This Haarp Will Score Out

just kidding, it will very seldom do that. welcome to my deck description though.

i've been playing this haarp kill deck for a few months now and it has performed quite well. it brought me to 2nd place in the toronto regionals, which took place the day before the new MWL dropped. that version ran 3 Scorched Earth and 3 Traffic Accident but i didn't bother posting a decklist since it became obsolete the following day. i've toyed with different ways to account for the 3 lost influence since then and i have found this to be the optimal build (although a number of the slots in this deck are meta calls). i brought this build to canadian nationals this past weekend and came in an adorably-mediocre 14th place (of 61 people) (along with my gang sign leela). it dropped two games on the day of and both were essentially due to bad opening hands. there are not many bad opening hands in this deck but you do have to watch out for a handful of useless agendas. specifically, Project Beale, AstroScript Pilot Program, and Quantum Predictive Model.* a handful of these with no money can lose you the game as scoring them does very little to advance your game and you have no way to punish the runner meaningfully for scoring them. you want Quantum Predictive Model in R&D behind your tagging ice and you want to occasionally score 3/2s in order to threaten scoring out. a combination of these in your opening hand probably means you're not making money (from Profiteering or econ cards), threatening tags (with Midseason Replacements or Hard-Hitting News), holding kill cards, or scoring your combo pieces (Breaking News).

in any case, if you're worried that the prevalence of Sports Hopper has killed this deck's viability, fear not. all of the tricks in this deck are things people have seen before and are very much aware of and yet it still lands quite a few kills. the majority of these are done right through a Sports Hopper. once you have Breaking News and another agenda scored, you 24/7 News Cycle and Traffic Accident. they are then forced to use their Sports Hopper before you attempt to Scorched Earth. what this means is you don't even need to have Scorched Earth in hand. keep drawing aggressively to set up the combo again. go hog on Jackson Howard draws and dump agendas into the archives (they're still afraid of Midseason Replacements and News Team!). then just attempt the kill again. this deck really doesn't lose to Sports Hopper but if they're just drawing aggressively to find their kill protection, you can always just go ahead and score agendas. this deck actually can occasionally score out :')

*15 Minutes can actually be an okay opening hand agenda since you can always click it back if the runner scores it, it also turns on Midseason Replacements, and it can be scored in a pinch as your forfeitable agenda.

flex choices

there's a bunch of cards that can be swapped around based on what counters you expect to see in your meta.

Snatch and Grab: anti-Film Critic. i've also killed Kati Jones if it was super rich and the runner was broke.

Salem's Hospitality: anti-Networking, anti-I've Had Worse

Hard-Hitting News: runners actually don't sit on <8 credits against me very often so this is often a dead card but if your opponents are often less prudent, definitely include more of these.