Rocket Fuel

Before the MWL 2.0 hit, I was experimenting with a non-MCH non-Museum deck, just in case the MWL hit them. It turned out that now much happened aside from Museum being unique, but the deck still ended up working, so here it is, modified to the new MWL standards.

Despite the name Rocket Fuel, this is not a super fast deck. Rather, there is a build up, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you win. Also, explosions! Also, Gagarin space puns.

The goal is to fast advance two 5/3 agendas (or the Government Takeover) and a Public Support. Although the deck contains Punitive Counterstrike, this is primarily a Fast Advance deck. The Punitive Counterstrikes are really just there to punish runners for having the audacity to take your agendas before you have the chance to score them. Fear of dying slows the runner down enough for you to make your money and get your power cards rolling, and then you take a couple turns to score a couple agendas and win. A lot of the time I go from 1 point to 7 points in just two turns.

The deck makes stacks and stacks of money. I've had 80 credits just sitting around, and now that Sandburg is out, this is a pretty big damn deal. In the early game, people will usually try and trash your econ, but just keep playing out assets and eventually DBS will show you a Diversified, and then you're pretty much good for life. The first time you play a Diversified, then rez Clone Suffrage the following turn and play Diversified again, the runner usually just gives up on trying to keep you from your money. If you can get Commercial Banker's (or two!) to fire a couple turns in a row, the same usually happens. This is great, because you need a lot of money if you want to land a Punitive or two, and you need a lot of money to FA 5/3 agendas (or a 9/6, which can indeed happen).

So, I rambled a little about the money, but here's a breakdown. Diversified (recurred with Clone Suffrage) and Commercial Banker's Group makes up the meat of it, but Mumba Temple is too good not to include, even costing an inf a pop. The PADs are there to fill out a little more econ, since sometimes you just don't draw the big boy money for a while and need something to help you limp along til the windfall comes.

The FA package comes in the form of Mumbad Construction Co (MCC), Dedication Ceremony, and Casting Call. MCC will usually go in a protected server, since the runner will usually kill them on sight if they're not protected. If it is protected, you can either rez it and start accumulating counters, or you can leave it unrezzed and wait for a Dedication Ceremony to show. There are a lot of combinations of cards and MCC tokens that allow you to FA an agenda. If MCC has 3 counters, you can FA a Hollywood with no issues, provided there's no Clot threat. If you have both Dedication and Hollywood, you can rez MCC on their turn, gaining a counter, Dedicate the MCC click 1, install Hollywood click 2, then advance and score click 3. Obviously you can score with no clot threat if there's 5 counters. You need the Casting Call if you want to FA a non-Hollywood agenda, but with 3x DBS and Consulting Visit, this isn't that bad.

For the agendas, obviously Hollywood is the most useful, since it's already face-up. We don't give a shit about it's ability; we don't care about advancing things at all. We just want to score it from hand. High Risk is in because if you score it, you can regain your money losses using whatever money the runner has. Public support is basically an agenda, and it makes sense to protect them rather than just throw them out there in the middle of nowhere to tax the runner, since you really do want to score one. The Takeover is there to reduce agenda density, give a juicy Punitive target, and, occasionally, to score. I've scored it several times, you just have to set it up properly; if you Dedicate the MCC twice right after it's rezzed, you're threatening to score GT next turn. When massively up on money, I've even Casting Called GT then dedicated it twice, daring the runner to run on it before I score it the next turn -- don't do this if the runner is already on 3 points =P. It's a fun card, but I will admit there's a little risk to playing it.

The ICE is mainly chosen because it's a pain in the ass to deal with. Bailiff is kinda a pushover, but it gets you money for accesses, which can pay a lot in a deck with only 6 agendas. If you're rezzing it with Temple, it's basically a pop-up with a hard ETR gearcheck. Hive can help you get through the weaker early game, and Spiderweb is basically a Hive that keeps subs all game. Tour Guide is Tour Guide, and can have a billion subs. Assassin is annoying to break, and with your money can sometimes give you a nice couple traces. There's really no good Code Gates to play in Weyland, so we don't bother. Maybe a Wormhole might be good again now that there could be less D4v1d out there, but I'll let time tell on that one.

The rest of the cards are mostly kill cards or filter/tutor cards. DBS is incredibly important, because you want to see specific cards at specific points in the game, and this lets you do that. You almost never want 3 rezzed, but 2 can be okay depending on how fast you want to go. Consulting Visit can act as Punitive 4 and 5, but can also be used to find other goodies. Consulting for a Dedication or a Casting Call isn't bad, and honestly if you really need to get the money train started, Consulting for a Diversified can be fine if you are pretty sure you can play it again next turn with Clone Suffrage. Suffrage also gets back goodies like Dedication and Casting Call if you need them for once the scoring happens. Interns is for getting back key cards such as Public Support and MCC, and Sandburg is for making the runner's life incredibly difficult, and occasionally outright impossible. A late game Sandburg behind a Tour Guide is soul crushing.

As I said earlier, this is primarily a scoring deck. Playing for the kill can work, but scoring is almost always better. Don't be afraid of scoring the hard way without using MCC if the runner gives you an obvious window. You have a ton of money, so spend some on getting agendas out. You only need to do it twice =)

You could also build this deck using Museums and Mumbad City Hall, but at that point it's probably better to just chuck all the cards that aren't in Hot Tub Time Machine and just make it Hot Tub Time Machine.

Also, I'm dumb and somehow accidentally took out the 3rd Pad Campaign before posting, apparently. This is actually a 49 card deck, I swear =P