Weyland is Coming to Murder You

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None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Scorched by the Blue Sun
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Saan 3111

This is the result of my experiment of trying to create a hyper-aggressive Weyland deck using Blue Sun. It's not as crazy aggressive as I would prefer, but this is the deck that played the best so far using the cards I wanted to try out. The Ice suite selected is a mix between good Weyland stop-in-your-tracks ice, as well as taxing ice, in order to bring the runner's money down and yours up. There are multiple ways included to tag the runner as well, running two copies each of SEA Source, Snare!, Posted Bounty, and Shadow.

As for playstyle, I'll often protect R&D with a single Hadrian's Wall or Curtain Wall for much of the game, as it is often enough to deter the runner from wanting to get in due to the cost. Fem and Parasite don't erode the walls either, due to Blue Sun's ability to suck the ice back to the hand to be re-played. Also due to Blue Sun's ability, it is fairly easy to score early agendas, since you can rez ice to protect it (with ice like Hive or Tollbooth, ideally), bringing your money to zero if need be, then suck the ice back up and score the agenda out, making the server disappear. A double over-advanced Project Atlas in this deck oftentimes spells impending doom, as you can oftentimes set up lethal combos with Scorched Earth or Punitive Counterstrike.

Reversed Accounts is a godsend in this deck, as it can either kill the runner's money by advancing it several times, then siphoning the runner's money away, or by tricking the runner into running on it, wasting his money getting through your server -- and at this point he is literally forced to trash it, otherwise losing not only the money spent breaking into the server, but also the 4 credits per advancement. This can be used either to set up a scoring window to score a real agenda, or to lower the runner's money into a SEA -> Scorch combo.

The card I'm on the fence about in this deck, though, is Shadow. Advancing it allows it to become taxing to the runner, but at the cost of wasting corp cash as well. Also, if you advance it, it becomes a loss of both your time and money spent advancing to suck it back to your hand, giving some anti-synergy with the ID. It gives another way to land a tag, and if un-advanced can be sucked back to the hand, making any new ice placed down have the threat of being able to give a tag, but at one strength any sentry breaker gets through it with relative ease, so simply doesn't pack much of a threat. I'll most likely replace it, but I'm still playing around with what.

19 comments
21 Oct 2014 Ulkrond

-2 Shadow +1 Guard +1 Taurus -1 Hadrian's Wall +1 Changling -1 Datapike +1 Wendigo. Get some variety in your ice strength so you won't have to worry about a single breaker smash

21 Oct 2014 Saan

Hah, I was actually considering changing out eh Shadows for a guard and a Taurus, so that's pretty hilarious that you're suggesting exactly that. What your saying makes sense, and I was also considering cutting a Hadrian's as well, since three copies is a little bit of overkill (in addition to the 2 Curtain Walls), now that I've had some more testing with it. I'll try some of these changes out over the next couple days and reply back with findings =)

21 Oct 2014 Meristem

I'm wondering, if you're locking out RnD with a big ice, would you be better served spending the Snare! influence on some more big ice? Thinking -2 Snare +1 Tollbooth +1 Lotus Field -2 Shadow +1 JaHo +1 Hive? Something like that...I just wonder about the effectiveness of snares in play

21 Oct 2014 Saan

So far the snares have been great. They help protect my hand, and I can occasionally throw one into a server and see if the runner bites. If they do, then great, eat net damage and a tag. If not, I just suck it back to my hand on a future turn. Now anything I put down unadvanced could be a snare in the runner's eyes, plus they're going to be that much more wary about running on HQ.

21 Oct 2014 Ulkrond

would love to try that with a junebug.

21 Oct 2014 AsteriskCGY

Snares aren't bad. The threat of snares is the important part.

21 Oct 2014 AsteriskCGY

Junebug is bad because it's useless when not ran, while Reversed is like Ronin that it forces a lose lose situation on the runner. Also at 0 trash it makes R&D that bit more porus over Reversed.

22 Oct 2014 Empty_World

I highly recommend Guard over Shadow in this deck.

22 Oct 2014 Saan

@Empty_World So far I'm using Ulkrond's suggestions for ice changes, some of which involved replacing Shadow with a Guard and a Taurus, and it's seemed stronger. Shadow was a pretty weak card, and I'm glad it's out.

22 Oct 2014 Boduse

I play a very similar build to you using reversed accounts, some questions: -I assume guard is used for the early score vs criminal, what servers was shadow being used on and what we're it's weaknesses?

-how are you feeling with both punitives and scorches? I've only seen one or the other, are you using them in conjunction, are you trying to blow through plasacretes and then kill? I haven't tested a build with both of them due to what I saw as bloat, but that was just an assumption.

-17 ice has felt like too little in my games especially with the reliance on combining big ice with OAI. How are you working around this, are you playing out a rush agenda or simply focused on the kill?

22 Oct 2014 Saan

@BoduseI would generally use Shadow to try and threaten a tag and to try and tax runners on centrals (occasionally on remotes too, if I knew that the tax/tag would set me up for a kill if I could bait them into running on an agenda/asset). However, the card usually turns into something they can just break with 2 credits as soon as the runner has a killer on the field, and then what was once a taxing ice with a threat of a tag is just a speed bump.

I've found that having both Punatives and Scortches really fun. If I get a Project Atlas with 2 counters on it, the game is basically over. I can search for whichever of the two kill methods would win me the game as soon as the runner enables one or the other. And yeah, I'll occasionally blow through Plascretes in order to slow the runner down, but as I said, I run in a meta where people usually have 0-1 Plascrete in their deck at the moment. They'll start running them soon, though, I'm sure. Then I'll probably try to add in a Shattered Remains.

17 Ice does feel slightly on the low side sometimes, I'll agree with you there. Generally, this deck wins by killing the opponent, which is why it's been beneficial to have two avenues towards killing them with meat damage. I have won a few with scoring out my agendas, though. Those were games where the runner had no plascrete out and couldn't compete with my economy, so was too afraid to have a low money pool and make a successful run, placing them in SEA Scorch range. I'm not going to lie, though, I've lost a couple just due to not getting the right Ice at the right times.

28 Oct 2014 casteffens

@Saan A week later and after several plays, do you have any comments/changes? I'll be trying out tonight for the first time.

31 Oct 2014 Saan

@casteffens Ah, sorry I didn't get back to you earlier! I have indeed made a couple changes. First, I made the changes detailed in Ulkrond's post above, as they seemed like solid changes overall. After playing with them, I decided I liked them, so they're in.

I've played the deck like crazy since then, and the biggest problem I noticed was against Criminal playing Emergency Shutdown and Same Old Thing. If they could get into HQ enough to disrupt me, with the Shutdown, they could force me into pretty heavy economic denial. All of a sudden I'm afraid to hard rez my huge ice, as I can't afford to take a 10-14 credit hit that I can't take back. OAI becomes a dead draw, since if I OAI an ice it just gets flipped back over anyhow, leaving me with only 6 real economy cards in the deck (3 Hedge, 3 Restructure). All of a sudden Weyland is poor, and that's a sad, sad day. Any huge ice I drew was also very unappealing to put down, since I only really ever wanted one, maybe two on the table anyhow, and now I wanted zero, maybe one. I altered my play against Criminal a little and the matchup got better, but it still felt more difficult than I thought it needed to be. More on this in a second.

Another thing I was noticing is that getting the tag and bag kill wasn't that hard with both SEA Source and Posted Bounty as a 2-of in the deck, and some additional free influence would be a great help.

My solution to these problems was to remove one SEA Source and one Curtain Wall and replace them with a Wall of Thorns and a Successful Demonstration. This made the criminal matchup better, since I had a slightly smaller ice to get Shutdown'd as well as an additional real economy card, making me slightly less reliant on the slightly janky OAI combo. Also, taking net damage on an ice out of a deck as aggressive as this is a scarey thing, especially when that ice could appear anywhere. Even with a Corroder, it takes 5 to break, so that's still okay mid-late game. Keep in mind that these changes are more recent, and I'm still considering them. I miss the additional SEA Source in my mind, but I'm not sure I actually miss it in the game (if that makes sense).

The final change I made was to take out the Priority Requisition and replace it with a Government Contracts. Being able to rez an ice for free then take it back to my hand later for cash is nice, but this deck ends up clicking for credits a LOT. Seeing as this agenda slot is the only non-agressive agenda in the deck (because for 3 pointers there's not a hell of a lot of choice), it has to be an agenda that's going to do something for me if I score it out early, as later agendas matter less and less. Priority Requisition wasn't ending up netting me that much money; it was either scored late game when it mattered less, or early game, where I couldn't always guarantee that I would have one of my huge ice pieces out. Sure, rezzing a 5 cost ice is cool too, but that's just 5 money gained, minus whatever install cost there is to replay it. A Government Contracts score early is amazing for cash. If it's my first agenda, I'm probably going to be hitting that on two thirds of my turns minimum, maybe more, for the rest of the game. It's not always going to be better than PrioReq, but on average it's a better deal.

There! So them's the changes. To rehash:

-1 Curtain Wall -1 Hadrian's Wall -2 Shadow -1 Datapike -1 SEA Source -1 Priority Requisition

+1 Guard +1 Taurus +1 Changeling +1 Wendigo +1 Wall of Thorns +1 Successful Demonstration +1 Government Contracts

31 Oct 2014 Saan

Oh yeah, Valbaca made a deck based on this one where he made the changes Ulkrond suggested above, but switched the Wendigo for an additional Changeling, and switched out a Restructure for a Subliminal Messaging. I'm not sure I liked the Wendigo change out, as I've found the little dude helpful and 8 barriers is a little high (also, it's a more costly ice), but I was curious about the Subliminal Messaging change. This deck does a lot towards discouraging runners from running due to multiple flatline threats, so I thought it might be possible to make more than 5 credits off of the Subliminal. So I gave it a shot for a while.

What I found is that if I score it early it can gain several credits for me over the course of the game. But if I get it late, I'm usually sad it's not a Restructure, as I'm unlikely to get more than a couple credits out of it, and as a singleton in the deck, that's the more likely scenario. Additionally, against a runner with a plascrete out or a runner with a shitload of credits who isn't afraid of making runs, it can be a real bummer to not just have the 5 credits from Restructure. Finally, I've found this deck usually wants its money up front, not slowly over the course of several, oftentimes non-consecutive, turns.

So I'm not using it. But it was a fun experiment!

2 Nov 2014 casteffens

@Saan That was awesome and shows you took a lot of time to explain everything so clearly. Will try the new changes on Tuesday. Thank you!

2 Nov 2014 casteffens

@Saan Any way to fit Edge of World in there?

3 Nov 2014 Saan

@casteffens I think maybe I'd remove the Successful Demonstration and the Wall of Thorns and replace them with Edge of World and another copy of Changeling. Alternatively, you could just remove the Snare!s and strait up replace them with Edge of World and see how that works out. In general, I think I like Snares in this deck better, though, as I like the additional threat they provide to running R&D and HQ, as well as the tag potential. I'd probably try out the first set of changes and see how that goes. Brain damage could be amusing =P

4 Nov 2014 casteffens

@Saan What do you think of taking out 1x The Cleaners and replacing it with Eden Fragment?

5 Nov 2014 Saan

Maybe, but Eden honestly wouldn't net me that much money over the course of the game, and I really, really like scoring a Cleaners if they get their Plascrete out, since double scorch flatlines through Plascrete and a full 5 card hand. I'll give it a shot in some practice and let you know how it goes!