Off the Grid Ceremony

Inspired by @x3r0h0ur this is a remote-less glacier deck. Ice up and upgrade HQ and R&D then score out via OtG (Crisium forces a trash plus extra run to break OtG). Dedicated ceremony allows you to score 5 points in one turn, which helps speed up the final score out as well as allowing Hive to stay relevant the whole game. To score 5, simply install Hollywood Renovation, use dedicated ceremony on it and advance once. Next turn, install Atlas advance Hollywood for one token on atlas, advance again for 2 more on Atlas, score both. Alternatively, you can score out Oaktown (or over-advance Atlas) by using two dedication ceremonies.

Since we never build a remote server, we use purely operation econ (including the oversight + curtain wall combo).

Weird choices: Enigma over Datapike, the 1 cred difference in my view makes enigma slightly better--especially early game when creds can be tight. 1 runner click is usually worth about 2 creds anyways, so only time enigma is worse is when runner runs last click (which at least on HQ is rare). But I can see being wrong and Datapike being better anyways since it seems all other Blue Suns run Datapike. Maybe someone can explain why Datapike is better?

Orion is just to be able to get econ though oversight earlier to help consistency. It's rarely used as Ice, but it can help in some fringe cases to surprise trash stuff or can be put on archives to deny Dirty Laundry or other archives runs (since we can always recoup our investment by bouncing it).

Research Station is a late add because I found that HQ tends to pile up when you can't find Jackson since we rarely are able (or want to) score early and we have a decent amount of late game cards we want to be able to hold onto (extra upgrades, OtG, interns, and dedication ceremony in particular). So far it actually has seemed pretty decent :)

Otherwise, I think the choices are pretty self-explanatory. Hive does massive work in this deck, as does Tollbooth. Cad lets us tax cheaply early game and can be bounced if it becomes useless due to link. Caprice works miracles, especially since our servers are extremely taxing. Jackson is critical for clearing agenda floods, plus burst draw helps our econ. Since we don't defend our remote we can (usually) only burst draw one turn--but even that is useful, and he still taxes the corp a click. Still, his primary purpose is to clear agenda floods and so I've found it's extremely important to delay using him until he's clearly necessary. The Blue Sun power is used heavily--the obvious situations are oversight and bouncing OtG after our first score, but re-positioning ICE and being able to cannibalize R&D/archives late game for extra creds for the final score-out can be crucial in many games. Dedication ceremony can also make scoring out without the combo easier because you can install OtG, install Hollywood, dedication ceremony it, and next turn be able to double advance score. If OtG is already out you can install, dedication, and have a click left over to defend (for example play a caprice over the agenda to create another layer of defense).

Possible includes: Subliminal Messaging (because our servers are so taxing tons of turns go by without the runner wanting to run but instead just econ up). Econ is a bit tight in this deck, but I seem to always end up with just about enough--still it would be nice to be able to play a bit more. Assassin could be a good addition since it's so taxing, but it competes with Tollbooth which does massive work defending centrals early and mid-game with its EtR+tax. In theory spiderweb would be good, but slots are tight and Hive is strictly better in this deck.

Some room to ditch the Ceremony combo and use 2 GFI + 7 2-pointers agenda spread. This would force trading one Toll-booth for Assassin but would allow for subliminal to replace dedication ceremony. My worry is that this would make games go too long (some risk of deck-out), as well as forcing the last score to be with Hive at one sub. It could somewhat increase consistency though since runner will always need to score 4 agendas (and we get 2 slots for econ, tech, or ICE).

Overall, I've found this to be a very strong deck. The fact that we only need to seriously defend two servers (sometimes need to defend archives a bit) makes scoring very difficult for the runner. The deck also creates a lot of dead-cards for the runner since standard tech slots vs the metagame are close to useless here (stuff like bank-job, scrubber, film critic, and plascrete) since we don't kill and don't have a remote. Account-siphon based decks get crushed since we ICE HQ so hard and play 3 Crisium. Most ice-breaker suites have a ton of trouble dealing with the combination of Hive, Curtain Wall and Tollbooth while having enough money left over to trash Crisium Grid.

As mentioned with regards to Research Station, I've found agenda flood to be somewhat common and difficult to deal with which can create some inconsistencies--and of course, we rely somewhat heavily on the oversight combo which makes some games relatively simple (turn 1 oversight curtain helps tremendously) and some games tricky since we're forced to rely on Hedge, Restructure and clicking for creds. Still, the deck has pretty amazing resilience--I've come back from quite a few terrible draws including a memorable game where I managed to draw no Jackson together with 5 of my agendas in the early stages of the middle game, then getting Fisk Seminar draw 3 more agendas. Fortunately, I was able to rush 3 agendas in a row behind OtG. Games usually go somewhat long, but occasionally you can find spots to rush out the win fairly early--I've been able to win before my tenth turn a few times, once was turn 6 (I think...).

That being said, Noise is a pretty rough matchup. Other anarchs are fine since Faust is taxed so hard by all of our ice and we shut down account siphon strategies and make Medium difficult to charge because R&D is so taxing, but the Noise mill really taxes our Jacksons and Interns together with milling operation econ and combo pieces which makes it very tough to deal with. It's still win-able if we are able to get enough pieces to set up together with enough Jacksons. Some late-game runners (example stealth) can cause issues too--but even the best rigs get taxed fairly hard which can make trashing Crisium (and fading the Caprice) still pretty difficult and we generally have enough time to set up some pretty nasty servers (Tollbooth helps here tremendously!). Gang-sign + HQ interface is brutal since we hold so many agendas in-hand often making our first score difficult without giving away 2 agendas. And of course Employee strike hurts a lot--not the end of the world, but it does force us to try to score out quicker so we can access oversight econ, it also forces OtG to be left after our score which can be a pain (usually the plan is to bounce OtG same turn we finish scoring out our first agenda so it's not vulnerable and so that we have extra econ to defend centrals with).