You cannot break it, you must face it, wave goodbye to all

Fictional History of the Deck:

He had heard there would be an elaborate welcoming committee – Jinteki liked their ceremony – so his only surprise was the calibre of those in attendance.

The horror stories his old friends in Germany had told him made his heart flutter slightly as he sipped his tea.

“Be calm Michael,” he thought to himself as the slightly bitter liquid wrapped itself around his tongue. “They invited you here as a friend.”

His second thought was, oddly, more comforting.

“If they had wanted you dead they wouldn’t have to be this subtle.”

He was discussing pleasantries with a man called Ifraz Yau; a man mostly unrelated to cybersecurity, the reason Michael was there.

Ifraz. Michael suspected, had been specifically chosen because it would have been impossible to discuss business with him, but they were of equal seniority. It was all part of the ceremony.

Ifraz worked in food genetics, or Agricultural Enhancement; Michael and his colleagues in Germany had called them ‘Brotbrains’. Ifraz would have little to no knowledge of the horrifying things people like Michael were capable of creating to protect the files of the men like Ifraz.

Eventually a small bell was rung and Michael’s cup and saucer were taken away by the clone attendant. Michael was used to servitude; a bioroid workforce really was no different to a clone one to his eyes.

But now the meeting was to being in earnest. The pleasantries were done. Ifraz was long gone. Those that remained were there for the matters at hand.

“We welcome Michael Gille to us,” Apoorva Malhotra, Palana senior Executive, said after a preamble. “He does not come to us at no cost, but we hope he is a positive influence on our endeavours.”

Michael nodded and felt every pair of eyes in the room on him anew. Every horror story he had ever been taught to believe about Jinteki to scare him from selling his services to them went through his mind. He wondered at that moment just how false some to them were. He had come because they were willing to pay him more than his side-lined creations were earning him back home. Still, a lot of these people seemed like the kind of cold people who really would hand a system operative a blade to appease investors.

Michael turned his head to survey the assembled.

He wondered if Chairman Hiro being in slight darkness was deliberate. He suspected it was.

Tori Hanzo, the Red Woman sat far more centrally. She was a terrifying sight in the abstract because Michael knew it meant that Jinteki intended to use him and his code seriously, and with little regard for consequences. She also looked with such fierceness in her eyes that Michael hoped very much he would not be working with her. She seemed to be unaware, or uncaring of the general assumed taboo against using a pad around the gathering.

Michael did not feel the same fear with her as he did when he saw another man, a man with a different reputation. Marcus Batty. Marcus’ eyes met his and Michael knew straight away – Marcus was the reason he was here. Marcus had an idea. It was not a thought that filled Michael with calm. In fact, he almost preferred the idea of

Tori Hanzo’s fierce disregard for him that Marcus’ friendly fascination.

Michael remained sat as he began his presentation. If he strayed into too technical detail the shortest and sharpest exhalation of breath from Chairman Hiro would move him along.

“Ultimately then,” he concluded. “The ‘Brainstorm’ turns the runner’s own mind against them. So huge is the potential for damage to the brain itself that the runner can be deterred by its mere existence.”

“How much damage to the brain?” the Chairman asked. “Our experiments in such things have been of limited success.”

Tori visibly hardened. This was clearly her personal remit.

“In simulations it has all but killed an ill defended runner. It can do more damage than even the largest Bioroid Ice ever deployed for instance.”

Michael regretted his mention of the hated enemy technology

“And even a runner without a rig of programmes can disable a Bioroid given time correct?” Apoorva attempted to smooth the process, insinuating that the insult to HB’s methods was implicit in Michael’s statements.

“It was a weakness I had attempted to work around with this. Make a runner afraid to approach us at all,” Michael saw the Chairman lean forward and smile.

Michael could see that the idea of striking fear appealed to the Chairman. He was a man like all high powered individuals Michael had worked with. Michael knew that they claimed money was the bottom line but Michael knew differently. People like Chairman Hiro kept working long after they could afford a personal Immersion Rec Studio, 5 Eve Models, a 3 Storey Gila apartment, and a Beanstalk priority pass. That something was what had inspired Alexander the Great to conquer all he could see, the huge structures in New York, Dubai and Shanghai that stood relatively abandoned, and the Beanstalk itself. They wanted to be the mighty. Nothing would stop them.

“So,” said Tori Hanzo relishing her chance to have her say. “Why are you here? Why are HB’s servers not benefitting from your glorious creation? Why are they willing to let us have their scraps?”

Tori was different. She was motivated by what had motivated the worst instruments of the mighty; the torturers, assassins, hatchet job propagandists and mercenaries who made the reigns of the mighty possible. Tori was able to hate. She was able to hate at a moment’s notice if that was what was required. She was not hating Michael for anybody else’s benefit right now, but it did not stop her from being good at it.

“There have been difficulties,” Michael started slowly. “I made sure you were aware before I came out here….”

“It is OK,” Apoora said a friendly smile that was genuinely warm. “The division noted your excellent self-critique.”

“Difficulties?” Tori held on to that word with the joy of a child pinching a young sibling and watching their pained face.

“Runners were able to find programs that made them able to pass unharmed,” Michael said. “Leading to a cost benefit ratio that made my creation unsuitable to the needs of the corporation.”

“So we have hired a reject?” Tori asked.

“I can make it fire,” Marcus Batty said with the briefest of amused smirks speaking for the first time all meeting.

“You can?” Michael looked in shock at this white haired eccentric for San San. Michael had expected that for some reason they had wanted to use his Ice as a highly publicised deterrent; he had not suspected that the plan was to make it fire.

“I can,” Marcus pointed to himself and nodded quickly. His sleeve rolled up just enough to show the tell-tale signs of a removed tattoo.

“Los Muertos,” Michael thought. “Jinteki have plucked this psychic genius sysop from the Underway of San San and given him tools to make things happen. They are even more mad than we thought.”

Because there was no mistaking the glint in Marcus’ eyes. He was like Michael; he wanted to see what could be done. He wanted to break the rules and find outlets for his own ideas. Marcus didn’t hate the runners, or anyone, they were just results in his own experimentation. Their misery was his joy not because it was misery, but because it was the intended goal.

Michael’s idea had been picked up by him and Marcus was suddenly in his element.

Michael sat in horror as Marcus took his idea and turned it into something it had never intended to be. A trap. Marcus would use secrecy, some psychic elements, and an unusual array of ice. Brainstorm was to be right at the heart of it.

And he was right. With the right timing it would fire. And the runners would die, or be so close to death as to make them easily killable soon afterwards. If they did not see it coming than even random EMP sparks would kill them soon after.

Michael knew he would never see the faces of those killed in this most invisible way. Chairman Hiro stood up and nodded.

“This,” he said. “This is what cybersecurity should be. Sudden, surprising, terrifying, fatal.”

Michael knew he could not leave now. Then, they really would kill him. He only hoped that somehow, rumours of what was happening would get out, and neutralise this before it took lives.

--

… “Has anyone heard from StatiX lately….”

DECK DESCRIPTION:

So this was the deck I took the UK Nationals and despite being a combo deck I am reasonably pleased with how it performed.

It killed runners on the day, with 2 more escaping in part due to time being called on the round (1 never needed to run the server due to having a point or two off R&D, one was on 0 hand size but I didn't have the Neural EMP to kill them before time was called). 1 escaped by virtue of being DLR Maxx and me playing against that deck absolutely wrong so that someone who went on to make it into the cut crushed me deservedly.

So what is the full combo? For those who haven't figured it out:

Set up normally, Palana money, Caprice on HQ/R&D wherever the protection is needed more (in later games against DLR Maxx the Caprice on HQ did sterling work). Then you get the remote going:

Batty as an upgrade, Brainstorm as innermost ice, Inazuma in front of it, a Chrysalis as an additional piece of Ice on the outside is useful if playing Faust to deal with the play of shedding one's hand with Faust to avoid the Brain Damage but is unnecessary against most decks.

The runner runs the remote (sometimes getting that to happen is the hardest part - typically you want to risk an agenda to let it happen. A smart play is Fetal AI, the play I did on occasion was Global Food because I was foolish) and sees the Inazuma. They either break and jack out in which case, great, you have a scoring server. That isn't a terrible thing for a 3 credit rez. Or they break and continue. At which point you rez the Batty and the Brainstorm together. You fire Batty and use the Batty to trigger the Inazuma sub that stops them breaking ice on the next piece of Ice they encounter.

They cannot break it.

They must face it.

They say goodbye to all they knew.

Follow up with any net damage at your leisure.

A few card choices worth mentioning:

The Future is Now/Surat City Grid - Dyper/Val walk passed this deck, unless you have tech. The tech is these.

Chrysalis - Possibly a mistake but I like to play with newer cards where I can. And it makes a good early bite on runners who poke R&D if you haven't drawn the Ice. Cortex lock would likely have been better.

Komainu - Worked as a backup Brainstorm in extreme desperation but ultimately was not needed as such. Again a good deterrent on early aggression

Interns - Worth their weight in gold in this deck. Put the Batty back if you fail, put Ice back against Ice destruction, put the milled Jacksons back against dastardly DLR. Great card.

The rest, I think, is self explanatory. A wonderful deck if your opponent isn't ready for it. And even if your opponent has some knowledge the ability make a single server terrifying is not to be ignored.

Of course, Rumour Mill utterly squashes this deck. Utterly. So Nats happened JUST in time!

Thanks to my opponents on the day, the organizers, and those that helped by dying to this in training, or by waltzing over it in such a way that made me slot the Caprice.