Trials of Vulcan 1.4

Who says you need to be Jinteki to kill with Net Damage?

The plan here is to make a supremely threatening deck by leveraging the interaction of The Foundry's ID ability with certain ICE and support pieces. If the runner is not properly prepared, you can kill them or cripple their rig. Or, if they're cautious, you can use the time they take to armour up to score.

The deck's current record is making the runner face 24 Merlin subroutines in one run. This killed them through Eater with 15 credits and two IHW in hand.

Changes

Only minor tweaks here; I've replaced Self-Destruct Chips with Gila Hands Arcology and Corporate Troubleshooter with IT Department. The former change is because scoring a single Self-Destruct Chips only minorly improved the lethality of the deck, but scoring a single Gila Hands Arcology significantly helps the money flow.

The second is an experiment, as yet untested. Corporate Troubleshooter proved excellent at messing with Atman and fixed breakers in general, but the one-shot nature could be a little frustrating in more drawn-out games. I am hoping the IT Department will fill the same role, simply sacrificing the surprise factor for reusability. IT Department is also -intensive as opposed to -intensive, so hopefully that will mesh better with the deck.

How it plays

Early game: get the low-grade NEXT ICE down, and Architect, and start building towers on the centrals. Put your killier ICE wherever is convenient, but I've found it to work well on remotes. Then try your best to hit the runner with a big Merlin, NEXT Gold or Grim. Use the time it takes them to recover to score. You'll need to keep your money high to pull it off.

Since I've managed to confuse some people with timings, rather than give a blow-by-blow of every card choice, I'll run through some of the more common interactions, (especially with The Twins). There's some technical timing involved, and it's worth making sure you've got it right. Important things to remember: -Rezzing occurs at Step 2.3, where paid abilities can be used and non-ice cards can be rezzed. -Encountering occurs at step 3, there is a paid ability window at 3.1, and The Twins trigger at 3.2.

Merlin: The Merlin you search out with the ID ability (step 2.3) can be revealed to give an extra subroutine(step 3). If you discard this new Merlin to The Twins, the re-encountered Merlin will still have 2 subroutines, as they last until the run ends. If you had 2 Merlin in hand, the first encounter will have 3 subroutines, the second 4, as the reveals trigger each encounter, but last until the end of the run.

Project Vitruvius: You can use counters to keep a Twins cycle going. If you discard ICE to The Twins it sends the runner back to step 3. At step 3.1 you can use a Project Vitruvius counter to fetch the ICE just thrown, and then use that to re-trigger The Twins at step 3.2. However, you cannot use the token to pull back a discarded Merlin in time to reveal it for the Grail effect, which occurs at step 3.

IT Department: The STR boost lasts for the entire turn, so will carry over through The Twins forcing another encounter. This works on most STR boosts, like Corporate Troubleshooter.

Architect: If you search out a second Architect with the ID ability, you can use the second subroutine to install it, if you want. The Foundry triggers at 2.3, Architect triggers at 3.2. You cannot install The Twins with Architect and immediately rez it to force a re-encounter; there is no rezzing window between the install and the trigger.

As a general note, there is a paid ability window in The Twins loop, but there is not a rezzing window. Also, if an effect trashes or derezzes a piece of ICE during a run (Crescentus, Parasite, Spooned, etc.), you cannot trigger The Twins.

Accelerated Beta Test: With The Foundry, when using the ABT ability, you may choose to install and rez a single piece of ICE and then shuffle the other two cards back into your deck, or let the ability fire normally.

Bypassing The Twins?: If they try to, say, Inside Job a bit of ICE, you can rez the ICE and The Twins at 2.3, trigger the The Foundry ability, and use The Twins to force a re-encounter. This bit of ICE will not be bypassed. If it's being bypassed by Femme, they can pay again. Femme triggers before the Grail effect, so you cannot boost the number of subroutines on Merlin against a Femme.

Tl;dr: Using an underrated ability and some sneaky interactions to tear up the runners' plans, rigs, and faces. It works well against more aggressive runners, and its Achilles heel is credit denial, such as certain Reina builds.

Thanks for reading! As ever, comments, critiques and suggestions are welcome.