[STARTUP] Weyland Hand Trick (with full guide)

bassmanbigc 7

This deck came to me in the shower.

What's good in Startup? Fast advance? 40 card decks? Built to Last? 'blank' 3/2 agendas? 3/1 Agendas? Glacier? Advanceable ice? Banned cards? Spending 3 influence on Trick of Light when Seamless Launch Exists?

Wait, what?

While some of those things are more competitive than others on their own; this deck brings it all together for some cool, off meta play that I think is pretty strong in the format.

How to win with this deck:

Put simply: Find a 3/2, Find a Trick of Light, Have one credit, Repeat. There of course is a bit more setup involved. Mostly having two advancements on a single piece of ice and not losing any of your combo pieces before you can use them - especially by getting the agendas stolen.

So seal up HQ and R&D and advance the ice to your hearts content. Bukhgalter or Odore deal with sentries cheaply? Well what about 2 Colossus on R&D with 3 advancements each? Cleaver or Corroder and some Leech counters get though every barrier for pennies? How about a 10 strength 3 subroutine Pharos? or even a 5 strength 1* subroutine Akhet that gives you money and more advancements for free? Unity or Buzzsaw getting you down? Ehh, the code gates are pretty lackluster here but a nice face check, Botulus waste/Inside Job waste.

So cool, advanceable ice, that seems very click and credit intensive. But the OP Cayambe Grid can help us here and also adds some security with the pay or end the run ability. Early face checks on Akhet can also be really nice for your first Trick of Light. You also have the nice Weyland Consortium: Built to Last ability to help at times.

You've also got Spin Doctor to help draw the combos and to shuffle back tricks or any agendas you need to throw out.

How To Have a Bad Time:

Get all your Trick of Lights and/or Spin Doctors Imped - I added a single Archived Memories to attempt to help here. It can also pull a Trick of Light or even an agenda from archives if you really needed it.

Clot/Simulchip - I guess you just have to stall and purge a few turns. Maybe you can build a remote if its early but its a tall ask to win with the combo on the table. Luckily not many people are running it because of virus hate and seamless.

This being said, I think René "Loup" Arcemont: Party Animal or other Imp heavy anarch will be your toughest matchup.

Early multi access - Not much you can do here. You could argue endlessly if Icing R&D is better than leaving a Hostile Takeover in your hand rather than scoring it first turn.

Forgetting Sneakdoor Beta exists - icing archives once or twice isn't bad in this deck for many reasons but this can be pretty bad with 2-3 agendas in hand.

Less problematic, but still an issue is losing all the Cayambe Grid early. They help the Trick of Light battery and huge ice strategy a lot.

The Nuance:

I don't think scoring a Cyberdex Sandbox is ever in your best interest unless you maybe have a Spin Doctor on the table and can instantly recur the double Trick of Lights it would take to do this.

Don't be afraid of scoring a Superconducting Hub. The card draw and hand size are both great since HQ will be a really rough server and it will help you get combo pieces. However, you can pretty easily use this to fill the hand or sacrifice them to archives if you really need to.

Increased Drop Rates is a nice deterrent to run archives, especially if you're scoring 2 or 3 of the Hostiles

Card Choices

I originally used the 2 influence from Archived Memories to have 2 Magnets to eat Botulus. Got burned when all my spins were trashed and magnet is kind of mediocre overall.

I also tried a version of this list with a smaller agenda density, using Send a Message rather than Cyberdex Sandbox and extra Superconducting Hub but you absolutely cant score a 5/3 and with all the 1 pointers it allows the runner to only need 3 agendas to win, although unlikely.

The Subliminal Messaging was a last minute include. Could probably be something else, but its nice to have to drip econ when the runner is spending full turns building up.

I also tried some Archers in the list but I dont think you want to give up your 1 pointers as it just messes with the math to win with your 3/2s. A 2+ advanced Colossus is pretty bad too.

The two positional ice, Winchester and Afshar, seem a bit suspect but they are pretty decent on HQ


Feedback is very welcome here. I think this is a fun concept and a pretty strong but I'm sure there is room for improvement or tweaks. Thanks for reading and have fun!

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