Into the Pale (No-Remote PD)

The Pale does not have a perceivable appearance. It is achromatic, odourless, and featureless, the "enemy of matter and life".[6] Therefore, it can only be measured through the matter that surrounds it.[7] Where matter borders the pale, the resulting border is an uproar of matter, evaporating into the pale, considered "a great vision".[8] The area of transition between the world and the pale is called "porch collapse": a grey mist with cold vapour, known to house a specialized form of fungal microorganism.[9]

Pale is difficult to describe and measure, as it is something whose fundamental property is the suspension of properties: physical, epistemological, linguistic.[10] The further into pale you travel, the steeper the degree of suspension. Right down to the mathematical – numbers stop working. No one has ever passed the number barrier since the discovery of the pale and it may be impossible.[11]

|- "Pale", Disco Elysium

It all began when I mistook the character art of Big Deal for Kim and Harry from Disco Elysium. [Note: This is Sam and Dien]. Then @ArminFirecracker made a comment about 5/3 suites with Elivagar being pretty hot out of HB, especially back when you could still play GFI. Ever since, I've been trying to build a no-remote Big Deal HB deck.

For the longest time this was tried out of AoT, because if you couple Jinja City Grid with the AoT effect all your ice kinda rezzes itself for very cheap [and sometimes you can score a nice CFC Excavation Contract for a credit positive Big Deal] but lately there's not been much good Bioroid ice around.

I tried testing the deck again when we realised Esâ was really heckin' good and I wanted something that could play Salvo Testing - Ontological Dependence - Elivagar. The fact that that deck had Subliminal Messaging and lots of spiky ice also meant getting sabotaged was much less of a threat. Still, gotta hand it to NWE to find a cleaner way to counter Esa.

This is the latest version. It's...not very strong, I think, but definitely an interesting thought experiment. In a world without Twinning, reg decks would struggle into it I think, but Scapenet just isn't the piece of tech you need.

The name is also an homage to the Shadow Realm, a similar no-remote strategy deck. I never ended up playing it outside of internal events, where it didn't do too well if memory serves me right. Maybe it's a good thing I don't really know how to build these kinds of deck, or maybe the cardpool thankfully doesn't allow for them atm.

Please enjoy,

tempest.