Androgynous Hottie Starts a Menagerie

This deck may be for you if the answer to any 2 of the following questions is yes:

• Do you ever feel like your opponents are always a step (or three) ahead of you?
• Do you love to take high risk gambles?
• Do you hate having to worry about ICE-breakers?

You're still here so great, we're vibing, now we're gonna throw out long term plans and go full rush. In exchange we get to mess up our opponents game plans and make them play our dice game (or at least that's the hope). Doesn't matter how skilled an opponent is, if we access ~18 cards we'll probably win. ^{No one would be rude enough to try and kill us, right??}

Lets liberate some cards..

Aggro Mercury

We only have fast money (minus one Axolotl), we have no real breakers and have virtually no tech cards. Some would say this is an error, but they're just not thinking aggro enough. Here we're all go, all the time:

• Face check some ICE
  • Future Mercury: do maybe think about what can hurt you
• Getting setup slows us down, what if we just accessed more cards instead?
  • Future Mercury: you should maybe consider setting up a little
• What if accessing cards also blew holes in the corp defences??
• What if it made them lose all their credits???
• Daily Casts too slow, get money now
• Nyoom

Now I'd love to say we can go full head empty no thoughts, but we do still have to think a little. We need as much and as dense fast money as possible so make good guesses with Falsified Credentials (or just have already seen the card), but more importantly we have to think about what ICE might get rezzed and when. A lack of money or Hermes triggers can only do so much if all the ICE is already rezzed.

The ideal scenario I think is that the corp tries to setup and defend a remote that we can run with Physarum, Boomerang, Inside Job and Malandragem. This should sink their ICE and money and give us time to find some extra access pieces then we can start digging deep into R&D or catching agenda floods in HQ.

I think working out when to risk things getting rezzed is important but difficult. Maybe the answer is to just roll the dice sometimes; it's on theme.

If you're playing against Mercury please avoid putting ICE on centrals and especially not 2 ICE! And absolutely do not make bank so you can rez it all. It's very rude..

Mid Game Mercury

Typically the runner is strong in the early and late game. We have no late game so what we have is a triple down on the early game and a cheeky way to extend it. Enter Amelia Earhart.

You'd be forgiven for assuming the Stoneship Chart Room is anti-kill tech. And it can be, but here's what's way more fun: charging Amelia once the hard way then threatening an end-of-turn charge for several turns. Before wiping out their credit total just as they're chancing something.

Or just do it immediately before they have a chance to prepare. Dealer's choice.

Losing 10 credits will force most Corps to slow right down for a few turns while they recover. This is the moment, hit all their servers, force them to seriously consider spending the last of their credits to stop you getting those accesses. Then just use the bypass tools like S-Dobrado to get in anyway.

Roll the dice. Close out the game. Live the dream.

Sad Day Mercury

Big economy IDs like The Outfit and power cards like YDL can knock out our mid game extension plans and make things difficult for us. Ultra fast combos decks like EA Murder cut down the time we have to access cards. All generally a bit sad. Oh also Anansi shudder.

These games aren't unwinnable but they're a lot more difficult and unfortunately are quite popular. These decks force us to do less dice rolls. IMHO that just means we ought to up the bet. Double or nothing. Blaze of glory.

Mercury Does Deck Building

Just like our gameplan, this deck involves rolling the dice. You could improve the consistency by paring down to the essentials and upping the multiples. My theory here is that we're trying to go as fast as possible so everything should work together as much as possible. 3x Mary is less influence and works forever vs Nyashia but Nyashia stacks so games where we draw all of them we can do exciting silly things like access 6 cards off an Eru run.

I tried to make Daeg work, one day..

Mercury Rising

This deck is a blast to play, but by it's very nature (and the super tight economy) it can be a bit inconsistent. Remember you can't get lucky every time, but you can roll the dice and see what happens o7