Sheffield Steel - Wargames Emporium SC, Sheffield, 1st Place

Won the Store Championship at Wargames Emporium (Sheffield, UK) with this deck out of a field of 16. A similar version, but with slightly different events finished Top 8 (out of 20+?) at Patriot Games (Sheffield, UK) the day before – unfortunately seven Account Siphons dumped me out of double elim that day. Embarrassingly I didn't win many games with this deck to get the Store Champion sash - although several were down to "win next turn" situations. For the real powerhouse of my rankings, go look at my runner Party Time, but several people were interested in my Corp deck so I've posted it up for completeness anyway, even if it needs work!

I’ve tried many versions, the first few of which had SanSan in – but I was finding it hard to rez and use while maintaining economy for later Biotic (or vice versa). With the release of O&C though, we now have opportunities for strong defensive ICE that can be paid for in terms of rezzing over more than one turn via advancement counters – and a good target to use those counters for Trick of Light (at the same cost as SanSan in influence, but much cheaper price in credits).

SanSan possibly allows more than one fast advance (although I never got more than one use before it was burned with fire) and has the trash cost to tax runners. ToL is one shot, but you can potentially get something scored when the runner thinks you don’t have enough for Biotic Labour. Reclamation Order does the work here, of either getting back economy or fast advance cards, to allow reuse.

Runner is back on top again now I feel, after some brief excitement about Corp getting some good cards over the last cycle. As a result, most of the time the runner can get into and server and so often does. I’ve caught so many people with Aggressive Secretary over the last four tournaments I’ve lost count. I even ran one naked, double advanced and someone face checked it. Adding ToL means even if they’re wise to this trap, its another target for safely storing advancement counters to score out later.

The ICE suite changes daily or more often as I tinker around. I did think about Wormhole and Viktor and not running many sentries, but ultimately keep a nice mix. As I played a lot of Kit yesterday, I’m glad. Feel free to have a play around with those ICE though or Architect, Ichi 1.0 or others. I’ve still not settled on the perfect mix. One thing to watch out for is parasites killing your NEXT Silver. NEXT is really strong in some match ups (no Parasite) and really flaky in others. Again, I went for a mix of strengths and types to try and cover as many bases as possible. Early Wormhole seemed a struggle to me, so I went Nebula, but there’s plenty of new fancy ICE to play with – be aware that all are vulnerable to D4v1d so you’ll want to stack them. I think Ichi 2.0 is too expensive having played it as well. Perversely I want to try Janus or the big Hiemdall!

MaxX and Anarch are definitely a thing right now, so it could be worth swapping out something for Crisium Grid and I’m experimenting with Boot Camp as it goes well with the ability.

Domestic Sleepers is in there to get that last point I was always struggling to achieve, but I’m still not sure about it. I think the trick is to score it and click it at a safe point fairly soon after. A couple of times I got to 6 points with a scored DS and the runner made a final last-ditch Hail Mary run and snagged the last card (once the very last card of three accesses on zero credits). So if you’ve your to use it make sure you get the point racked up early as this adds some urgency to the runner earlier, when you can manage it better.

Another version of this deck didn’t have DS, Eve or Reclamation and went for 3x Successful Demonstration. Like Peak Efficiency they are good economy cards if you get them at the right time. Don’t get too precious about holding on to them if your hand is getting full, ditch them and Jackson back in later if you think they’ll be more use then (or Reclamation if you’re playing that).