Sleeping in the Toybox (Worlds 2014 - 31st place)

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Repartition by Cost
Repartition by Strength
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Risque Metals (Twenty Sided Store 17 person tournament 1st)
Include in your page (help)

westonodom 1120

I had no idea what I was going to play at worlds all the way up until the night before it started. I put this deck together more or less on a whim one night to play at a weekly meetup about a month or so before worlds and felt like it had potential, so I just kept playing it. By the time worlds came around I didn't really feel comfortable with NEH anymore, so I just stuck with what I knew (after "switching" decks 4 times in the 3 days leading up to worlds).

I only lost one game as corp during the tournament (to the eventual 5th place finisher, Zach Cavis). I think it's still far from being perfectly optimized, but overall I'm very happy with it and I love that it did as well as it did given how different it is from most other corp decks I saw in the top half of the field.

As far as strategy goes, the basic plan is to do what you can to stabilize early - get some basic ice down on centrals asap, get enough credits to Biotic out an agenda, get an Archer or Wotan down on a remote (being mindful of security testing), and install every asset you draw (usually just one per turn, though, to maximize ETF's ability).

I had lots of install, credit, credit turns, and that's totally fine. This is a fast advance deck, but it isn't a rush deck by any means. If the cards come right it can go quickly, but more often than not it scores one or two agendas early-ish, then slows down and makes it extremely expensive for the runner to make runs on centrals, then scores out the last 2 or 3 agendas within a couple of turns once the runner is out of money without an easy way to bounce back up. It's okay to leak points early - in many, many games I would start off down 0-3 or even 0-4 (and in once case even 0-6), then come back and win once I got my board state solidified.

As far as ice placement goes, I tried not to put the NEXT Bronzes on the server that I thought would be the runner's main goal (HQ for most criminals, R&D for shapers, etc). Once I get 4-7 NEXT ice up (counting Mother Goddess) it's not an issue at all, but around midgame once Yog.0 is out but before the Bronzes have more than 3 strength they are a liability, so you want the Silvers to pick up the slack.

Outside of the NEXT ice I don't think I had any solid rules. It all just depended on the game state at that time. While it sounds crazy, an Archer on archives can win games (often because it is kind of crazy to most people and will trash their rig since they don't expect it).

The absolute all-star of the deck is Eliza's Toybox. I don't know why more people don't play this card. It costs 4 to trash so no one wants to do it, but there's really no option. Every single time someone let me have it they regretted it, and the problem really compounds on itself as you rez more ice.

The obvious Toybox targets are Archer and Wotan, but it has a few more uses, too. The simplest of those is that it makes Nasir really, really sad. It's also good against Reina, especially if Rook is out. I saved a ton of credits in a match using Toybox to rez ice I could have rezzed during runs, but chose to use Toybox for instead. In addition to Nasir and Reina, it has a couple of good, general uses. For example, it lets you rez your NEXT ice on servers that the runner refuses to run.

There is one last use that I discovered during the tournament that I think is incredibly strong, and actually saved two games for me. There are times where you go to 0 credits, either to fast advance an agenda or from getting Account Siphoned or rezzing ice. Sometimes, the runner is in a situation where they can exploit the fact that you can only get up to 3 credits during your turn, but they expect that you need 4 to rez some piece of ice. With a Toybox out you can rez a Mother Goddess or Architect for free, giving you a turn of breathing room to restabilize. It isn't a play I'd make often, but in turns where you know having that one ice rezzed really matters, the versatility is very welcome.

Finally, one thing that is scary at first but I learned to deal with extremely well is that if you play this deck like I did you will be agenda flooded. You will have turns with 3-6 agendas in your hand. If it's early you're going to lose some of them, and that's okay. Just focus on locking up centrals. If it's late, odds are you can just drop one in your remote and score it next turn, then repeat until you win. This was my usual win condition. Baiting with a Sleepers or Adonis is also really strong since your remote is likely to cost a significant amount of credits to get into, and you don't really care too much whether they make it or not as both outcomes benefit you in different ways.

Feel free to ask questions or post critiques or anything else in the comments - I love feedback and I'm sure I've got some blind spots that more eyes could shed some light on. Thanks for reading!

8 comments
11 Nov 2014 dtelad11

Thanks for the writeup! This was a blast to play against. Cannot wait to give it a go.

11 Nov 2014 slevin38

Interesting. Definitely will give it a go.

12 Nov 2014 Fjord

Generally how much ice do you protect Eliza's with? Does it get its' own remote or live in the scoring server until you replace it?

12 Nov 2014 westonodom

I generally only make one remote, save a naked Jackson occasionally. Usually I'll just drop a Toybox there as soon as I draw it, then use it while it lasts. If I get SanSan I'll drop it in too, then trash the Toybox when I wants to score an agenda or drop an Adonis in there. Sometimes I'll overwrite it with an Adonis then rez another one later on when I draw it.

I found that having multiple remotes can be more of a liability than a help due to the prevalence of security testing and the fact that any ice on a 2nd remote is an ice not on a central or the primary remote. I almost lost a game in the winter tournament (a "casual" tournament the day before Worlds) because I dropped something in a 2nd remote and let the runner get a ton of Security Testing runs in on it.

tl;dr - It goes in my single, general purpose remote.

12 Nov 2014 holosmoss

So what happens when you score Haas's pet project ? Do you get a second remote up ?

12 Nov 2014 westonodom

@holosmoss: Oh, right. It's situationally dependent. Occasionally I'll put an Adonis behind some ice, occasionally just a jackson that was trashed earlier (either behind ice or just naked), and probably occasionally a toybox or agenda (though those two are rarer). I typically only score Pet Project when either I don't have any other option, or I have a good target for it. I think My prefered target is Adonis with two NEXT ice that they trashed with parasite.

17 Dec 2014 sruman

Very interesting deck and I've been thinking of trying to make the toy box work.

I'd imagine with Toybox, it would typically be something like -- create an external server with some okay protection Ice -- Next Bronze / Silver, Eli. 1, maybe 2? Have a eliza-worthwhile ice somewhere else ( R & D vs. shaper, HQ vs. criminal). Then drop toy-box, hopefully it survives, then rez and rez the big ice. Was the toybox typically a 1-shot usage? How often were you able to get multiple uses out of it -- that scenario being eliza drop, turn X+1 rez-and-use, X+2 add more big ice (if have it), X+3 eliza-use, etc. Which would be 3+ turns of Eliza survival, which I'd imagine a runner would be pushing hard to Trash. Or did you often drop the big ice over the 1 remote and rez that first with Eliza, aggressively trying to get multiples out of Eliza? I suppose it depended on # of worthwhile ice in hand/on-board.

General question -- do you feel that the existence of D4v1d has weakened this deck significantly? Recursing it and adding E3's can lower the big ice tax alot. ( a token with 3 creds to go through archer would make me very sad ....). Or worse for Wotan, quetzal with her typical E3's?

Out of curiousity, how often did you fire the ABT? Giving into the thrill of that is a weakness of mine but with 11 non-0 agendas and some important scoring pieces (i.e. biotic or san-sans), I would definitely have pause if in a 4+ ice out situation. Just roughly, in general, what % ice-left in deck do you go for it?

One thing I'm considering is cutting a card somewhere (1 of the sleepers?) then going 2 Eliza's and 2 melanges. Eliza has a big upside pay-off but melange money can be more general. Any thoughts on that idea? Thanks.

Looking at the rest of the cycle post-worlds, I don't see anything that would make the cut into the deck, but I could very likely be missing something (Bifrost array?).

21 Dec 2014 westonodom

@sruman Hey sorry for the delay in replying!

In most games I only have one remote. occasionally it'll be two if the situation is perfect - one with just one or two ice for accessories like toybox or jackson, another with bigger/more stuff for sansan/adonis/agendas, but generally I only need toybox for a few turns per game. I'll also just drop it unprotected turn one or two pretty often. I'd rather them not trash it, but taking a 4c hit on turn one is also okay.

As far as the sequence of events, I'll typically install ice as I get it even if I don't have toybox yet. That way once I get a toybox online I can use it for 1-3 turns in a row and be set. I've noticed that once I get one or two big ice rezzed some people just give up on trying to trash it. One common play is that I'll install it and and archer in front of it in one turn, preferably with an agenda scored. Then if they run it and have breakers I'll rez the archer normally to trash them, otherwise if they leave it I'll rez the archer that is protecting it with toybox on my next turn.

Like you said, it's all situational in the end. I think my favorite play, though it happens very rarely, is to biotic, install Wotan, use toybox. I've only done it twice, but both times it won my the game vs shapers with multiple interfaces out.

I've only played against a D4v1d/E3 deck once so far. I won, but it was close (they also ran crescentus and clone chip - it was brutal). If that deck was more common then it would definitely mean I had to retire mine. Thankfully, though, it's mostly standard Kate and Andy/Gabe, so I don't have to worry about it. Quetzal isn't as big of an issue because I have enough barriers that she needs more than just her ability to get through. It definitely helps her, but usually Archers are really rough for Quetzal in my experience.

As for ABT, I try to have a Jackson available. If I have jackson down I fire it every time. If I've seen a lot of agendas (maybe 10 points worth?) and there are still 12-14 ice left in my deck I'll fire it sometimes. It really just depends on overall board state a lot. I don't worry too much about fast advance pieces getting trashed, or anything for that matter. I can get them back with Jackson.

I've considered adding a little more econ, but cutting sleepers/toybox isn't something I've tried. It sounds reasonable, but I'm a little worried about making R&D even more porous (melange being cheap to trash). I think I'll give it a shot though, because having a melange behind an archer would be really strong. Thanks for the suggestion.

And yea, there's not a lot that I'm excited about swapping in. Bitfrost could be neat but I don't think this is the deck for it. It's great with Efficiency Committee though.

Thanks for your comments and questions! If you try it out let me know how it goes =)