Reversed Bumm (6-2 at Worlds 2017)

This deck is largely the responsibility of @Highwire, who I mercilessly harassed for deck ideas in the couple of weeks leading up to Worlds. While the UK has a couple of pods of test teams, Rich and myself tend to sit in our own little lonely bubbles and ferment ideas separately. I was originally on a version of his Hyperdriver Hayley too, but switched last minute to @circadia's Dark Web Hayley (or version thereof) at the last minute.

I’m a big fan of kill decks, and murdered @cacoesthevictor and others at the Sheffield SC with Scorched CI and was sad when the best Liz Mills card got rotated, but an opportunity to play with my alt art German Bumm! got me all excited again. The deck went 5-1 in Swiss (1-1 day two), with the only losses to a top deck from the Runner the turn before I was going to Biotic out, and to 2x World Champ Dan, so pretty good showing – 5 kills by Bumm!

How To Play

In short, get money and cards as per normal CI. Leverage the power of your installables behind a piece of ICE. Chain MCAs if you can, use Reversed Accounts to bait runs or shut down runner economy. If possible, get the False Lead scored and then you can use it with MCA / Load Testing to land tags and not give the Runner opportunity to clear, before Bumming them next turn. You might have to suck it up on accesses sometimes to maintain your credits and look for the chance to murder someone. I often don’t rez ICE on centrals unless I feel it’s absolutely necessary, so the Runner doesn’t know what tools they need, but if they are a bit run-happy it’s sometimes worth it for the tax. Don’t forget the scoring plan. MCA allows a lot of free scores if Clot isn’t available and even if it is, consider if the cost of them Clotting and getting to the agenda will put the runner in a bad position. Scoring agendas is another way to distract the runner into trying to battle what you’re doing instead of sticking to their own goals. If they’re studious in keeping credits up, it might give you the opportunity to score off the table.

Agendas

Influence is pretty tight, and while Elective Upgrade is useful, it’s a liability when the runner can get 3 points, I think overall I’d have liked 3x Food, but then again the free clicks are really helpful if you score EU. Vitruvius should always be scored with a counter and the False Leads are excellent for post HHN action along with Load Testing to deny the runner chance to clear tags. They are also great for scoring a bigger agenda by denying the Runner clicks, so you can turn one point into three.

Assets & Upgrades

MCA Austerity is a dumb card that should be on some kind of list. One round I had the runner on 2-3 clicks all game – afterwards he showed me three Apocalypse in hand that were never going to fire (without Amped Up). Aside from scoring things (over advance Vitruvius, use the counter to get MCA, reinstall it) you can get clicks for more money cards to land a HHN or whatever else you may need. Stinson is great for many reasons, but especially with Reversed Accounts, which can put even a careful runner below the crucial 6 credit total and then let you leverage powerful transactions. Reversed is also a good pretend agenda to draw a run from your opponent. All of these assets and upgrades are good for getting that run, or punishing the runner not getting involved. I’d like a CVS, but #slotsm8

Operations

An alternative is to remove Stinson and Consulting is adding another Bumm and HHN – but I was convinced last minute of the flexibility of Consulting, and the usefulness of Reversed. Archived is crucial and I’d take another if I could find space, but #slotsm8

A Scarcity is great for clearing runner currents, upsetting Hayley, etc. and I’d take two, but… Load Testing should be 3x, but… The operation suite is open to debate – you generally want more of everything that isn’t a 3x and somehow get a Best Defence in there – so have a play around and see what you can do. There’s a way to get another slot by replacing a couple of agendas with a bigger agenda, but the False Leads win game and I’m not sure you want to lose any Vitruvius.

ICE

The Mythic suite did work all day, and only really fell down in the last game or day two, where my opponent got an early Turtle and I couldn’t find any real ICE to tax him with, so purging wasn’t particularly helpful. Other than that, it allows free scores or expensive Atmans to give you advantage. Fairchild 2.0 is great without Yog in the world, Vanilla and Rototurret simply provide other gear checks. You often don’t use them, but occasionally you’ll kill a Gordian or stop a Runner from Info Sifting you. An argument could be made for Swordsman or more Turing to defend against AI, but at Worlds I was expecting mostly Shaper or limited-AI Anarch and so it was for me. Ideally I’d want to mess around with this ICE suite and make it a bit more face-checky.