TAstro (1st Place, Undefeated, Black Moon Games SC)

DarlingSensei 93

This is the latest iteration of the "glass shop" archetype. I prefer shorter names so I call it TAstro on account of the game plan of ending with an astro train or a traffic accident.

Most of the description can be found on the original glass shop deck, but I'll go through some of my thoughts and choices:

Assets/Upgrades

Maximum pads and jacksons are standard. Daily business show did work all day. It lets you shave an ice and a 24/7 while maintaining consistency. Most people will trash pad, but not DBS.

Shattered remains gives you a solid way to deal with plascrete without recycling your kill combo twice. On match point it looks like a must run Explode-a-palooza and with an astro counter it can turn a committed access into a dead plascrete.

Cyberdex Virus Suite is there as the inverse of shattered remains to push the astro train or a key breaking news through a clot. It also protects vs. medium digs and imp attacks.

Ice

I tried turnpike over the 3rd data raven and liked it. Early game it taxes for 3 credits and a click while forcing a mimic that struggles to break every other sentry. Data raven is amazing but I found that rezzing multiples slowed me down much more than the runner. As has been said before, archangel is much better in HQ or R&D than installed. The only exception I've found is to make a strong remote against a D4vidless runner.

Match ups

Anarch

By far the most popular faction in our area. As anarchs continue towards resource economy the tagging ice serves to slow them down enough to get setup. Most of the ice is annoying to faust. I've not seen much clot out of anarch so pressuring with scoring is a good start. The key to this matchup is to get a sense for when they've had worse. You often have to go in Traffic Accident first and hope to dodge the protection.

Shaper

Shapers often pack hate for both of your win conditions, but they're hard pressed to have both online at any given time. Tax them with early SanSans behind ice to get them to blow SMC on a breaker and go low on money. Try to manipulate their resources towards stopping either scoring or flatline and open a window to close the game via the route they didn't guard.

Criminal

Oh team blue how you have fallen. They don't have easy access to a counter for either of your plans. They don't draw enough to find plascerete on time and they have no answer to a scored astro. Be very wary of enabling security testing/bank job with too many open remotes. Use your SanSans carefully to stuff siphons. Tagging ice on HQ limits their flexibility with siphons to click one only.

I am very much enjoying this archetype's ability to threaten two viable win conditions.

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