Midnight Sun Kit 22.09 [Berlin StartUp CO Oct-2022 8th]

I wanted to build a runner deck with an identity not so commonly seen in current meta. I also didn't want to rely so much on the boat, having chances to challenge servers even if the boat doesn't appear or is trashed. I ended up with this Decoders-based Kit deck.

I brought it to the Startup CO celebrated in Berlin in October 2022, and I had with it 2 wins, one tie and one lose. One win was against Pravdivost and was quite close, I had luck on my last possible access before losing. The other one was having more points on time-out against Restoring Humanity, and the tie was another time-out, against GameNET. The lose was against Built to Last, flatlined quite early with an Azef Protocol after commiting the mistake of ending a turn with one card. I played a Pravdivost deck as corp.

The idea behind this deck is to make cheap runs as soon as possible with Euler, forcing the Corp to dedicate resources to stack and rez ICE since the very beginning, delaying their plans.

It takes advantage of the trinity of icebreakers that work better on the turn they are installed (Euler, Gauss and Penrose), Pelangi helps to get the most of them, and SMC helps to find them when facechecking. Aesop and Simulchip help to recycle them while getting some value. Trickster Taka and Mantle help with the running economy, specially when Penrose is on the table. Carmen is there to help when you find yourself breaking sentries frequently, and it serves this purpouse quite well, specially with odd number of subroutines where Euler is less efficient. Cordyceps can be tutored to get rid of specially taxing ICE and Endurance helps to get more value of these efficient runs.

I didn't want to rely so much on Endurance, neither for MUs, so I also included a couple of DZMZ Optimizers. They also help with the costs of the recycling icebreakers.

I didn't use Hyperbaric or Gordian Blade because I wanted to be able to run earlier and dedicating less resources. For long games with more stacked ICE, the boat helps, as well as Penrose with Mantle and Taka.

The plan to steal agendas is to pressure with Conduit. If the corp succesfuly protects R&D, they will have to neglect other servers, so you can recycle it and focus on the scoring servers and maybe HQ. If they don't, you just continue pressuring there. Clot helps against fast advance.

Something I like about this deck is that it offers many possibilities, and thus it leads to very different games, adapting to the situation in an authentic shaper way. Sometimes you install the whole rig of icebreakers and go on with them and DZMZ without requiring Endurance, other times you fully rely on the boat, and other times you mix it with a single decoder. And you can vary how much you focus on running R&D.

This was true for JNet, but when facing the real world, the day of the tournament, I ended up installing the boat quite early in all games, sometimes mixing it with Euler. I didn't even see Penrose or install Taka. Harmony AR Therapy is mostly there to recycle economy cards on long games, but you don't find many of them on tournaments, so it has been mostly a dead draw, I drawed it almost every game, and only used it once and probably I shouldn't have done it.

I had quite fun and challenging games with this deck in the tournament. Thanks to everyone that participated and 114141 for the organization!