Bonsai Palana 1.0

CURATED GROWTH CREATES BEAUTY

Back in December 2020 I stumbled across this list which seemed to fly under the radar with no comments or fanfare. It looked pretty good but I was struck by how confident the writeup came across. I thought to myself "Bah, who's this person and why do they think this is so good? Preposterous!"

Turns out that @CritHitd20 is actually a very good player and their description of that deck was spot on. I played about 30ish games with their deck with a winrate floating around 90% on jnet casual. My only criticism of the deck is that I didn't come up with it, so here are my very minor changes that arguably didn't do anything beyond making me believe I could do a writeup for it. So I'm going to spend a bit of time talking about what makes this archetype so good and why it's worth giving it a try.

GLACIER DOES NOT MEAN SLOW

Back when I was a beginner I thought that a glacier deck meant that I could build up some slow monstrous ICE defense so that the runner would get locked out and I'd slowly win while they watched my increasingly bigger grin. That's largely not true since for many runners they will reach a state of inevitably winning after a long setup.

But Glacier isn't the Rush archetype like you'd find in Titan. Glacier instead is all about assessing Scoring Windows and when you think you have them.

BRANCHES WHEN AND WHERE YOU WANT THEM

CritHitd20 spoke about the agenda suite being exceptional, and they're right. Fewer agendas means a lower agenda density, which means you're less likely to be flooded early and the runner is less likely to snipe agendas from R&D early. But with few agendas, you might not get them when you want them for that scoring window. Enter Fast Track which is a real MVP here. Now you can score the agenda you want precisely when you think you have the window for it.

I liked Fast Track so much that I tested a bunch with its upgrade, Digital Rights Management. That card ultimately wasn't worth the influence cost, as it didn't quite do enough beyond what Fast Track can do. Especially when you can utilize La Costa Grid.

CREATING SPACE - SCORING WINDOWS

This deck runs no traps and has no kill package. That means you need to score out and that means you need scoring windows. Thankfully this deck has the strongest scoring window bluff package I have seen in Netrunner yet.

NGO Front and Bio Vault both can be bluffed as agendas. Don't forget the strength of the simple install-advance move that bluffs a 4/2. Baiting runs with these two cards can give you a scoring window. It doesn't matter that Bio Vault doesn't fire if they've spent all their money getting in just to trash it.

But this Bonsai server has another layer! La Costa Grid now changes that potential for you to bluff. Now you can install anything with a La Costa down and it starts to threaten a 4/2. Or you can install-advance to bluff a 5/3.

Even more! You can Fast Track, show the runner that agenda, then install NGO/Vault instead.

As a final thought, you can reverse-bluff too. Instead of installing NGO/Vault while bluffing as an agenda, you can install the agenda with Costa down and bluff it as a NGO/Vault. If the runner doesn't check it immediately, they may just assume it's not an agenda and let you slowly score it on its own.

CLIPPING BRANCHES - THE STRENGTH OF ENDING THE RUN

Nisei MK II, Bio Vault, and Border Control all can end the run. That is a very, very, powerful effect.

Suddenly the runner needs more money and more clicks to run your scoring server. In a lategame state you might even have so many ETR effects available that they don't have enough clicks to get into your remote at all. Not only that, but you can use those effects to stop them from playing high pressure cards, such as Diversion of Funds or Indexing. These effects make this deck really resilient.

A cheeky consideration: keep in mind that when a runner passes Thimblerig in one server, you can swap it with a rezzed Border Control in another server which then lets you trash it to end the run.

SELECTIVE GROWTH - CARD CHOICES AND TECH

Agendas - This suite is unchanged from CritHitd20's choices and I don't think I have anything novel to say about it.

Assets - I've already discussed the value of NGO here. Rashida Jaheem moves your tempo along quickly, giving you pieces to create scoring windows or take advantage of when you have them.

Operations - CritHit had 1x Celebrity Gift whereas I use a Preemptive Action. I found I rarely needed the econ from Gift and I didn't like revealing my hand. Preemptive instead gives you bluff pieces back in the mid-late game. Returning NGO/Vault to R&D means that your remote bluffs are stronger.

Upgrade - Cyberdex Virus Suite hasn't been discussed yet. It does the most work against Medium and Aumakua with a side benefit of making you money if you've scored Cyberdex Sandbox.

ICE - I picked Seidr Adaptive Barrier over CritHit's IP Block. I like Seidr as its strength grows as the game goes on and the runner gets set up. It's also a full ETR effect over IP's trace. I think the virus package does enough work against Aumakua on its own and the turtle is less common now so IP's tag rarely applies in this meta. Surveyor similarly grows along with the game. Excalibur I find strongest on R&D to make Medium/Indexing more difficult. However there's also a cause to put it on the remote so that it can combine with an ETR effect to prevent further access entirely.

BEAUTIFUL TREES - FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall this deck plays out very smoothly. Games I've lost have been when a runner gets mega rich over the course of a match so that they can check the remote for everything and still have money to get in again. The deck doesn't usually win 7-0, but frequently the runner will lose when you're on match point and they're forced to check everything you put in the remote. You want to score 3 agendas - getting stuck at 6 points is possible and puts you at a real disadvantage. Two 4/2s and an Obokata is your smoothest win and should be the initial plan at the start.

The deck also doesn't aim to create a mega-server. Like sculpting a bonsai tree, you're curating your servers with just enough ICE just where you need it. Many games I've won with a single ICE on R&D/HQ and two on the remote. Runners respect the Anansi threat so they're reluctant to facecheck super early. Then they start checking so you bluff them. Then they're broke so they can't steal. Also unlike traps, if you bluff out with a Bio Vault and they don't check it... Well now you have an ETR effect so they still need to run the remote twice regardless.

My last comment is that this decklist is very strong in a tournament where lists are known. You show the runner that you have difficult ICE, that you have 3 advanceable options that move your tempo forward (opposed to a trap that moves your tempo back if they don't run it), and nothing that needs to be a secret like surprise tech. This means that you're going to be playing a game of pure, challenging, Netrunner. And that is a beautiful thing.