Tower to the Sky (Roadmap)

lostgrail 114

Prototypical Weyalnd Always-advance deck. I've been itching to build this deck ever since Because We Built It was released. Simply, every turn you don;t score an agenda, you advance a card. Probably a piece of ICE, but once you have The Root out, anything goes.

Economy This deck features four kinds of economy: Agenda-based econ, Asset-based econ, Operation-based econ, and savings-based econ.

The agenda based econ is pretty straight forward: you advance agendas, then you get paid for it. Mostly this gives you bad publicity, but we're Weyland and give no fraks.

Operation and asset-wise, it's one card in each category. While this may not seem like much, with all the advancing Commercialization is a gold mine. Even with only Shadow, Ice Wall, and Hadrian's Wall (and sometimes Swarm) in the current card pool I've found this to be incredibly effective. GRNDL Refinery is always a strong bet.

The fourth kind is provided by the identity itself, The Root, and Architect. These recurring sources of credits (or in the case of architect, install fee free installs) will preserve the money you have for when you need it: rezzing all that delicious advanced ICE. Honorable mention in this category goes to Constellation Protocol, which will allow us to recoup on advancement tokens spent on the advance-to-reduce-cost quartet, and consolidate them on other pieces of ICE. In a way, Trick of Light is also in this category, as we are able to re-use advancement counters form ICE to quickly advance our agendas.

ICE Twelve of the nineteen pieces of ICE are advanceable. Why not all? Because you want to focus those advancement tokens on a few pieces so that Commercialization is viable. Six of those will probably be capped at three advancement counters (since after that it's not worth the investment). This means that we have six possible pieces of ICE that we will advance towards the sky as Commercialization bait.

The other theme here is program trashing: we want to keep the runner's breakers offline. Archer, Nebula, and Orion give us several options, as well as Wormhole in conjunction with any of these. If they cant' break our ICE, they can't get in.

Conclusion I'm looking forward to honing this style of deck, and to see what other people will do with it. I think by the time we see Order and Chaos out, the ICE Fortresses of days gone by may be making a comeback.

But, what do you think? What did I do wrong in this deck? What did I do right? I've tried to provide some justification for my choices, but I want to hear what other people have to say so i can do a better job. Comment! Criticize!

4 comments
27 Nov 2014 MasterAir

I'm sad that you don't have Swarm especially as your deck seems already primed to take Bad Pub on the chin. Maybe Nebula is better, I'm not sure.

I also think you might be struggling to score with very few ways to score from hand and no way to leverage your money advantage, the runner can probably be rich enough to break your gigantic ICE.

In my experience Glacier decks prefer Jackson Howard to Anonymous Tip. You need to dump your agendas until you get set up.

I'd try -1 Trick of Light +1 Corporate Troubleshooter. (Which gives you a couple of spare influence). Maybe an Aggressive Secretary to ruin the runner's day.

Project Atlas? I don't think Weyland are good enough to give up access to their best agenda.

27 Nov 2014 lostgrail

Swarm is my least favorite of the viable advancable ICE in the current card set. I find too often that when my back is to the wall I can't rez it when I need it. My hope with Nebula is that, at worst, three turns after install I can rez it for free.

You are absolutely right about Jackson Howard. It's a much better fit because of the archives trick. As a bonus, Architect can give some forewarning about when to use Jackson just to get a reshuffle.

I like the idea of Aggressive Secretary and Corporate Troubleshooter. In fact, I think I will add two Troubleshooters and third Howard in exchange for the Trick of Light. Not sure what else to drop to make the room though. Maybe a drop a GRNDL Refinery, but what else?

Project Atlas is a good choice too. I guess I shouldn't dismiss a 3/2 because I'm not sure I can capitalize on the ability. I can see swapping the Superior Cyberwalls for this instead.

28 Nov 2014 greasy spicetaster

Hey man, I like the deck. But after looking at it, I have a question. How come you haven't included Simone Diego? I've been playing BWBI for a while and I've realized that Simone is a really solid support card for adanceable ice decks. She also synergies with GRNDL Refinery and Hostile Takeover.

29 Nov 2014 lostgrail

@greasy spicetasterSpace. I wish I had room for more Roots too. With all the new goodies from O&C, this deck's feeling pretty full. I agree with you though, Simone is a great woman to have around when building towers. What might you drop to fit her in?