Death Improved (4th at Australian Modded "Nationals")

*teleports behind you*

"I'd say it's nothing personal, but corporations are people too."

This is Death Improved: "It's Nothing Personal, Kid", my sweet Kill Mti deck! Originally conceived in Modded after spotting a sweet interaction with Bacterial Programming and Punitive Counterstrike, I ran it for a while in Modded, then took it to the 2018 Regionals in Melbourne, before getting coerced by the local scene out of playing exclusively kill decks (which, honestly, is quite fair).

Today was its first reprisal since, and I'm happy to report it went really well! The deck went 3-1, landing only a single kill (sadface), scoring to 7 in two games, and losing one game from giving up two non-Bacterial agendas off an early Indexing (super sadface).

PLAN A - SHOTS FIRED

• Mwanza City Grid on R&D, Snares in hand, Anansi or Neural Katana in hand, ready to punish attempted steals.
• The main thing is just have a Bacterial be stolen, land some other damage somewhere else, then Punitive + Punitive or Punitive + EMP or whatever to flatline.
• Variations include Bacterial steal -> rearrange R&D to have them hit a Snare off Mwanza, straight-up Punitive murder if they steal two agendas, and some spicy nonsense with Gene Splicer. Otoroshi could probably do something but I didn't see it all day.

PLAN B - GUNS AWAY

• ONLY DO THIS IF YOU CAN'T CONFIDENTLY KILL
• In cases where you can't flatline before they hit 7 (whether by Mopus econ pressure or something else), you'll need to score out.
• Use Anansi and Tollbooth, breaking them sucks, and build a decent remote.
• Thimblerig can help with positioning your stuff and defending your more vulnerable servers.
• Jam out agendas, ideally SSLs to keep the economic pressure happening.
• Use damage sources as hand checks. Celebrity Gift your EMPs and Punitives - at this point they might force counterplays that you don't care about.
• If there's a good opportunity for a spicy bait, throw down your Gene Splicer - this is how you get the extra point to reach 7. Even if they see it from Gifts or Indexing or whatever, they still need to run, get into the server, take the hit and pay the trash cost. With sufficient EMPs you could actually kill off this. It's a solid threat.
• Do NOT have Mwanza rezzed on R&D if you're doing Plan B - you'll bleed agendas and lose before you can score. The rez on Mwanza is a tricky one, definitely gamefeel-dependent.

Gene Splicer was the dark horse of this deck, helping me reach 7 at 6-6 in probably the closest Corp game I played today.

I love playing this deck, this is about the fourth revision. Prior versions were:

• Trees with Guns: original Modded form
• Trees with NUKES: tweaked for Standard
• Trees with Rifles: further tweaks, took to Regionals, went 2-2

It's a wild, spicy, surprisingly legit deck that can do bonkers things with card rearrangement and hand threats. It's one of the few Corp decks I've played that actually feels natural to play!