80% winrate (in Jnet casual). We're in Corp favoured meta and I don't know if that's that good (Drago Ob was literally unbeatable and I'm not takling about original writeup), but I suspect 40 out of 50 games is decent result. I don't think there are notably bad match ups and weird ICE suite ends up pretty efficient against most breakers.

Speaking of results it didn't perform too well on Accelerated Meta Test: when people notice your hot brew and your match gets streamed, you know you WILL lose in most stupid way possible. Rushing while leaving weak HQ against tagme Zahya is this way, apparently.

I think match up is decent at least, but if AMT was representative of meta to come, flex slot of Subliminal (Esya hurt me) should switch for some Retribution or so.

Funny card choices:

Trojan Horse - for single slot you slow down runner or win outright. Play condition is trivial. Overtrace isn't hard to pull of with our quick money and taxing ICE. Numbers are good so popping that Fermenter when you know rig shoot is not viable also does work.

Kimberlite Field: we don't want to sac to Azef, so had to play a single 4/2. Also lets us to win sometimes. Rest of suite is classic "score 3/steal 4", generally NAble with some assets to bait runs.

IAing GFI is actually decent play when at 4 points, as runner may let it slide before Audacity closes the match.

Wall to Wall: improves long game plan (usually when we need to secure centrals first), turning stalled turns into so much value.

Blockchain: accidentally found BABW card which proved actually very good. Gets out of hand quickly, becoming EULA with big swing stapled on. Kinda porous, but outside of last run of the game that's not that big deal. Also weak vs Turbine Smoke, but still taxes somewhat and match up is easy otherwise.

Oduduwa (and advanacble ICE): slap on priority central or remote depending on match. Very hard choice, actually. Generates obscene value and is decent ETR code gate by itself. Oduduwa/Border Control/Colossus server sometimes wins a match not as value engine, but as humble gearcheck. Just a little pricier.

Border Control is defensive upgrade in disguise.

Extracting Howard Jr. is cool opening sometimes.

ICE is all-around suite and depending on meta may be changed.

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