NEH Never-Advance Semi-Glacier (1st Place Mead Hall Store Ch

This deck went 4-1 in Swiss and 2-0 in the cut, getting me to 1st place out of 48 at the Mead Hall Store Championship on 2/6/2016. My busted Whizzard deck can be found here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/31636/the-2-armed-ice-feast-1st-place-undefeated-mead-hall-store

This is not a fast-advance deck. Obviously it has SanSan and AstroScript in it, and yes, sometimes you use these things to score from hand. but about 80% of the agendas you score should be from a remote server.

This deck is HARD to play. You need to really understand the deck your opponent is playing: When it wants to run, how quickly it gets set up and how its economy flow works. You need to sniff a scoring window 2-3 times to win. All of the games I won against strong players were by a matter of A SINGLE CREDIT/CARD. You need to play pacy, and keep the pressure up. If you click for cards/credits for a combined total of more than 10 times in the game you have lost.

From my testing, this deck has a great Shaper Match-up and non-noise Faust match-up. The Noise match-up is close but slightly unfavorable, Whizzard is hard, and Criminal is rough unless they just never draw security testing (in which case it's a free win).

Report: Round 1 vs. Jesminder Game-day Faust Power Nap thing (7-2) He goes turn 1 draw Gamble Lucky Find. I get Pop-ups down on centrals and get a SanSan behind an Enigma. He doesn't check it and I get an Astro and a Beale out. Eventually he gets the SanSan trashed and starts cleaning up my other assets as well. This is annoying since he's on Faust and I'm going to need the money to set up my Tollbooths to tax him out on the remote. Luckliy I draw my Ash at the perfect time and am able to get out a GFI with it to close it out.

Round 2 vs. Maxx Wyldside Faust (7-0) I get 2 PADs up right away and he can't kill them with his Scrubber, threaten my score, and set up his engine all at the same time. He chooses instead to just kill my Business Shows, which is reasonable. This drip econ lets me set up a Tollbooth, Sansan remote that gets an Astro out. I can't find another agenda so I put down a Product Placement in the SanSan, which he doesn't run. Next turn I go draw, think, think, think. Add ICE to the remote, put Ash in it. He runs it, I rez Wraparound and he gets in the hard way. He gets in with 10 credits, including his scrubber credits, trashes the SanSan, trashes the Product Placement and then squirms when he sees the Ash. He leaves it, unwilling to go to 0 since he needs to Levy in the next couple turns. I had Interns even if he killed it. I get a GFI down with 1 Adv in the remote and he goes for a Maker's Eye, hoping his Turntable can take my Astro counter and buy him a turn. I punk him with Swordsman on R&D for the game. Tollbooth Ash is the best way to deal with this Maxx nonsense.

Round 3 Noise (7-0) He has Wyldside early but is pretty poor. I put my first Astro behind a tollbooth and he checks it, losing most of his credit pool. He has Feeder and Scheherazade and a bunch of viruses, so he is milling a lot. He checks archives but gets nothing after about 5 mills (thanks GFI!). His next mill hits an Astro, which I Interns into my Tollbooth Ash Remote. He gets through the Tollbooth with 0 credits, assuming the upgrade must be SanSan or CVS. The Ash stuffs him and he can't even trash it. I get a 2nd Astro counter. A few turns later I put a GFI with no counters in the remote and score it with the help of both Astros the next turn for the game. Interns is Incredible Tech for this Match-up.

Round 4 Leela (0-7) I hate Leela. Her turn 1 is Sure Gamble, Desperado, Sec Testing. FML. Her next turn is Bank Job, putting her at a crazy total. 2 of her first 3 R&D pokes get her an Astro and a GFI. From that point I need to drag her through my remote to drain her money but have drawn nothing but agendas. The R&D hits were particularly frustrating since I had 2 agendas in hand the whole time. Eventually I get Legworked and lose.

Round 5 Desperado Whizzard (7-6) He has Desperado turn 1 which threatens to dismantle my econ. He also takes my Astro from HQ turn 1. Not fun. I get an Astro out with a SanSan, and Fast-Advance a second one. Eventually he gets Medium + D4v1D out and gets through my Archangel R&D for several cards, taking him to 6 points. I install Advance my GFI behind Enigma Eli when he has 4 credits. He saw the enigma in HQ so he goes, Credit, Yog, Run and gets stopped by ELI. 2 Turns before this I rezzed a PAD that was sitting on the board for the whole game that took 1 click for him to kill the turn before my score attempt. Had I not made that play he would have had exactly enough to break my remote and win.

After Winning with my Whizzard vs RP in the cut...

Round 2 of cut Wyldside Maxx (7-6) On the first couple turns I hit him with Archangels on both centrals, bouncing a Datasucker and an Adjusted Chronotype. I again stick an Enigma'd SanSan against this deck's weak early economy and use it to get 4 Points with an Astro counter. He goes to finally kill my SanSan and I punk him with Swordsman, slowing him down even more. I later Fast-Advance another Astro to go to 6. He turntables my Astro counter for my 15 minutes. Sad times. I'm going to barely miss my Levy Time Scoring window because I'm a little short on money and the only agendas left in my deck are the 3 GFIs, one of which I have in hand, but he hits a Product Placement in R&D that sets me up to score the GFI with Ash the next turn. Thank you for your purchase :)

Round 3 of cut Chaos Theory Faust Mopus Vamp (7-4) He has Magnum turn 1 and trashes EVERYTHING I rez, including Marked Accounts. He dips to 2 credits from trashing at one point and I put down Enigma Astro, which scores. The next turn I put Beale + Ash in the remote. He plays SMC and gets Faust, getting into my remote with less than 3 credits, which is a disaster for him. Now I have 4 points and he spends half of his next turn just clearing the Ash. I then stack Wraparound + Swordsman on the remote to counter his Faust, but he counters with Inti + Mimic. I feel the remote-lock tightening and I don't quite have enough money to go for the score. He plays a Makers Eye though my pop-up and his a Product Placement. Now is my chance. I IA my GFI in the remote and put an ELI on top when he has 1 credit and 2 cards in hand. If he goes money->run or money-> Draw Draw run, he gets in, but he doesn't know this. Even if he does it would break him and I hopefully can dig for another agenda to put down the next turn. Unfortunately for him I think he reads NAPD and goes money money run, getting stopped by the Eli. At this point I think I've won, but we both have 5 credits and he click 4 plays Vamp (this is the real reason he took 4). I have an unrezzed ICE on HQ that I have not touched all game. It's Archangel which he cannot break. I bounce his Faust and he takes my last credit. I take 3 and pass and he cannot re-intall Faust, get money, and get cards to get my GFI, so 3 ADV and the Astro counter gets me the game.

Whizzard wins in the finals in about 5 minutes and I take 1st!

I'm not quite sure how this deck did so well. I guess I just practiced a lot and am pretty good at the game. I do think that even if this deck isn't amazing, all the Corps are pretty weak right now and this deck both teaches you a lot and lets you leverage your skill and knowledge very well. You need GOOD ICE PLACEMENT to play this deck. If you are getting remote-locked early it's because you are putting stuff in the wrong places.

One thing great about this archetype is that it doesn't have to be tricky to win, but it CAN be tricky when it is behind and has to be. You can put an Astro behind an Eli on a remote if you really have to. You can also put a Product Placement back there. It's all about your read, but make sure you are ALWAYS PUTTING ON PRESSURE. Create a new remote and create a threat nearly EVERY TURN. Eventually the runner will make a mistake, and with a 3-agenda scoring pattern, it doesn't take many of those for you to win.

Also, don't cut the Ichi. In testing it was the best ICE in the whole deck. I drew it 0 times this tournament (not counting drawing it when the game was nearly over), but I promise it's awesome.

You can also Scumbag Astro-train out with the 15 Minutes if you have to, but oddly this almost never happens.