Maskirovka stocks are way up now that Cleaver's banned! 3-4 to break for popular fracters, and only costs 1 on the face-check! If you want to go faaast but your agendas behind Maskirovka. Do this turn 1! In one minute, draw a maze that takes two minutes to solve!!!!

He plays hard to get, but I've been playing Phật Gioan Baotixita in BANGUN. It turns out that combining two ID abilities (Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed and Jinteki: Personal Evolution is pretty potent! PGB makes your installed agendas really, really painful to steal. If you surprise rez him, they Byte! with one counter, they're Obokata Protocols, and with 2 they're nearly deadly even with a full hand. Add in Angelique Garza Correa or other Jinteki imports like Daniela Jorge Inácio, or Anemone and it quickly becomes outright suicidal to try to steal. PGB also gives Bangun centrals a little teeth, as a consolation for not getting to fire your ID you get a little damage. Smacking the runner on a Greenmail that's trivial to score also feels really good - PGB is great at setting up catch-22s where the runner gets set back no matter what.

Except for Pinhole Threading. Yeah, PGB folds to Pinhole, played at least 1x in almost every runner deck at this point. Mahkota Langit Grid helps with this, but it still feels bad to see him trashed, especially since BANGUN can't really afford to have more than 2 copies.

tl;dr, oh no, he's hot, and he's down to bang -- BANGUN, that is.

If you aren't putting an agenda agenda faceup into a remote behind some of the cheapest off-the-shelf ICE Weyland's defense researchers slapped together and smiling smugly at the runner turn 1, you're playing BANGUN wrong. If you ever refer to BANGUN without using all-caps and don't say it like BANG-GUN every time, you're playing BANGUN wrong.

OK, I'm joking. But just a little.

BANGUN, as the name and ability suggests, plays aggressive. Very aggressive. In the vast majority of games I've played, I've done the turn 1 I just described -- slammed down whatever agenda I had in my opening behind a Descent or Maskirovka, balanced my budget with a few Key Performance Indicators, and passed the turn. That's because BANGUN agendas thrive in the wild, not in cozy central servers. Unlike beloved Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed, BANGUN only BANGS when agendas are installed faceup in remotes. Like a bird of prey swooping down on newborn rabbits, the runner can snatch your vulnerable projects from the nerds in R&D and the suits in HQ with 0 (immediate) consequences. That's not OK. Your agendas need the trial by fire of the remote. Shove them out there. Let them be free. Hire Angelique Garza Correa to babysit them and keep them amused. Just don't let them languish in centrals.

That's the main thing, really. Go fast. Go hard. Give the runner catch-22s at every turn -- Do they take the sure thing, and bite the bullet (literally) by running your remotes? Or do they run your centrals hoping to win off random accesses -- some of which Byte! or are a sight to Behold! If they let you score, pressure with Measured Response. If they go aggressive, follow their Public Trail and show them what lies at the End of the Line. For real plays, Play Public Trail when they have the money to dodge it, THEN play Measured Response and kill them.

If you lose your steam, grind the runner through a Biawak or 2, courtesy of your Eminent Domain.

BANGUN is all about giving the runner as many bad options as possible.

BANG!

I've been having a lot of fun, and a lot of success, with this ID. Comparisons to Weyland Consortium: Building a Better World are fairly apt, as you get more value when you make money, but crucially, this comes in the form of cards, not more money. Despite being a shadowy organization that works "at a distance," Zwicky moves fast, and it needs to. As soon as you've made a bit of money, jamming agendas behind Maskirovka and Descent is the way to go. This puts pressure on the runner to find their tools while you naturally draw into yours just by playing the game. Since you're playing many transactions, Plutus gets you even more value out of them and lets you do some cool click laundering with Red Level Clearance, Greasing the Palm, and Petty Cash, allowing you to FA your Off the Books and Above the Law towards a win. Since you're going fast, Threat cards come online faster, specifically Measured Response. The longer MR is on the more likely it is for the runner to slip up on money or cards, letting you blow them up. Slash and Burn Agriculture deserves special mention as it allows you to add to your score area (by FAing) and your opponent's if you let it get stolen -- why would you do this? If you let your opponent get to four you can rez all your Biawaks and Plutus without worrying about turning off MR.

The Zwicky Group: Invisible Hands will never reach the incredible credit highs as BABW but I like it quite a bit more because it allows you to actually do something with your money instead of just jacking up Punitive Counterstrike traces or whatever.

If you squint, this card basically says, "If the runner has 2 Events in hand, do 2 unpreventable meat damage that doesn't trigger Steelskin Scarring." Why is this important? Well, it turns out the runner going from 5 cards to 3 cards in hand makes certain proactive solutions that much more effective - that is, lethal in single, rather than double doses. The caveats here are you need something to advance - easy enough, given decent advanceable ICE exists in both yellow and green, and the Runner needs two of some card type in their hand when you play it. AFAIK there aren't any grip-snoop cards in Standard except for like Focus Group but then that's a massive waste of credits and effort just for some info - so you might just have to guess. My gut tells me Event is generally the best call, especially against runners like MuslihaT: Multifarious Marketeer but idk you might call resource sometimes. Outside of green murder decks Jinteki might use this to do things with Neurospike or Phật Gioan Baotixita. I struggle to see HB using this one.

Man, I do not want the last thing I see before getting shot is that guy's face.