bootcamp glacier is here to stay

As a fellow Weylander I commend you! Congrats on the night, and I honor your attempt at being good but you are starting to see the power of Weyland's controversial methods. Hostile takeovers and Elizabeth Mills are a good start to the techniques the rest of our consortium employ :)

I made a Blue Sun deck that looks extremely similar for almost the exact same reasons, and mine has been testing really well too.

The main difference with mine is I have 1x sea source and 3x scorch just to be able to have the flatline threat, but it's not what I consider the primary win condition.

I haven't been able to fit Lizzie Mills and have given her a lot of thought ... sounds like I'd best give her some more thought based on your results.

Try cutting your meat damage package kwind. Flatline threat only works against careless or bad players, if you're not NBN, and won't work at the top tables of any SC. Public support crisium and mills do way more for your deck slots.

I went 2-4 in a SC with a similar build. Made it through the cut (3rd) w/ my Leela just stomping face every game, but then lost to a Noise in the cut on 6/6 (25 players or so). All five games I was flooded (it was just funny after the first three times), so I was actually quite pleased. I'm basically just repeatedly stealing your builds, so thanks : ).

I ran the corporate war at the SC, but have given up and made the HT switch immediately thereafter. For whatever reason it seems to show up whenever you can least afford having it, and when you get it when it isn't a problem you don't care because you are already winning. The possibility of advancing out at 6 with the HTs is well worth the BP in my opinion, so, dear reader - do what bblum says.

Why only one Spiderweb but three Caduceus though? I feel like so many Caduceus and the two Assassin really exposes you to link runners, which does happen. And you get a better Faust tax out of Spiderweb when it really matters.

Also, what are you using for Orion extra sub? Just an ETR? I've been toying w/ Negotiator instead of a Caduceus as a random gross thing to fire. The degenerate Faust nonsense don't really like the card either, given that they rarely have the 4 to keep burning.

Anyway, keep posing these decks - it is much appreciated.

I'll definitely give a hybrid of our lists a try. Our ice suite is a bit different but the decks are otherwise very close.

Spiderweb is pretty vulnerable to parasite and not very stellar against noise. Caduceus is totally bonkers in the early game and almost everyone has 0 link anymore. It's still good against 1 link, 3 rez for 3 tax is the best rate on small ice since eli pre-lady.

I might just still have nexus-Kate PTSD w/ Caduceus then. I'll try 3 and see how it goes.

Now that Nexus Kate has ducked out of the meta for a bit, I'm hyped to get back on the Blue Sun train. The Hollywood Titan Rush was working wonders for me, but then that damn Whizzard deck blew up, and it's a nightmare keeping ICE in front of R&D against it. I was experimenting with different BS Glacier builds, but I don't need to any more. This looks fantastic =)

Yeah if someone's playing nexus kate you can pretty much scoop turn 1 and save time. But I think people are starting to realize that deck is too gimmicky and itself folds to other common stuff like RP. Sunny is tough too but you can sometimes rush out underneath her.

@bblum so far I'm 2-6 versus nexus kate... but both wins were at store champs haha. i've been playing blumcamp since mwl announced and it's been rewarding to see myself improving at piloting it.

lizzie mills def seems good versus anarch. i'm still baffled by your swap to second orion over second curtain. i'm still on curtain because i feel oversight orion is more vulnerable

Cool list. I'm basically in the same space with Glacier Gagarin but hadn't at all thought about the gear check ice and the Lizzie Mills. Really solid meta-calling. Will updated accordingly. Have my like.

Nice deck, personally I think the MWL has put Weyland in a much better place. Any thoughts on Datapike vs Enigma? I normally prefer the pike in Blue Sun for early game tempo hits so I'm intrigued by the swap.

My main question is why only 1 lizzy? If you want to blow up the anarch goodstuff only 1 seems like you are often not going to find her.

Everything else is super solid and as sad as it is, kill in weyland just seems like a waste atm

@frost-duty Executive Boot Camp is the reason. It's a second Lizzy, second Adonis, third Public Support, and 4th Jackson.

This is very close to what I am playing right now, well done!

@bblum forever bringing us the cutting-edge shit when it comes to the big W, can't <3 this deck enough. Couldn't agree more that meat damage in W is not the way to go right now, and I think this may be a unique time in the meta to take advantage of runners who are preparing for a field with 0% green decks.

Are there certain decks you try to rush against in particular to avoid their late game, or do you find that you can close out even against traditionally strong late-game runners? (big-rig hayley, Nexus Kate, etc.) I've floundered with this archetype in the past, and I think (in addition to always trying it at a bad time in the meta) it may be my tendency to want to rush with weyland rather than sit back and wait for the correct board-state; just wondering if you think there are times to go for the quick scores or if you tend to always play it slow and steady with these builds.

Second question, do you typically try to recur lizzie to clear her own bad pub, or do you think the ICE can support floating the BP?

Personally with my version of the deck, I always rush if my cards allow it - but some games you just don't get the right cards.

PREACH! Blue Sun is back baby. @bblum, reckon you'll play Surat city grid (http://bit.ly/24598o8) when it lands? Seems like fun but I can't make up my mind on whether the maths works out.

@whirrun I moved to enigma solely on the credit difference in rez cost. 3-cost ice let you protect your OAI on turn 1; 4-cost ice don't. Runner clicks are usually worth 2 credits or more these days anyway (though the last click run is obviously a downside).

@frost-duty I always want more metagame tech but you have to cut a card to fit it! I'd add a 2nd boot camp before adding a 2nd liz (e.g. if you changed hostiles back into corp war) but adding a 2nd liz for speed would be reasonable.

@voltorocks Big rig hayley nexus kate etc I definitely need to rush against. Noise too but not quite as much. I won't bother trying to ditch the BP against anarch but I would vs shaper/crim (and valencia too of course).

@CobraBubbles surat looks like the same problem as AIZ to me. Rezzing stuff in advance is pretty wimpy. Trying to make money off that looks like it would take at least 3 turns of the BS ability so at that point you should just play a launch campaign.

The more I think about it, I think the minimal scorch package still does something even against good players.

Still testing my vegan version, but after more reflection and a little testing, I think two huge benefits against the increasingly-popular cutlery anarchs are 1) a good player knows he can't drop below 4 cards, even with a plascrete out, handcuffing the play style of someone relying heavily on Faust in a not-insignificant way, and 2) it forces anarchs to hold IHW instead of using them, slowing them down many times.

For example, I've seen some of the Whizzards play forked on my archers, spending 7 cards + the cutlery itself (unless I didn't just OAI the archer) to break and destroy it. It's pretty difficult to do that and still have 4 cards left in hand - so it becomes an incredibly risky play to get rid of archer, a card that is going to give the runner an enormous headache for the whole game.

The runner also has to be really careful when he gets close to the bottom of his deck prior to levy because I've had worse might not save him anymore, or you might be able to take out the levy/SOT in one shot.

There's a lot of merit to using those slots on an extra ice, an interns, a Lizzie Mills and a boot camp too. Just need to keep testing to see which I like better, or if I can import some of those other cards while hanging onto the scorch package.

Also, I think for the better part of most games, anyone is forced to assume Blue Sun is trying to burn them, so you might get the benefit of caution even while playing vegan -- kind of like when you play against Fastro and have to respect that it might be Butcher until you see enough cards to know what you're up against.

Question: Don't you feel like the bad pub starts to hurt your trace ICE?

Yes; actually it's a bigger issue with tollbooth though. Almost everyone is playing a 0-link runner now and the traces are totally bonkers against them, BP or no (5 vs 4 for caduceus, 9 vs 8 for assassin), so the traces never actually land after faust hits the table. Against kate or andy I'd be more worried. It's a tradeoff with hostile, like I said.

got a few games in at lunch; feels really good. the anarch matchup seems really strong. It was surprising how little 1 BP ever seemed to matter - plus you rarely go above 1 since recurring lizzie (blew up all 3 wyldsides in one of my games) keeps herself in check.

re: the BP/trace situation, it's also worth mentioning that 1 BP only makes the first tracer cost the runner one less. For example, if assassin goes from 9 to 8, then the caduceus behind it is still a 5.

I'll have to do some more testing against some solid shaper players, but right now this is feeling a lot like a store champs deck for me.

I've been playing Blue Sun with a punitive kill threat since nationals last year and I've had a lot of success with it. Since MWL I've been trying a variant that retains the kill threat but generally as a deterrent, and aims to win by scoring. The ice package was very similar to yours and I had the same though about using Bootcamp and Lizzy to slow Wyldside down. Having seen this list, I've decided to go vegan, trading the Punitives for the rushable agenda suite.

The other main difference in my list is that I've cut Public Support and Archer because I feel like Public Support is hard to keep safe against Whizzard and actually contributes to agenda-flooding while you sit around waiting for it to score; I like to be a little more proactive and force the issue. Archer is a good card due to being resilient to D4v1d, but if they bite the bullet and Fork it with Faust the investment loss is huge (much worse than Knifing Curtain Wall, IMO) and I feel like if you cut one you have to cut the other.

Some cards that I am testing and I feel deserve consideration:

Off the Grid: in the place of Ash. I'm not trying to turn this deck into an OTG Mushin combo deck, I still think you should build a remote when you're running OTG. You play exactly the same way, you install the OTG as if it were an Ash, only you rez it once you see they have the tools in play to access the server. As is, with Ash as your remote protection, Anarchs can just blow up your remote server with Parasite and cutlery before going in to kill the Ash, which defeats the purpose of Ash forcing them to make several taxing runs through your remote ice. OTG forces them to have to make multiple taxing runs because they now have to contend with two separate servers, which stretches cutlery very thin. If they break down the HQ ice, then R&D is pretty safe AND you still have a remote to score from, which I feel is a better position to be in than having no remote. Plus, if they've found Wyldside but not Chronotype, the click tax alone can often be enough to push an important agenda through. Not bad for 4 extra credits and 4 less influence than Ash (not to mention you're more likely to have the opportunity to recoup your OTG-investment, whereas Ash often dies after his first use).

Sub Boost: Hear me out. Orions and Curtain Walls become un-D4v1dable when they've got an extra ETR Sub. Consequently, this also makes them MUCH more resilient to cutlery. I'm less keen on it being used to protect OAI-credits since then it's a three card combo (and you lose the Sub Boost after you pull it back to hand) but if you've built a nice big remote or HQ, you're probably going to keep that Orion hard-rezzed and then Sub Boost really does overtime against someone relying on D4v1d and cutlery to deal with your big ice. Forcing an extra card for Faust is also not nothing (a Curtain Wall with Sub Boost is 8 cards, making it pretty damn difficult to Knife). A niche use is if you're short on ice and sitting on 5 points, you can still make your Hives useful. Obviously far less useful against standard rigs so it's a meta-call.

Hourglass: shop around for ice that is hard for Faust, Parasite and D4v1d to deal with, and I guarantee this is the best you'll find after Hive and Archer. 5 credits to force only last-click runs on R&D is nice when you're facing Medium digging. (Fun combo: use a Sub Boost to make it a super Enigma!)

There's other cards which I'm less sold on but might be worth testing including Interrupt.0 (into Hive or Spiderweb it is hella-taxing) and Archived Memories in the place of Interns (for extra OAI fun and less obvious telegraphing).

consider this if you will: instead of playing your deck, why don't you play my deck, which is quite similar except that i dedicated a lot of slots and inf to a different win condition. i have been playing a deck like this one with some meat damage + off the grid thrown in to no notable success, and i think it might really improve your game

that being said, later this week i may test your deck with just a few changes, that is to say, i will not test your deck, but will test my deck after i arbitrarily rebuild it having seen yours

congrats on the gnk!

@josh01 Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you suggested having a totally different win condition. Even though I've been playing bootcamp glacier for over a year, in all that time I had simply not realized that your combo idea was possible. I'm definitely going to switch over to your build now. Simply brilliant.

Yeah, fuck me for wanting to start a conversation about card choices, right? I guess it's much easier to insult than it is to critique. You know Josh, I don't need to justify myself to you. People who know me know I'm a good player and a good deck-builder.

"Let me also say in advance... I'm not interested to hear how you built a "similar" deck that instead packs a scorch or punitive kill package or a off the grid or twins combo package or whatever." -- from the actual deck description.

And if you read my post you'll see that I was NOT talking about building an "Off the Grid combo package" deck, but that OTG should be compared to Ash to see their relative merits in a glacier deck.

Out of curiosity, why am I the only one being jumped one when like three other people above me have made comments about having a kill package and so on?

I'll consider OTG.

@Circadia pay no attention to these heartless Spikes

@Circadia I think josh's comment was perhaps just poorly-timed; he and I were joking on stimhack about the paragraph I wrote which triorph quoted. Josh was trolling me, not you.

That said, I think you should really try my list card for card before trying to tweak it. For example, the david resilience offered by sub boost seems attractive on paper but if you play a few games I think you will find yourself bouncing your 15-cost ice all the time to liquidate the credits. I can achieve the same resilience against silverware just by clicking to de-rez my ice (which doesn't cost a deckslot). And I don't see any situation in which hourglass could ever be better than ichi 1.0 (which I actually would consider over a tollbooth).

I know you might be resistant to "netdecking" but seriously, this deck is already very finely-tuned and has a lot of intricacies that are not immediately obvious without a handful of games playtested. Try it the way I've got it please.

Seconding bblums latest comment. You absolutely have to try playing a deck card for card as long as you can before making any changes, even if they seem obvious to you. This is how you learn new decks.

@thebigunit3000 we are not here to learn, we are here to play sea/scorch in every deck ~the oaktown gang~

I can think of a situation in which hourglass is better than Ichi - against a meta where one of the best runner decks regularly runs Datasucker and Mimic, but rarely packs Yog.

I would debate your point about always bouncing 15-cost ice - once my ice is 3 deep I don't want to be doing that as it's creating a significant click and credit tax on me to maintain board state.

I take your point about trying your list as is, which I fully intend to do. I just thought I'd chime in with what I've been finding effective against cutlery and Faust lists. I should say that I'm not inexperienced at bootcamp glaicer; I have tried several of your lists over this past year whilst playing my Punitive variant, because it made me be better at recognising scoring windows and consider different card choices.

@circadia I think you should really post your "updated and improved" version of @bblum 's list now I'm excited to see it succeed

I haven't built an updated and improved list :) I've just been playing with a similar list that I've adjusted to adopt the agenda suite that bblum is running.

@Circadia I don't get to play much anymore, so I haven't bothered logging in here in months, but I do still like lurking around the various ANR forums. While I was reading your comment, I had thought about logging in already just to say that I thought it was great and wished there was a lot more writing about real, specific, meat-and-potatoes game state + deckbuilding card interactions. While I feel like decklist testing may do the lion's share of the work for getting a really solid list put together, comments like yours do the lion's share of the value of a write-up of such a list.

There's a good chance given @bblum's testing that someone trying this list really is better off playing it card-for-card, but as far as the article itself goes, your comment contributed as much or more to the reading value as the deck list itself did.

There should be more comments like yours on the various ANR forums, not less. You stated your thoughts, your thoughts came from observation and not theorizing, and you justified them with in-game specifics. I don't think your post falls into the category of poor ones that @bblum intended to avoid. If I misconstrue his intentions, then I advise him to realign them, because this discussion is better for having your post in it.

@Lluluien, thanks, I appreciate that. I feel like some people are interpreting my post as "I can do bootcamp glacier than bblum" which is incorrect and patently untrue. Rather my intention was to add the discussion about what else could be considered to further what this deck is trying to achieve as a good solution to the recent spate of cutlery-Faust decks. Like, has any extensive testing been done with Sub Boost or Hourglass? If so I'd love to hear about it, but if not then I don't see the problem with me making a case for their inclusion.

This, with Chronos project and a second restructure is where I arrived after considerable theory-crafting. Glad to know I wasn't far off the mark. TY based @bblum.

@Circadia I really would like to see your list. It sounds at least similar to something I've been wanting to try and get going, but haven't had the time to build. It could be a good jumping off point for when I get around to building something similar.

I tried to make chronos project work but was never really satisfied with how it doesn't actually win the game on the spot, even if it does exile a ton of stuff. It's playable, but I don't think it's worth the liability of getting turntabled for your 2- (or god forbid 3-)pointers.

2nd restructure is good for rushing, just a meta call whether you need to be more proactive or reactive (i.e., do you need that deck slot for metagame tech instead). I think the latter right now.

@Saan. Sure thing Saan: netrunnerdb.com

Let me know what you think!

I love playing this deck but am so bad at it.

Can you give some updated matchup comments, Ben? Say vs. Dumblefork, ProcoKate, Noise, and maybe standard Leela? I know there aren't hard and fast rules, but some rough guides relative to the StimHack article (whose matchups are quite dated at this point) would be helpful, for sure!

Whiz: Click to de rez your big ice. You can't derez all of it obviously (too click- and install-cost-intensive) but you can e.g. leave a booth rezzed with an unrezzed assassin in front of it. Time your mills to trash wyldside after they've already discarded 1 (or 2 if you're lucky). Consider playing 2 CVS if they are really skilled and try to sucker farm you at the same time; if you can't fit the 2nd one, use interns on it.

Kate: IDK man, just play a normal game. Protect your OAI, just like in every single other matchup, although obviously not with assassin in this case. Adonis is priority #1. Protect your public support slightly more than usual, since never-advance atlas is your main way out of remote lock in late game. You can leave RD open for the first few turns, or even longer if you got a crisium.

Noise: Rush. Protect HQ before R&D; 1 turn of free lamprey is more devastating than 1 turn of free medium. Pay attention on when OAIing your archer on the remote can be good. Shoot wyld any chance you get since he's more vulnerable to not having it than whiz is.

Leela: Play slow & careful. In early game leela players tend to let you score in the remote, hoping to bounce and counterattack; prevent that by IAAing everything. Sometimes can even be good to score oaktown across 3 turns instead of 2. If they have gang sign, try to foil it by having a 7-card HQ when you score. Leela has no inevitability as long as you have access to jackson so try to save an interns for emergencies; as long as there's no emergency you're heavily favoured as long as you don't get greedy. In the end game, either wait for double ash so you can have safe RD, or score oaktown which is invulnerable to bounce.

General tips: Protect your pub support with an assassin or tollbooth in a new remote while adonising/OAIing at same time. Put your EBC naked and use it when the runner spends a click to check it. Shuffle back your interns any chance you get with jackson (#1 shuffle target apart from milled agendas).

How do you beat Quetzal running D4v1d, Faust, cutlery and E3? It seems like an ideal matchup against this deck.

@bblum: "I can achieve the same resilience against silverware just by clicking to de-rez my ice (which doesn't cost a deckslot)." ...and... "Whiz: Click to de rez your big ice. You can't derez all of it obviously (too click- and install-cost-intensive) but you can e.g. leave a booth rezzed with an unrezzed assassin in front of it. "

What do you mean by this? Using Blue Sun to bounce back to hand? Is there some card I'm not seeing that lets you click to derez stuff?

E3 quetz is a tough matchup, fortunately not a lot of people play it since it's too slow vs NEH. All barriers on one server all sentries on another. Cadu and toll are your MVPs. Don't go for archer obviously.

Click to derez just means getting a refund with BS. "Click" refers to the click (and sometimes credit) it takes to reinstall.

@bblum: thanks, got confused by the wording. damnit, i was salivating at the thought of some designer screwing up to let us derez adonis :-P

you could splash for a test ground Kappa

Won't Restructure be better as 2nd EBC with two Hostiles in deck?

Love to see you still working for the big green W.

I just wanted to hear the reasoning behind Public Support. Is it that strong to warrant a spot in this deck? Is it helping with some sweet spot for agenda points or just for (the one) archer?

I like an agenda point as much as the next guy, but I have been a little underwhelmed by Public Support in general. I have not tried it in this particular deck mind you.

And congrats on the gnk!

@Jander Quite possibly. I'll give it a shot.

@Warpstoned Public support is the glue that makes the agenda suite that much more powerful. Against shaper, scoring 5/3s through a remote lock is pretty impossible, so support gives you a way to drag them through a tollbooth 1 more time (and if they don't bite, you can threaten never-advance atlas and/or hostile for your last 2-4 points). Against anarch it gives you the flexibility for archer with no lost tempo as well.

IDK man, it's just always good to score points the runner can't steal. forum.stimhack.com

Thanks for the answer. I will try the deck out as is for sure. Just wanted to pick your brains on the matter.

The remote lock argument seem very reasonable. 2xInterns helps brute forcing that support through too if they insist on coming in and trashing it. Which you can do only so often through these ice :P

I'm curious on your thoughts for Mills over Corporate Town. Is Corporate Town just too hard to defend?

In my experience, Corporate Town these days is just too vulnerable and comes at too high of a cost. You can't rely on the trash cost to deter, what with imp and Wiz everywhere. And to those runners who really care, permanent lockout is basically impossible with Faust in every deck.

Also, you really just want to destroy some part of the pancakes lady, the earlier the better. With Mills, the lack of the added condition of needing an agenda scored is huge in timely stopping the pancake train (EBC to Mills and trash in one turn, while public support is ticking - I love it). And she gets rid of HT BP.

Obviously, bblum will speak for himself, but that's why I did it.

The agenda cost is too steep for matchups where it doesn't flat-out win the game on its own (of which there are some, but aren't common right now). Corptown slows down the game a LOT as you have to keep 2 remotes for a while; pancake faust decks can win without their resources during the additional time that takes.

@ijw473 @bblum

Thanks for the feedback! I've been running Corp Town for awhile in BS and liking it a lot, but this reasoning makes sense. Time to test Mills.

The reason to play this deck is Elizabeth Mills. Hayley is on Aesop's Pawnshop, Anarch is unanimously at Wyldside, and Noise is on both. And there's always that one guy who brings cheese Valencia to the event. Wise use of Lizzie can win games and put people on huge tilt.

The Orions and 3x (!!) Assassin are a brilliant swap for the Crouton Walls and is obviously tuned from experience. Forcing a per turn rez of the Curtain was commonplace for Runners.

Everything here feels good. Sometimes I loathe having 3x Caduceus, and sometimes that second Support feels dead, but I sure as hell value those first copies. Public Support can trigger some players into making some really dumb moves too.

re: public support, it's so, so strong in a deck with 2x interns. even whizzard hates running the scoring server only to have to do it again and again for no profit.

@hi_impact good insight on caduceus; after testing I was trying to find some way to trim them down but whatever I tried ended up feeling worse. the key of having 3x cadueus is making sure you see your first one early, when it really shines. after that they're dead weight or fork bait, but whatever, if you taxed them when it counted.

going back to 3x.

You must be tired of hearing this, but I've been playing a similar deck with a Scorch package! Woo!

You're probably right that it's just not good enough at top tables though. I had the pleasure of facing Nordic National Champion Gary B. at a GNK here in the UK recently; he was playing Val and I made the (obvious, in hindsight) mistake of Midseasoning for most of my money and double Scorching. I've Had Worse is a good card. I never recovered from the credit swing. I feel like I'm betraying my country, but I suspect that the kill will have to go.

Anyway, my main questions is why the two Crisiums? I've gradually cut down from two to zero over the past month or so. None might be too few, but I feel like you can generally survive Siphon without their help, and the only times I've been successfully Apocalypsed were when I made the mistake of dropping too low on credits to rez central ICE (either from not bouncing, or from Midseasons...). Personally, I'm tempted to try this list -1 Crisium and +1 Cyberdex.

I haven't played the Whizzard Cutlery deck myself, but the consensus sounds like having the early Wyldside is what really kicks the deck into high gear. Liz Mills seems like a great counter to that.

I'll have to try the Adonis + Interns out. Has anyone tried Eliza's Toybox in this slot? It can print some serious money, although it does require a dedicated turn to use it.

@ouroborosglyx I find 2 crisiums really important for crushing jank in the early rounds of swiss. On one hand it's easy to play around siphon/vamp by making an HQ tower, but on the other wouldn't you rather have that ice for your remote? It also buys a lot of breathing room against skilled shaper players regarding indexing and legwork. You could maybe shave 1 crisium for another CVS in a very anarch-heavy meta but I wouldn't ever cut the last one.

@Walker Net Ranger I tried Eliza's back in lunar when all this first came out. Monopolizing your turn is too high a cost when playing against anarchs, where you usually need to spend at least one click reacting to medium or lamprey threats. It's only good against criminal, where making tons of money is the only thing that matters, but that's win-more since you should crush those matchups without Eliza's help.

Wish I would have seen this list before Sunday, prob wouldn't have helped much though. I seem to always slam into a destroyer on your archives. Thought I was being cute splashing a sharpshooter then face plant into Orion, and Elezabeth was just brutal 2 wyldeside snipes. Great deck

I have a store champ Saturday in Virginia, seriously thinking about running this even though I've never run bluesun before.

Thanks for the feedback @bblum! Another question, do you find a Janus 1.0 or Inazuma to be good for punishing the face-checking as well? It seems a good way to force a sub-optimal use of the runner clicks and/or D4v1d counters when they're trying to Cut on whatever is behind. I know influence is a concern though.

The influence is pretty much fixed in stone. The only thing I would consider cutting a tollbooth for is an ichi.

testing -1 booth +1 ichi right now online and tonight in my local legue. so far feels really good; ichi is a mean ass ice that (bonus) provides a great target for orion's middle subroutine when they're just facechecking.

Speaking of ichi. Vikram could be an interesting option. Brain damage is good against faust and it is arguably more taxing for 1c more. Booth is still an generic champion of course.

as you know i've been playing this a lot since mwl announcement but i'm still on an older version. still don't understand the second orion over the second curtain. i find the curtains helping immensely versus kate, making it a pretty even MU that can go either way. i also haven't struggled immensely versus anarchs; i slotted a second CVS awhile ago and have been 100% happy with it. the biggest trouble I think is early sucker pressure; if you can seal off centrals and make acquiring sucker tokens costly for faust rigs, i generally find i can survive the cutlery and win with ash. mills seems durdly in theory to me, but it's unfair bc i've never actually tried her or this new build. my older one has yet to fail me so i'm still on it. i'm also still on changeling bc while not great v faust it still wins me games versus shapers and criminals from time to time

I was deck testing your build yesterday and of course the Maxx player I run up against isn't using Wyldside and he DDoSes me a bunch. Le sigh.

To be fair I am still trying to get my Blue Sun legs under me and I am sure I made a metric crap ton of play mistakes in that match up... Also, not getting Crisium Grid fast enough when Eater/Keyhole came out in turn 3 didn't help either. Did I mention the deck was packing Account Siphon. Double le sigh.

@bblum If you have Mills early and they pull out Wyldside, will you burn it? Or do you try to wait for BP from Hostile or for them to trash another Wyldside?

if it's immediately, like turn 2, I'll burn it (they have 2 more wylds, I have 2 interns, odds are good for me). if it's early midgame, I'll probably wait for them to discard their 2nd wyldside before blowing up the first.

@bblum Love this build and look forward to trying it out. Could you explain why you went for Enigma over Datapike?

Protect OAI on turn 1

Did you do any testing with Ashigaru?

What 3 influence would you cut for it?

Exactly haha. Probably both Tollbooths and Adonis for two Ashigaru and Launch Campaign. But Launch can only be out for two turns before needing to be bounced, so that's another problem in addition to one fewer credits per proc.

tollbooth is way better than ashigaru

@dormio ahhhh! kill this idea with fire! number 1, tollbooth is better. number 2, adonis is the beating heart of this deck, and imo the main reason to play this build.number 3, weyland has the most robust selection of "taxing-multi-sub barriers in the game, but has the worst code gates by a distant margin.

I'm actually a pretty big fan of ashigaru and I think it's pretty underrated in general, but if there's one archetype in the entire game that doesn't need it it'd be this one.

while we're on the subject of replacing tollbooth, I did quite a bit of testing with ichi 1.0 at @bblum's suggestion, but I have to say in general I'm finding it not super strong. ichi is a great card, but it's also everywhere right now and runners seem more ready for it - booth on the other hand feels extra-strong given that this archetype unduly taxes its main enemy (d4)

@dormio I've tried Ashigaru in my own, admittedly different, build than this one, but I think the importance of having at least about half of your ICE have a painful facecheck cannot be under-stated. Really liking the 2x Orion here for this reason.

With this in mind, I find Heimdall 2.0 generally a lot better than Ashigaru for the times when it forces a runner to spend two clicks and end the run. I would also like to point out that it makes a (slightly) better option with OAI than Ashigaru. And finally, Ashigaru can really shoot you in the foot on those games that you find rushing to be your best option. The problem can be compounded with Ashigaru and Hive in the same deck sometimes as well.

I played this several times against the Whizzard netrunnerdb.com deck today because my friend and I think that's currently the deck which must be beaten.

With the caveat that I'm rusty and a Blue Sun novice, this deck seemed to have a lot of problems with this matchup, in spite of the assertion that Elizabeth Mills is a solution to it. I discuss some alternative card choices I might make below, but that is more to highlight my observations than it is to say I would be improving the deck.

The deck doesn't seem to have many ways to generate money in comparison to the money it needs to stabilize 3 central servers and a remote due to its high rez cost ICE. The Oversight AI + Blue Sun: Powering the Future trick is obviously great for this, but I was only able to land very early ones because the combination is so vulnerable to D4v1d.

Centrals being hard to stabilize against Datasucker exacerbates the problem with broken Oversight AI, Spooned, and Forked, and that in turn feeds back into the money problem because if you're losing an ICE to cutlery that costs 8-15 instead of 6-8, it hurts you a lot worse.

The combination of all the related problems was the same every game. The ICE costs too much to be able to stop Datasucker early enough. Datasucker in combination with bad publicity makes Tollbooth a relatively trival break for Faust compared to its rez cost. D4v1d and/or Datasucker+Mimic and/or Faust are all capable of wrecking an Orion, and it's nearly impossible to guard Orion from the cutlery since any of them work against it. The small installs are hard to keep from getting chewed up by Parasite because it's hard to draw enough of them, due to a disproportionately large number of the ICE in this deck having high rez cost.

Based on all this, I actually completely agree with @Circadia's assessment of Off the Grid versus Ash 2X3ZB9CY. I feel like most of the times I felt unsafe in the remote was due to being unable to withstand the tempo loss of losing an expensive piece of ICE; Ash can't help in that situation anyway. I need a piece of HQ ICE rezzed anyway, if for no other reason in this matchup than to dissuade free Datasucker charges. Adding the nuisance at the front end of the two-run process to eliminate OTG is good too, because it makes the runner more nervous about running into unknown ICE on the remote if his resources are partially depleted.

I think that furthermore, if I continue trying to play this deck, I will be switching the Restructure and 1 Caduceus for 2 Rainbow. @bblum has said several times that he prefers Enigma over Datapike because it can protect OAI, but I think against the evil Faust/cutlery decks, I'm much more concerned about protecting a for-realz rezzed expensive ICE, ESPECIALLY Orion. Rainbow in front of Orion is ideal for this; it's comparatively hard for Parasite to chew, it has all common ICE subtypes so it blocks any cutlery just like Orion dies to any cutlery, and it has an "End the Run" routine, so it HAS to be broken in order to get to Orion, as opposed to something like just letting the "Gain 3 credits" routine fire on Caduceus. If Mimic isn't installed, it doesn't matter that any "normal" icebreaker can break it, because the Faust doesn't want to use a "normal" breaker anyway. If it is installed, it's still a wash on Datasucker runs against it, so it's plenty fine at the central server deceleration I mentioned earlier. All of this AND it's cheap. I've never liked Rainbow, but it's seriously perfect for everything I didn't like about this ICE suite in this matchup. I feel strongly enough about this particular observation that if I run this matchup again, I'll be testing this change for myself no matter what anyone else has to say about it ;)

Moving off from things I can very distinctly describe and on to ones that I just have more of a "feeling" about:

• Elizabeth Mills felt expensive to use for murdering Wyldside when the primary method of getting her in play was Executive Boot Camp and Interns. That's a lot of clicks for the extra install/double, installing Mills, and clicking again to trash. The deck feels pretty click-intensive already from juggling ICE.

• I feel like I would've welcomed 1 more Adonis Campaign for similar reasons, even if I had to give up 1 Jackson Howard, and I would have the influence for this with the Off the Grid versus Ash 2X3ZB9CY switch if I did that. In fact, I'd have extra that I'm still not sure what to do with because the rest of the card choices that I haven't reconsidered yet seem pretty non-negotiable.

• I felt more joy at finding Cyberdex Virus Suite than I felt when drawing any other card, but I'm not sure what you cut to get another one. I don't really feel like the recursion options fit this either since the benefit you're buying by getting ahold of the card is saving yourself clicks.

Left one off of the end: in spite of the problems it has with the cutlery, Orion definitely feels like a centerpiece of this deck to me, even after just a handful of games. If the state-of-the-art for this deck prior to this used Curtain Wall instead, then this list definitely pushes the state-of-the-art up a notch or two.

I typically prefer curtain wall to Orion because I see a lot of stealth decks, and Orion is just too easy for stealth shapers to walk through -- and it's vulnerable to all three types of cutlery.

That said, Orion makes a huge amount of sense from the perspective of combating Dumblefork decks and the like. That is, the runner will make a run to force you to rez huge ice. If it's something like curtain wall, the runner will just bounce off, install a D4v1d, then come back with a knifed and make you lose the wall and the 14 credits unless you preemptively hid the wall behind something else to disrupt its destruction. Orion poses a different problem because the runner can't just bounce off. He or she has to either lose 1-2 programs, or deal with it before coming back with cutlery. That can be very disruptive... and dealing with it means he probably won't have the ammo to come back immediately to finish it off. If you can snipe a faust and a medium or datasucker, it takes a little bit of the burn out of losing Orion.

I've been toying with a hybrid version of my existing Blue Sun deck and some of bblum's card choices and have been having huge success against all types of anarchist decks.

I'd be interested to see how he pilots it because I tend to agree it needs a little more economy and replaced the public supports with restructures (Mind you, I'm a huge fan of public support as a lover of Gagarin).

I also put blacklist in as a one-of because I can go and get it with executive boot camp whenever I want, and there are a lot of times where dropping it in the scoring server and rezzing just ends the game.

I just wanted to chip in that I took home a (small) SC today with a slightly modded version of this deck. It went 4-0 the day, against 2xWhizz, Jesminder and Noise.

I ran - 1 Crisium, -2 Tollbooth, +1 CVS, +2 Vikram.

The reasoning was I expected a heavy anarch meta (which it was) and Tollbooth has been utter garbage against cutlery. Vikram could have been ichi I guess, but I wanted to try out Vikram and it was great. Especially on rnd, and doubly so when not the innermost ice.

Thanks for the inspiration @bblum! It felt great playing something else than yellow for a change.

I will say though, that this deck is not an easy "pick up and play" deck. There is a lot of room for mistakes regarding scoring windows, ice positioning and click management due to the Blue Sun ability. So don't disregard it if it doesn't give easy wins right off the bat.

@bblum Please don't tell people to Derez their ICE without a card effect like Testing Grounds. That's not nice! :P

@Lluluien Rainbow does make some sense, but early game caduceus is just way too important to cut down on. I would consider cutting the spiderweb for a rainbow but nothing else. If you are having trouble with cutlery I suggest that you're not bouncing your 7+-cost ice enough. I try to never leave an assassin or toll rezzed & outermost, instead derezzing it in the early game, or putting another punishing face check outside of it in the midgame. That way they have to pay through 2 assassins/tolls in order to cutlery 1 of them. As for orion I'm pretty sure I never leave that guy rezzed under any circumstances (barring having 40+ additional credits).

In this hostile build, I cut the 2nd public support for the 2nd CVS. 3 1-pointers is enough and the 2nd CVS is definitely necessary. If playing corp war, 2nd public support fills the 10th agenda deckslot (which used to be the 2nd EBC).

@Warpstoned Nice job! I saw a vikram in a blue sun kill deck at my SC before and it seems pretty ok, although clickable ice in a deck with no caprice seems kinda meh. Thought it was 3 inf but it's actually 2 so maybe I'll test 1 toll 1 vik.

Kinda bummed this made deck-of-the-week, was really hoping I could bring it to my local SC next week as surprise tech....

grats on the win @Warpstoned, no matter the size - Virkam is a nice splash, definitely solid if you're seeing really really high percentages of the new cutlery flavor anarchs (and at 6 credits feels like a bargain vs. tollbooth) where the best ice are ones like orion - they must be broken when rezzed (faust no likee brain damage) but are too taxing to be easy to break twice in the same turn.

That said if the turbo-rig shapers show up to play vikram loses a lot of his teeth, either to link, cash, or just straight ignoring subs if it's a glory run.

Gonna definitely try a 1/1 split myself - seems like a potentially really strong call (1 PS or crisium for 1 CVS is also a no-brainer right now - CVS can practically win the game if they're out of d4 tokens and orion is still in play)

Ran into this deck yesterday at a store champs in Virginia.

I've been tweaking a surprisingly similar deck out of Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon and was thinking of making the switch to Bluesun.

I've had really good results with Mumba Temple and The Root to rez those costly ice. It plays asset spam and obviously makes checking/trashing unprotected remotes painful.

Does anyone think paying for those big ice with recurring credits would be worth dropping OAI? Orion/Curtain wall rez on first turn is probably the strongest play in the game but those recurring credits are almost always good. I've had some success with tech startup grabbing the pieces and tool-boxing for certain IDs (Hello, Hostile Infrastructure).

Definitely giving this a try.

I don't know your exact list, but I've also played a lot of gagarin in the last few months and I think I know the type of deck you're talking about. my 2c would be: while it might be good to switch to blue sun (it's the Kate of weyland: so good almost everything is made better by it) I think you're talking about a totally different archetype from the one presented here. This deck intends to use operations and bouncing transitory assets repeatedly to build up huge cash reserves, rather than developing a large horizontal presence. This works largely because you don't have to invent in your asset until the split second before it pays off - if the runner trashes it, it's them who has spent a bunch a resources getting to it.

for the root or even mumba to work the same way, you need to rez ice, then protect the asset until the end of the runner turn, then bounce the asset, and only on the next turn can you bounce the ice you rezzed for a net profit. adonis or launch, by comparison, can simply make 3/2 cr. per turn without ever putting "investment" credits at risk, and can sit safely in your most expensive scoring remote.

TLDR; I don't think the setup you're talking about is without merit, and it might even be improved by blue sun (or not - I like gagarin a lot when my locals don't have whizzard sleeved up), but it is definitely fundamentally different (and imo currently competitively weaker than) the deck being presented here.

There was that time I took a game off you once in J.Net, though!

This deck is still scary. I've seen variations of this and it's getting as intimidating as seeing RP hit the table for me.

Ran this deck at a store champs yesterday (around 45 people), 4-1 through swiss (wins: Faust-Max, Waltz Leela, DD/Faust Leela, some anarch; loss: Panchatantra-Kate and brutal pulls) and 0-1 in eliminations (Dumblefork shell in Maxx + my exhaustion). 4th/4th.

After a fair amount of testing the last week, the SC, and these comments, I have a few thoughts. A lot of these are directed towards folks who have played iterations of this deck before. I'll phrase my comments as Declarations of Good Playing, but only because it is easier for me to write that way when drunk. I welcome a great deal of pushback.

1. First, assume all Anarch decks right now are ice destruction decks. Second, against ice destruction decks, in particular Dumblefork, do not run Public Support through your main scoring server. "But I have no agendas in hand so why not just let it tick through my Fortress of Sadness?" No, stop it. The usual loltax you get for making runners go through your scoring server will open you up to getting hammered w/ your big ice rezzed. I'm seeing good runners basically setting themselves up to make a run click one or two on Public-Support-with-one-counter turn, just praying that you rez that Orion. Dumpt it in your where-is-my-Adonis-server? protected by a Tollbooth (read: Enigma, because you're smart against ice destroyers) server if you must put it somewhere.
2. First, assume all Anarch decks right now are ice destruction decks. Second, against ice destruction decks don't put big ice on R&D that you think would be fun to rez any click other than click four. Don't be disappointed when no one runs click four.
3. Ignore 1-2 only if you check archives and see three of every piece of silverware that exists or you have determined it to be literally impossible to break it twice given the timing of the run. Your Orion draws cutlery like Atlas draws random HQ accesses. (This basically lost me the elimination game.)
4. Given 1-3, and the sadness that it creates, I'm... oh god, shot, really thinking of running... okay, here it goes: Rainbow. I'm going to try dumping Spiderweb and Meru-#*&$-this-card, run 2x Rainbow, and see how it goes. I am just assuming everyone will have a Corroder out, always, so what difference does it make? Yes, fine, two credits for Meru. Whatever. This isn't exactly a gear-checking suite anyway. The sadness-greatness that a no-rez then faceplant into Orion, followed by a cutlery-Rainbow rez, would be beautiful. I wouldn't drop Caduceus or Restructure, however (someone said that above). The Meru drop is probably dumb, but seriously, I irrationally dislike that card and have been looking for a reason to drop it for months.
5. All of the virus nonsense going around will make you want to go +1 CVS, -1 Cris Grid. As bblum pointed out above, if your meta is so destruction-Dumblefork heavy that such a change makes sense, then go -1 Public Support. Cris is our friend.

I'm still not entirely sold on +1 Orion / -1 Curtain, but I'll keep at it and be smarter w/ the rez timing. Anyway, it is a great deck but, thankfully, a bit hard to play. So I hope everyone who is checking it out on the front page tries it out, gets frustrated, and dumps it, because my Leela really does not want to see it everywhere.

This doesnt really involve this deck, but im curious about the kate build, what all does that entail?

"Rez curtain wall." "Is that an AP curtain wall? Oh it is. Deus Ex. Next." Ad infinitum. Sharpshooter too. Targeted runs build mostly (remote hammers and makers runs). It's annoying to play against with this deck.

``@voltorocks` Thanks! It's not as easy as swapping an ID and shuffling economy. I'm trying to get them to run more servers.

@bblum Great deck! I made something similar for a store champ 2 weeks ago and got 6th. There was a lot of fear or Scorch that helped me early. I love the hives. Glad I'm not the only one who saw the early and mid game benefit they give to blue sun. I wish I had thought of boot camp! That would have helped. I want to ask tho, how often does Orion die? My issue is it dies to early D4v1d and faerie in crim. So I decided to stick with Curtain wall and if they want to break it, it's going to cost them. Also, the most recent Store champ I played in where I went with Scorch, I won half my games with Scorch before and after the swiss. Do you feel scorch games aren't that effective or is it a preference to want to score out?

I can't speak to @bblum's thoughts, but I've been playing his bootcamp glacier decks prtty much card-for-card since last years regionals season (and this version quite a bit recently) so I can speak to my own experience with the deck:

Orion does work. the secret to its power is keeping it unrezzed at all times. because of the trash subroutine, it pretty much must be broken when you face check it, meaning that anarachs will have to break it twice in 1 turn to cutlery it. It's better not to think of d4 as "beating" orion, more that Orion Taxes d4 heavily as even a facecheck bounce will cost at least one token, and a break will empty it.

faerie sucks when it's a critical run and you're relying solely on orion, but this deck has plenty of ways to tax those as well so the key is forcing them to blow these tools on runs that won't win the game for them.

Re: scorch: my feelings mirror @bblums deck description, I think scorch out of Weyland generally only kills bad/unprepared players (largely because it is incredibly slow and lacks the variety of tagging tools yellow has access to), and the deck is good enough to beat bad players without it. Against decent players, it's 4+ cards and at least 2 influence that's just dead weight, which is bad news for a deck trying to play a tight game of resource attrition and narrow scoring windows.

Couldn't have put it better myself @voltorocks

I played a hybrid version of this and the vikram list last night, going 2-1. I had -1 public support, -1 tollbooth, -2 enigma, +1 CVS, +1 Vikram 1.0, +2 Rainbow

First was against a RegAss Val deck. Lizzie Mills was MVP here. Shutting off the blackmails were a huge hindrance to her. An early score of the public sympathy turned on the archer. From there it was just advancing my board state until I found agendas.

Second was against a Hailey deck using Atman, shrike, study guide, courier and multi threaders. This was really though because eventually I couldn't keep her out of R&D (Atman at 5, study guide at 8). Thankfully, by the time she was fully set up I had scored 5 points and just had to keep digging with Jackson until I found my last two points. Was able to fake it out as Adonis, which I had been recurring each turn for about 10 turns behind a tollbooth my opponent ignored. I put the Atlas in the server while she decimated R&D and went to 6 points. I won 7-6.

Last game and the loss was to noise and variance. He trashed a Jackson and milled another plus an interns. I was unable to find another copy of either until very late in the game, got flooded, eight points got milled into archives when he was already on 4 (thankfully by this time I had 2 Caduceus on R&D that was giving him trouble and had found my last Jackson). I did get to blow up wyldsides twice with Lizzie making him work for the win. I was able to claw back up to 5 points before losing with 8 cards left in the deck.

Thank you for this awesome deck, bblum! I won card yesterday's SC with your deck card for card going 3-1 and 4-0 with Kate. I beat 2 Noises and a Whizzard and lost to a Whizzard with agenda flood and a huge mistake of mine, your deck is awesome, I just need to learn to pilot it even better. Kudos and Weyland4lyfe

Orion drew quite a few chuckles from bystanders but my opponent wasn't chuckling, that's for sure :)

@Raynor My pleasure, well played!

Brought this deck to my local SC - while I didn't place that well (thanks runner) Bootcamp crushed all day, basically only losing to high variance accesses.

I ran the list as published but with -1 Tollbooth +1 Vikram 1.0 and both cards felt really great all day.

Game 1 V nexus Kate (who made the cut): Early rush pressure slowed their setup significantly, closed out by going deep on RnD (orion into curtain wall - OAI was super easy to land as nexus can't "break" it) and slipping atlases out the vikram+tollbooth atlas remote.

Game 2 v Stealth Kate (also made the cut): went to 5 points easily and had the closers in hand/on board, but an all-in Makers eye that emptied 2 full ghost runners picked off 6 points (the runners only other access all game was a 1-in-5 HT steal from HQ. what are you gonna do, sometimes that shit happens.

Game 3 v DLR valencia: turn 1 Lizzie sets the tone for the game. I easily score a 3 token atlas which lets me train out long before they can get setup (plus he never trashed lizzie. probably hoping i'd give him his BP back - so i popped her to trash wyldside then interns her to turn the blackmail back off :(

game 4 vs The Whizz: gave up on attacking adonis, which allowed me to get hella rich. lost an Orion to a knifed (after two misfires - thanks blue sun!) only to rez a curtain wall the hard way the very next turn. went down 5-2 on RnD and one failed remote rush, but then he ran out of d4s and I won while he dug for levy (the hard way ofc - lizzie says no wyldsides allowed)

errnyways, just wanted to gush again about the deck. this is by far the strongest non-yellow I've played since the MWL hit - gonna definitely keep playing it and learning the rhythm (which is so crucial to playing the deck well), It seems like the archetype has a lot to offer going forward.

@bblum I've found myself playing a similar Blue Sun deck, but as I look at yours I find myself being convinced your card choices are better. I currently run 2x caprice, 2x Curtain Wall, and 3x Assassin instead of your 2x Ash, 1x Curtain Wall, 2x Assassin, and 2x Tollbooth. Do you mind telling me what you think about such a switch?

I think 1 caprice, 1 ash, and 1 toll could be good. I wouldn't go down to 0 toll, since it's so important for beating shapers, but I get where you're coming from with caprice. It's just that ash is usually good enough when the server is orion/toll/assassin.

idk how much I like caprice. in a vacuum, she's a flat upgrade to ash, but in practice I find myself in many games with this deck where ash is guaranteeing a score (when you are suer rich, as they cannot afford to run twice or beat the trace) and caprice would just offer 2/3 protection. That said, drawing her along with ash and using her as a central defender is a very enticing (if unlikely) prospect...

I also say ditto to not going below 1 tollbooth. It's easy to forget that there are still a lot of shapers out there that run on money, not cards, and tollbooth is still the champ in that department.

Would you change anything with the Political Operative splashed heavily in decks nowadays?

I would play a different deck.