Homemade Spicy Brain Fries (7-1 @ Worlds 2021)

Recipe for homemade spicy brain fries:

STEP 1: Wait for an eager runner to jack in.

STEP 2: Mess up their run and throw them in the brain cooker.

STEP 3: Slice up the runner into thin cuts, fry the brain and add some Snek oil to taste.

STEP 4: Enjoy!

This is a silly Asa deck I brewed for Worlds 2021 mainly to create some fun moments in the swiss rounds and to give some rarely played cards a chance to shine. It performed way better than I expected, going undefeated in day 1 and carrying me to the top cut tiebreakers. The deck definitely has that swiss cheese flavour and suffers from open decklists, but early test games showed it's still quite nerve wracking to run against even if you know the list.

GAME PLAN

The general game plan is to rush with the Asa double install tempo to force risky runs early and hope the runner trips up into the brain cooker. The deck also has a surprisingly solid scoring plan either by pure rush behind End The Run ICE, or using the upgrades and nasty ICE as intimidation if the opponent knows what they're facing. NGOs add good bluffing options that can turn into lethal ICE rezzes and Troubleshooter buffs on any server.

CARD CHOICES

The common Asa tempo support cards Rashida, Assembly Lines, Lateral Growth and Tranquility Home Grid paired with the tempo-positive agenda suite allow going fast and not running out of steam. No spice found here.

One half of the spice is the nasty ICE that can flatline a risk-taking runner. Saisentan, Brainstorm and the good old Cobra are ICE that the runners don't seem to expect from Asa. Often being Asa is all it takes to get the runner to faceplant into these.

The second half of the spice is the nasty upgrades that you can slam down fast with the Asa double installs and can mess up a run in various ways:

-Signal Jamming turns off Paperclip, Black Orchestra and importantly MKUltra installs during a run and also works against SMC, Simulchip, Gachapon and Prognostic Q-Loop. (I can't believe I listed Signal Jamming as a "nasty upgrade" - look what you've done, bin breakers!)

-Cyberdex Virus Suite turns off Botulus, Aumakua, Leech, Pelangi and... Musaazi I suppose if it shows up.

-Corporate Troubleshooter messes up with the run math and combos nicely with Ganked! in the same server.

-Ganked! is great against most single use icebreaking/bypassing solutions like Boomerang, Botulus, Logic Bomb, Gbahali, Kongamato, Inside Job, Security Nexus etc. It also punishes insufficient economy with normal breakers. Since we're a rush deck, often the runner can only afford to break the ICE once, which makes 3x Ganked! quite intimidating. Combos great with Brainstorm and can lead into 10+ brain damage.

-Prisec is good against runners who survived a single Brainstorm and think they can just run through it with no cards in hand. Prisec can also finish off what Saisentan and Cobra couldn't finish off during the run.

Earlier versions of the deck also ran Navi Mumbai City Grid and Helheim Servers but were dropped for more Troubleshooters and more Ganked!. Navi was a nice way to blank Boomerang, but I was always hoping it would be Ganked instead, especially because it also fires when accessed from centrals and costs zero credits. Helheim was almost always worse than a Troubleshooter because all the Asa installs and tempo cards mean I usually have 0-2 cards in hand.

WORLDS MOMENTS

Round 1: Mark playing Adam dies to Snek oil after their Engolo painting ability has already been used up on Vanilla.

Round 2: groenkaaf playing Steve dies in a double frying process on turn 2 after Bravado facechecking a Brainstorm into Ganked!

Round 3: lstm playing Adam dies to Snek oil on turn 1 after Logic Bombing the Snek, to find an agenda on Ganked!

Round 4: aunthemod playing stealth Kabonesa with Afterimage proves too difficult to kill, but Asa scores out behind Gatekeeper when Prisec snipes out decoder recursion from hand.

Round 5: Lucidit playing Sunny gets rushed out by not finding a way past Vanilla in time.

Round 6: Sanjay playing MaxX gets down MKUltra early to stay alive, but struggles a bit with economy to keep breaking all the sentries. This opens a window to score out on scary Ganked!-enhanced remote after MaxX goes yolo and eats a Brainstorm on R&D to go to zero hand size but can't find the agendas.

Rounds 7: sebastiank playing Az gets sliced up by Saisentan but survives. Signal Jamming gets a moment of glory after preventing Prognostic Q-Loop installs and allowing scoring out behind double Gatekeeper. Not sure how much the Jamming made a difference in the win but hey, Signal Jamming was rezzed and used on a Worlds livestream!

Final day tiebreaker into top 16: thebigunit3000 playing MaxX gets down MKUltra while I rush to 4 points and plays well to avoid tripping into a brain cooker. Open decklists are in use. NGO bluff on a lethal remote fails. I've Had Worse saves from Saisentan hit on R&D fired by a Corporate Troubleshooter. Stargate smartly snipes out ICE and finally finds the agendas. Nice game with some thrilling moments and a well deserved win for thebigunit3000

FINAL WORDS

Worlds 2021 was a lot of fun and this deck accomplished its mission of creating fun moments in the swiss rounds. Shoutout to my fellow jankster @Kagolskab from our small Copenhagen meta for helping test this silly deck. Huge thanks to all the NISEI folks, TOs, streamers, commentators and the whole community for keeping this game alive. Thanks for reading and Always Be Running!