Cory in the Warehouse

Yeah... I made that reference. What's up?

Concept

I'm back at it again with ST, one of my favorite decks to play. Recently receiving love and playing this against some people, I've come up with my most stable build yet to date.

People that play ST a lot know two things about it:

• ST has a hard time balancing ice in a manner that ETR wouldn't play the suite better
• Our early turns are the most important to determine the outcome of a game.

So let's discuss some options to fix these problems.

1. We can either run more ETR ice to keep people off our centrals / Adonis. This is the route some people take and works decently well. This forces people to look for an answer, which is nice. I dislike this because we don't get our ID ability. I also see a lot of eater and keyhole in Reina, Whizz, and even some Val. This makes those ice the same as our bioroids, except less taxing, and we can't use BTW on them.

2. We can try and deal with the weak early game and accelerate into mid as fast as possible while running all porous ice. Here is the goal my build tries to achieve. We dig for ice, econ, bury agendas flooding our hand, and attempt to not lose tempo. We use cards like Crisium Grid and Daily Business Show to accommodate how weak our ice is. It keeps our ability online and offers more answers as time passes. These cards are never bad to see later in the game either. I'm not saying this playstyle is for everyone, nor am I claiming that it is better than the first method. This is consistent for how I like to play.

Agendas

I run 9 instead of 11 on purpose. One thing that ST suffers from is flooding with no Jackson, DBS, Crisium in sight. this is going back to our goal. Eliminate early game issues. We want agendas later more than early. Running less helps. A well timed legwork early has snatched 5 points from my hand before. It hurts lol.

Influence

• Celebrity Gift is time and time again proving that it's the right decision for this style deck. The only reason to not run this is not being able to lay NAPD, advance it once, and gift. Gift always has to be on a turn that you don't intend on setting up to score soon. Otherwise for me, it has blown everything else out of the water.

• Daily Business Show This card is ridiculously good. We will use this to bury agendas early since we can't score behind bioroids.
  ST falters early game. You can either add hard ETR ice, which doesn't supplement our ID, or you can try and hasten that poor early game into mid game. DBS has been doing this for me. Try it. You won't be disappointed. Protect this with a single ice if possible.

• Jackson Howard stays in here as 2 because he is always good and we can abuse ABT by just pulling the trigger with no regards if he is on the table.

Assets

Standard, but strong assets. They don't even need explained. Stay away from Eve Campaign. She is too slow. Anything bursty like Private Contracts could work in her place if you decide not to go the Celebrity Gift route like I do.

Choices and Flavor

• Markus 1.0 I originally thought this card was bad. It's not, it's downright useful for taxing out lady's options and still costs corroder 4 to break.

• Brain-Taping Warehouse After testing this for awhile, it's our staple economy card. We want to see one asap. running less than 3 is something I personally wouldn't recommend. People that play against me often, immediately will go and trash this. We don't mind them doing this for tax, but we want to find another to put on the board. Have 2 with one trashed leaves finding that last 1 hard to find :(

• Daily Business Show Use this to bury agendas and dig dig dig. There is nothing you want to see more than additional econ and ice. this has rounded my long problems with ST.

• Crisium Grid In other builds of mine I had 0 or just 1 of this card. If you want this deck to be even moderately competitive or have ever considered going to a tournament with ST, don't go without this. ST is weak early. We can be siphoned, keyholed, maker's eyed, legworked, etc and literally almost lose all our tempo or lose the game outright before we ever gain momentum. If you just play ST for fun, exclude this card. Otherwise, 2 is the correct number. Only running 1 hasn't shown up enough for me to be consistent.

Exclusions

• Medical Research Fundraiser people are testing out. Here is my bottom line thought on it. Only run this if you plan on needing the burst 5 credits on a single click.

MFR does have some advantages though. It is better than gift on the first turn. You can't risk playing gift on turn 1. You can with MFR and it feels good. It also lets you gain bursty econ, lay an agenda and put down a piece of ice for a next turn score.

MFR doesn't see competitive play in most decks because it really isn't that great. It ends up being a click you spent to put your econ only 2 above your opponent for the compromise of burst. I don't think ST should ever be in a spot where it needs 5 credits so badly that they'll offer the runner money as well for 5 credits other than turn 1.

I also purposely run NAPD, DBS, and ST because of no other reason than tax. I'm not going to give the runner anything more than I have to. They are encouraged to click through ST ice because it's more costly. Don't negate your ID for even a single run. Don't give them 3 credits to go trash your BTW or DBS.

Please comment on success with or against MFR / Gift. I'm open-minded, but right now, I don't see a spot for MFR in my deck.

Thank you for reading my long description. Feel free to message me on Reddit "Four_Leaf" if you'd like to talk about ST. Thanks again everyone