Souless Rig Trasher

This is a Sol Glacier deck that uses Surveillance Sweep to make cost-efficient tracer ICE into effective and destructive run-deterrents.

The idea of this deck is to tax the runner's ability to recur their rig as quickly as the corp can trash it. There is no Blacklist because I had trouble defending it, particularly early in the game in a scrubber and whizzard heavy meta, but it probably should get a slot again.

The Agenda suite is fairly self-explanatory at this point. Astro Chain is powerful, GFI and/or Beale count 3 for the corp, 2 for the runner. 15 Minutes allows the corp to FA win from 6 points, or steal a point back from the runner. The runner has to steal 4 to win, the corp wins on 3.

With rig-trashing in mind, most of the ICE are sentries. This allows the corp to focus on trashing on trashing the runner's killer, leaving them unable to break News Hound, Dracō, and to a lesser extent Rototurret (Parasite is still very common).

Sentries also supply most of the tagging and program trashing that are needed to power Marcus Batty and Keegan Lane. Assassin, Rototurret, and Archangel are the main Batty subroutines. it is really worth mentioning that Archangel does not trash a card, where it can be saved by a Clone Chip at instant-speed, leaving the runner committed to encountering the ICE with their breaker in their grip, and unavailable to them. Data Raven supplies most of the tags that power Keegan, although News Hound also chips in on occasion.

Surveillance Sweep is very helpful, making the otherwise weak traces on News Hound and Data Raven quite intimidating. Dracō also becomes a viable ETR ICE, with a bonus tag. These three are the best ETR ICE in this deck, which is odd given none of these are considered ETR outside of Surveillance Sweep. Similarly, Assassin cannot be paid through on traces, even high-link Sunny is forced to break the subs instead of letting them fire when Surveillance Sweep is up.

Most of the ICE are mid-to low cost, and the runner is forced to boost traces, not the corp, so the credit demand on this deck is pretty low for a glacier-type, but the economy suite is pretty light. 3x Hedge Fund and Sweeps Week are enough to get a match started, but grinding out credits with Melange Mining Corp. is the main source of revenue for this deck. This is the trickiest part of piloting this deck, striking a balance between maintaining a credit base to threaten ICE rez, force trace boosts, and power the deck through 1 or more scoring windows before another Melange Mining Corp. or Interns will be available. If the corp finds itself in a strong enough economic position, the Interns are excellent for recurring Batty and Keegan.

The main weaknesses of this deck are the early game, before a strong economy and servers are established and Surveillance Sweep is up. Keeping Surveillance Sweep up against early aggression is expensive and painful, but without it the ICE are much less effective. In my experience, if I can weather the early game and get a Melange Mining Corp. running with Surveillance Sweep up, then the game is almost won.

R&D digs, particularly with Medium are always dangerous. Archangel is the main defense against this, so it can be very worthwhile to dump one into archives and return it to R&D via Jackson Howard. I had been using Cyberdex Virus Suite, but found that Archangel was more effective (cannot be trashed) and had other uses in this deck.

In casual games, this deck has been very effective for me, so much so that I brought it to a couple tournaments. It did not do well at serious tournaments. The setup is too slow and too vulnerable. Without Surveillance Sweep the ICE does not keep the runner out, and paying repeatedly to keep it is very taxing in the early game.

I have moved on from this deck, but I still really like it. I like the way the cards work together and nearly everything synergizes nicely. The play is interesting and can frustrate the runner greatly. I am posting it here to share with anyone else who is interested in rig trashing, nbn glacier, and Sol current decks. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.