The Thing (IG Prison Lock)

PRESENTING
JOHN CARPENTER'S

You may have thought it was dead. You may have thought the Museum errata would kill infinite recursion. You may think that without the Heritage, the deck would surely starve. But no matter the beating it receives...

It will not die.

Hello all! What a month for Netrunner! I've been on IG for a while now, basically since I took this to the Louisville Regional's Top 8 (As well as St Louis)

This was about a week before the big bad City Hall decks took storm. However, I, along with a few others, stuck with yellow IG, which has proven to be both less bullshit, and much speedier.

Here's the cards that make the basic shell function:

• Sensie Actors Union: The guild is god-tier card in IG, and helps you achieve everything you need to to turn the deck on: Overdrawing and speed. Meanwhile, IG as an Identity almost fully negates the card's downside.

• Bio-Ethics Association/Ibrahim Salem: The win condition, obviously. Ibrahim may seem like a troll include, but I score a Chronos Project almost every single game at one point or another. Never again will you hit an I've Had Worse, and never again you miss that key Slums that would otherwise save the runner. And on top of that, it's a pseudo-Bio-Ethics bringing your maximum output to 4 damage per turn.

• Caprice Nisei/Marcus Batty: These obviously protect your Archives, and with a Sandburg + Komainu surprise, Marcus can often just outright win you the game.

• 2x Museum of History: Two are all that are necessary. Nearly every game, I end up with two Museums on the board, one unrezzed, and 0 cards in R&D. it sounds like a simple problem for the runner to deal with, but this deck tends to have a much larger Archives stack than most, and Jackson can fix you in a bind. This card is really only necessary in the late game, and the Unique restriction just changes the card fundamental function (From maintaining R&D density to simply maintaining R&D)

• 1x Shock!: It may seem surprising to only include only 1x, but this IG deck is not meant to tax. It is meant to end runs and keep Archives very, very full (At least 10+ cards). The Shock! is merely to provide realistic threat to continuing a run after Komainu wipes, and nothing more. If they continue with 0 cards into Archives, they should die.

• Sandburg: Along with 9x ICE, all acting as gearchecks, this can very efficiently turn the deck into a monstrous glacier at an EXTREMELY low cost. This mostly is used to protect Archives, but if a savvy runner manages to remove your Bio-Ethics from the game, you can sensibly score out behind two giant Vanillas. It's very easy to read whether a runner can deal with that in a single turn after the IAA.

The rest are just candy:

• Docklands Crackdown: This has to be my favorite pizzazz card in the deck, and functions at nearly any point in the game. Often in end-game, you only have a single card you can recur, so you have 2 spare actions each turn. Originally, these actions were devoted to Capital Investors, but Docklands proved to be much more oppressive, as it negates economic return on many resources. And early game, if you can get this behind an early Vanilla, you created a very demanding and hard to deal with problem for the runner right out the gate, while also building up your other problems.

• Cerebral Static: Even at a one-of, you can probably find this before the runner find their Employee Strike, and just camp it in hand until that happens. Additionally, if you ever see Whizzard across the board post-MWL, you have a lovely answer.

• Voter Intimidation: This card is so useful, I cannot even begin to list the amount of cards it deals with. Liberated Account too full? Film Critic with a TFP? Same Old with a Levy in the bin? SCRUBBERS? Early installed DLR? It is 90% of the time the card that I continually recur in endgame to wipe the runner's resource board.

• Crisium Grid: Originally, this deck had a lot of problems against Siphon and Vamp decks. No more! And luckily, I've caught a few other threats in the crosshairs: Indexing, Apocalypse, and Keyhole.

• Executive Boot Camp: Being a pseudo-glacier deck, Blackmail runs on Archives give this deck quite a problem, even with Caprice. Luckily, EBC handily fixes that problems by rezzing ICE early. You don't even need to worry about the Parasite threat if you have a Sandburg on the table.

All in all,

IG IS NOT DEAD