Rich Retiree — Hypercube Draft Runner

Hypercube draft deck. Iain Stirling: Retired Spook was the ID.

I had terrible IDs to choose from, thus Iain, but I still built a wildly powerful deck, I thought it was the strongest one I saw at the draft but then I went 2-2 so what do I know. Freedom was my only other playable ID but I didn't see a lot of viruses so I'm very glad I didn't try hard to make him work. Instead, I built a drip economy control deck.

My pack-1-pick-1 was Şifr over Paperclip, my next two picks were Amina & Corroder (which I was elated to get after passing clippy, though I did get Inti later so I would've been fine) but then I was passed Yog.0 which sort of nullified the Amina pick. I played one copy so I would have an answer for multiple 4+ strength code gates on the same server though I also had Logic Bomb just for mythic ICE/flexibility.

I remember the first 2 packs being a bunch of utility but very little draw and money. I awkwardly wanted to draft some link because I had Underworld Contacts then was immediately passed The Archivist and a pack or two later Rabbit Hole which made me able to draft Office Supplies and White Hat since I already wanted to be Iain.

So with a solid foundation plus DDM win condition I focused on more money/draw for the final pack and was suddenly gifted the best economy I've ever drafted. I already had Data Folding plus Underworld but was passed Temüjin Contract (Siphon & Faust were also in this pack, @TyrellCorp took Siphon which is probably correct), then used a special card to add a new pack to the pool which gave me a pick-1 Bloo Moose (this pack, incidentally, also had Virus Breeding Ground which made me feel great about not trying to play Freedom). I grabbed the neutral cantrips because I had no draw.

I also played 3x Wal-Mart Run, a Roseville cycle card. It's a 0-cost neutral run event that reads: "Make a run. If successful, you may look at the top five cards of your stack & install a resource card from among them, ignoring all costs. Shuffle your stack." I think this card is extremely powerful—it's dirty laundry value but even better click compression (you get a run, access, draw, & install) with the high roll potential of hitting Utopia Shard.

Hypercube rules ignore "limit 1 per deck" and I should've played more copies of Utopia Shard. I dropped the Rabbit Hole/Office Supplies package, and Underworld with it, because my economy was already so great. In fact, my runner was so good I started pre-emptively hate drafting all the net damage prevention cards in anticipation of the corp draft. I'm not sure if Office Supplies plus link is better than all the cantrips—my thought was that it basically wastes a bunch of deck slots on bad, slow setup cards whereas the cantrips are always OK no matter the stage of the game.

In the actual games, I played a fairly long game against a many-agenda Sportsmetal deck featuring Breaking News into High-Profile target but no answer for Aaron Marrón. Then I lost on stream to a NEXT/Grail Palana because my breaker suite was slow to come together, a barrier stuffed my first DDM, and I fell behind enough that I felt like I had to contest an obvious Marcus Batty remote then died to NEXT Gold. In retrospect, I should've let the agenda score go and focused on R&D lock, I think the game was very winnable I just threw it away. Then I lost to @Insanit's ETF where my his deck was lightning quick with only gear check ICE, I just didn't find breakers or Logic Bomb in time to contest. Finally, I played a Tennin that was on Trick of Light shenanigans but I managed to do the usual fall behind early, build an unbeatable board state, win in the late game.

I cube drafted a Gang Sign Noise deck that I also thought was unbeatable but this is the maybe the best a runner has ever come out for me, despite the record. 10-10 would draft again. I think I misbuilt it a little (2nd Kati is super unnecessary, only 1 Utopia Shard is wrong) but my drafting was on point for sure.