[startup] Matryoshka Esa

This is a deck I have enjoyed playing with good results on jnet recently.

In a way this is kind of like a red Rielle "Kit" Peddler: Transhuman -- you don't try to install a decoder, fracter and killer, you just try to make sure you can crack a server 1 deep, then 2 deep, then 3 deep, etc., using your one breaker and then whatever other tricks you can put together.

• Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga can break the first ice
• Matryoshka can break probably one, maybe two more ice
• Botulus helps you break any extra ice beyond that.

This deck isn't fast, your goal is to have threats in every server and force the corp to slow down and play defense. The possibility of Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga and sudden Botulus makes it hard for the corp to predict for sure when you can't get into the remote.

We also aren't exactly trying to mill the corp out. We'd like to mill about 15 cards or so. You can usually hope to mill about 6-8 from doing 3-4 core damage to ourselves, 8 from landing two Chastushka, and maybe 3 from landing a Time Bomb at some point.

In a corp with 49 cards in their deck, this is about a third of their deck. After 12 turns, they've probably drawn 20 cards or so, maybe a little more. If 15+ are in the bin then there's ~15 left in R&D. At this point if you play Finality you are going to see like a 1/3 of the remainder of the deck. So that's a point of maximum pressure.

Sabotage also synergizes well with Matryoshka. If you put 1/3 of the ice in the bin then there just isn't going to be enough to make very deep servers.

The main way we make money is:

• Playing money events, with Ghosttongue discount
• Fermenter
• Clicking on Smartware Distributor

Liberated Account is good when you just need to ensure that in about 2 turns you will have a pile of money, but you get more money for your click in Smartware Distributor. The longer the game goes on the better it works out for you.

The draw engine here is a mix of Verbal Plasticity and Earthrise Hotel, as well as Wildcat Strike. Wildcat Strike works very well with Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga, you can often create a situation where if the corp gives you cards instead of money to try to prevent you from making a run, even if the cards are trash you can just use them with Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga to break without credits.

Usually, I throw the first Botulus on HQ to try to help enable Chastushka runs, but Botulus on the remote is sometimes the right choice.

In terms of how the deck matches up, I find it pretty good vs. PE, and the numerous kill decks based on Punitive Counterstrike or End of the Line. This is because with Marrow and Hippocampic Mechanocytes your hand size is going to be 9, and you can opt not to install Ghosttongue in such games. You also have Steelskin Scarring.

It also works well vs. Thule. Usually I find that if Thule starts trying to damage you using Djupstad Grid and so on, the increasing amounts of sabotage tend to cause the corp to lose before you do.

Against the Jinteki: Restoring Humanity deck using Nanisivik Grid to protect archives, the main thing is to ensure you can break into archives before there's too much ice in there, and use Pinhole Threading to trash the grid from archives if necessary. Once you can break into archives it disables the grid, and getting into archives at some point is generally part of your wincon anyways. You can also use Light the Fire! to break down the door of the remote.

Against Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel., you need to play differently for fear of ZATO City Grid. If you suspect ZATO City Grid you have Pinhole Threading and Light the Fire! if you want to try to contest. However, you may be better off ignoring the remote after a certain point. Remember that ZATO City Grid is remote only. You can still get harmed in this matchup by the Stavka + Hafrún shenanigans, it is painful if Matryoshka gets trashed. However, Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga can give you an out against that. Sometimes it's correct to hold back some copies of Matryoshka in hand, you can usually recover if only two of them get trashed. (May consider slotting Katorga Breakout also to help mitigate if your rig gets shot.) The matchup is pretty nasty overall, as you can't easily prevent Kimberlite Field from trashing Matryoshka either. Don't sit back when you play this one, try to force the corp to rez ice on R&D and so on and take accesses if they give them to you. Remember to play netrunner and don't just fixate on sabotage.

It's probably a bad thing that the deck has 54 cards in it, but I've found that the tech cards here are helpful in the meta such as I perceive it. When I've tried to go down closer to 48 cards, I've had issues where I can't use Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga when I would want to because my deck is getting thin.

I liked using Asmund Pudlat, he can do a lot of work pulling forward one of Botulus, Fermenter, Time Bomb. Another option I would consider is Legwork. When there's a lot of sabotage, agendas tend to accumulate fast in HQ (if they don't end up in archives) as the corp trashes everything that it thinks makes sense to do so from HQ, leaving only agendas often. At some point a Legwork can be pretty devastating to the corp.

Compared to this other AI Esa deck, we went for Matryoshka instead of Mayfly. The reasoning here is that Mayfly is only single use, and if the corp uses items like Anoetic Void or Nisei MK II you can fail the run and then lose the breaker so you can't follow up with a second run. The Matryoshka works better for a deck that wants to play longer than that deck.

If you start to see a prevalence of Near-Earth Hub: Broadcast Center decks or Hostile Architecture asset spam decks, you might consider slotting in Scrubber, which helps a lot to contest those situations.

I'm not sure how I would change the deck if Swordsman enters the meta. But honestly, the Stavka + Hafrún combo is going to trash your breakers sometimes anyways, for any deck that isn't running Endurance.