[THEME DECK] Truly Stronger Together

The Director silently lamented in her office. Whatever to do with Thomas. Whatever she was doing now wasn't working. Was she a bad mother? Simply put, was she putting her company before her family? She sipped her drink, no. She hadn't betrayed her family, she had created one, stronger than any other, and her empire of brothers, sisters, sons and daughters - her creations - was evidence of the fact.

A themed deck, not meant for competitive play

Every card in this deck either is a person, bioroid, clone, has art of people / bioroids / clones - or is directly relating to bioroids. (See BER)

(Vitruvius is an edge case - still not sure whether that's supposed to be a robot or bioroid in the art - but I'm going to assume the latter.)

I decided to go with Stronger Together mainly because of my obvious ICE choice. I was tempted to go with Custom Biotics but found firstly that I wasn't going to go anywhere near 22 influence - at least without the star clone herself - Caprice Nisei. Secondly, I was putting a lot of people in (Bernice Mai and Simone Diego for instance) that simply weren't going to do anything.

Also - Stronger Together is just such a damn good ID name for the deck's theme - too good to pass up.

Isabel McGuire is an edge case of whether to include or not. In favor is that I can bluff Director Haas back to hand - noting that I've specifically excluded Self-destruct in this deck. (Thematically - why would the Director blow herself up - seems a more Weyland thing to do.)

Playing the deck

Wait you want to play the deck? Um...OK. Well here's my 2 cents I guess.

Playing semi-glacier is an alright strategy - but considering that with enough clicks your ICE can be busted to hell, that's not as prudent as one may think.

Your cornerstones are going to be Ash and Caprice. On top of your immaculately painful servers - you're going to make the runner both win a psi game AND beat your trace. Stacking them in the same server is critical - because Caprice always fires first - meaning you may not even need to play the trace game.

Thomas Haas is a pretty terrible card really - however is also the ultimate bluff. One must remember that even though the money is pretty bad - you don't need to spend a click to retrieve that money. So you can Install > Advance > Advance - and then after the runner has spent X credits getting through your scoring server - you snipe him away - and make a little bank on the deal.

Regarding Director Haas - I couldn't help but add her. It seemed useless to have a deck themed like this and not have the infamous matriarch. You can use whatever you will to defend her - a good plan would be to expect the runner to go after her - and try score out your Mandatory Upgrades while the runner is screwing around trying to make enough bank to get to her. A reasonable tax on the runner would be a Wotan followed into Caprice or Ash. Remember that you have 2 copies of Interns to get these crucial upgrades back if necessary!

Another point regarding Director Haas is that you can install in her server and trash her yourself if you feel under severe threat. It doesn't score the runner the points - and unless they have Record Reconstructor - makes her impossible to get at.

Besides that, play stock HB. Stronger Together provides a natural tax - and the 1 of Zed 1.0 is a reasonable punishment for trying to brute force something the runner can't afford. Just be careful with it - because if the runner can break through the initial ICE with money - he becomes a little useless. Use Isabel to pop him back or something.