Pachinko! (1st Place Cambridge, MA GNK, 3-0)

This deck was undefeated at last week's GNK. It's inspired by this Crown of Lasers decklist. I made a few changes as follows:

-3 GFI +2 AR-Enhanced Security +2 Degree Mill

I'm not a huge fan of playing GFI, and it never doesn't feel good to score ARES. Degree Mill is also helpful to keep you ahead if the runner makes a steal. This agenda suite has two things going for it: 1) you can NA or FA cards with Jeeves, Biotic, and Remastered counters. I have Biotic --> Jeeves --> Beale/Degree Mill to close out the game several times. And 2) Beale being over-advanceable gives you a variety of ways to reach 7 points. Taxing ice combined with relevant assets keeps the runner from checking every remote, which makes you a NA powerhouse. And scoring an early Remastered or ARES just puts you so far ahead.

-1 Data Ward, -1 Hydra, +1 Architect, +2 Pachinko

Even with the other build's huge economy, rezzing three Data Wards or Hydras is a big ask. Pachinko is dirt cheap and can be a reasonable deterrent to park in front of a Marilyn, Jeeves, Amani, or even Daily Quest early on. Architect is just a pet favorite ice of mine in these sorts of decks.

-3 UCF

Why would I want to be that guy? But seriously, I am not a fan of UCF and think it is an obnoxious card. Also, whenever I would play it, I wound up wishing I had an ETR ice instead. With enough Aumakua and Engolo around, sometimes you can invalidate an entire server with some bad UCF placement. I will admit that the deck is probably strictly better with at least 1 UCF, though. Bonus: The Runner's fear of UCF still benefits you even if you don't slot it.

-1 Ash 2X3ZB9CY

I never found myself particularly wanting Ash in a server, although I think having this instead of Architect is a perfectly reasonable choice. I think part of it was I never wanted to tip the runner off into which remote was the one I planned to score out of.

-1 IPO, +1 Fully Operational, +1 Game Over, +1 EOI

With the influence saved from cutting GFI, we can put in a second fully operational which can really save you in so many situations. Being able to credit up after crim credit denial or draw through Stargate, getting a well-timed Fully Op off is well worth it. In addition, on jnet I had some Runners decide to go tag me after being sick of paying for Data Ward and IP Block. To punish them, I slotted EOI which can let you exchange an early ARES for a hard-stolen Degree Mill or such. Definitely worth the slot.

Game Over is a fun card that is useful in about 20% of games. It could probably be changed back to an IPO or another tag punishment in the Liza meta, but occasionally it can be a real blowout and put you so far ahead after a steal that you run away with the game.

I really like this deck in that it has a lot of lines of play and takes advantage of taxing the runner to death while having lots of economy/tempo options. It feels more like HB than NBN to me in a lot of ways, which I am very much cool with.

Final Thoughts: Please don't play UCF.