YODEL RIOT [7-0, 27th**, Undefeated @ Worlds]

The Austin City Grid and Texas Meta would like to introduce you to our Yodeling secret sauce. Note: Unless otherwise noted, this was all written before worlds. @DoomRatwrote most this writeup, but @NetDadis posting it since the deck is just as much his idea as mine and he actually played it in the event.

This has been a project deck with between DoomRat and NetDad for a while, which started as a discussion over on Austin City Grid about a tag variant of PD with Oppo and Greasing. Our #Workshop chat usually ends up with several drafts by different people; NetDad's version ended up having Yodel for economy and for whatever reason and a single copy of M3A. We ended up playing it a bit and the tag angle was just bad but the deck kept winning games on the back of M3A + Yodel. DoomRat upped the agenda suite to 3 copies of M3A because the draw & credits combo was winning games. A lot of optimizing later we had a deck that was fast and rich but struggled to close. We tried Biotic and Audacity, but they were awkward a lot of the time and Vitruvius is pretty low impact. It took us way too long in DoomRat's opinion to realize that Big Deal was the obvious solution. Adding that turned the deck into straight fire. All that was left was a name.

How To Play

When its working:

Standard PD game plan for the first four points. No advance agendas behind your Gear checks and Skunk. Score them with seamless if you can, but don't wait if you can't. Your ice will usually hold if you're fast enough. Turn those scores into massive tempo with M3A into Yodel. By the time you've scored four points you've hopefully found an Ikawah Project, Big Deal and 18. Toss it in the score area and move on to the next round.

But I'm at 4 and I don't have Ik:

That's OK. Jam another 4/2 if the remote is still safe, though at this point in the game that might be wishful thinking. You can also just durdle until it shows up, which works out more than you'd think. But if you have enough credits my favorite line here looks something like:

1. Score M3A, go to 4 points, use PD to pick up Yodel.
2. Next turn play Yodel, install another M3A (you just drew a bunch of cards, good chance you have one) and score it with Big Deal. Pick Yodel up again.
3. After two turns in a row drawing four cards and not having a discard phase and drawing 4 cards, you should have a truly ridiculous hand size. Enough so that after Yodel you might be able to play Big Deal again and win by scoring another 4/2. More often you'll be just a little short with just one Yodel. Take a bunch of money, throw a Gatekeeper over HQ and discard some cards. Win with the other copy of Big deal next turn.

But I'm at 4 and I don't have Big Deal:

This one's a little bit tougher. If you don't have Big Deal but do have absurd Yodel money, the best line is to make a stack of M.I.C. and put an Ik behind it. Runner will usually struggle to steal an agenda that requires that they break two M.I.C. completely and also pay 3 clicks. If you have the third one it's gg. It isn't nearly as efficient as big deal to turn a giant pile of money into winning, but it'll get the job done most of the time.

But I'm at 4 (or less) and I don't have a giant pile of money:

This usually happens because runner had a bunch of tricks to disrupt our rush or Your Digital Life is glued to the bottom of the deck. This is the situation Too Big to Fail is in the deck for, and it'll often drag the deck kicking and screaming to a win, even though it'll be ugly as hell. If you got at least two but the remote is dead, just keep making money and jamming cards you don't care about in the remote as a distraction. Just get money and play big deal until you win or they do. This works out a surprisingly large percentage of the time, as runners are cutting multi-access and you have a six card hand size. It's very easy to miss repeatedly. Remember the advice of Peppy Hare:

Midnight-3

I can just here people thinking "OK, maybe this Midnight 3 thing is neat, but why don't you just score OffOff. That's also a lot of money and its simpler and doesn't cost YDL influence/slots." To which there are three counter arguments:

1. OffOff gives you a lot of money, its true. But M3A gives you a lot of money plus forward tempo with the cards. You're much more likely to have another agenda to jam the next turn, or even draw the YDL you need. An old Texas mantra for drawing cards is "It could be anything. It could even be money!" Speed is life. Speed is winning.

2. Post-Worlds from NetDad: Drawing is integral to the deck. The agenda density is 8/44, which is slightly lower than typical low density glacier decks at 9/49. On average you'll have to draw almost half the deck to find enough points to win, even more if the runner steals some. The burst of 3 cards from M3A plus the PD trigger gives you the ability to sculpt your next turns in ways Project Atlas can only dream of, all while padding HQ to make potentially winning runs unappealing.

3. There's a difference between a lot of money, and A LOT OF MONEY. Scoring M3 will easily produce 15-20 if you have two Yodels. In one turn you can make an entire game's worth of money, which leaves you free to close the game however you need to.

Odds and Ends

• Ice Choices: Wraparound replaced Magnet because we weren't seeing a lot of Botulus but were seeing a lot of Slap Vandal. It's cheaper and is quite good at stuffing Ari with additional utility vs. Aumakua and other AI breakers. As a rushing gearcheck, Wraparound is still peerless. Enigma came in late as an additional tax on clicks. It combos well with Military Industrial Complex and Skunkworks to create just a bit of an extra tax. The facecheck is also good, and Andrej told everyone to facecheck HB early cuz "Nobody is playing MIC". ;) He's right, rezzing Magnet or Ablative Barrier to protect an early Rashida doesn't feel great, so we built the deck to not do that.
• Greasing the Palm actually stuck in the deck for a long time after it stopped being a taggy deck. Tranq out performs it generally and is exceptional Pinhole bait, but Greasing will often let you avoid discarding cards after a M3A score. We found the extra 2c was unnecessary, but the question of "which of these 10 cards do I discard?" remains the hardest part of piloting the deck. If it hurts you too much to bin a Hedge Fund you don't need, you could add it back in, replacing the Tranqs.
• On that note, we also played a lot of versions of this that didn't have Hedge Fund. When it's rolling you're going to feel like it doesn't need to be in the deck, but the games where you need it, much like TBTF, you REALLY need it. Turns out Hedge Fund is still a perfectly reasonable card to include in your deck.
• Four Influence, One Cardslot. We were in a really awkward spot of having 43 relatively fixed cards and one slot left over. 1x Anoetic Void kept getting Pinholed or trashed from centrals, Audacity was awkward on the agenda suite, so NetDad tried to spread out that influence with Tatu-Bola and Government Subsidy with mixed results. Once we were locked on to Big Deal, the other Big card fit perfectly as an answer to the question of "What's the most money I can get in one card?". Bad pub doesn't help Aumakua break Wraparound, but 7 sure does help score behind it.
• The deck can afford about 3 copies of 6 cost ice. Originally this was some combination of Bran and Ansel 1.0, but it felt like runners were prepared for these, and runners clicking through them made rushing more difficult. At one point NetDad was toying with Ganked! which was cute and certainly did things in this list, but overall those things weren't in perfect alignment with the rushy game plan. Eventually we shifted toward M.I.C. and found the facecheck of "Lose half your turn" combined with a tricky break point of 3 subs & 4 str and the added bonus of a Border Control Button made it perfect for this deck to score the final Ikawah or protect centrals from Deep Dive. The most efficient solutions to M.I.C. require a bit of setup which the runner just doesn't have time for at the speed we're going.

Wrap-Up

Thanks to Austin City Grid for the idea that got this going, NetDad for putting a ton of work into tuning it, and NetDad again and @branimatedfor actually playing it a major event. Also shout out to @jonkey bong for naming the deck during the October AMT.

**Post Worlds Updates

NetDad and Branimated both played the list at Worlds. NetDad went 7-0 with the list, 14-4 overall record, but missed a chance to play in the cut due to a series of clerical errors and incorrect results reported to cobr.ai. The TOs at Worlds acknowledged the mistake was on their end and were kind enough to give an extra top 16 deck box as compensation for their error. I [DoomRat] wasn't there, but so far as I can tell everyone feels really bad about how this went down. Branimated, despite having not played the list before the tournament, still got it to 4-3 with what he described as 4 wins, 2 punts (protip: remember to rez Rashida and don't try to score Luminal with Big Deal, it doesn't work out well) and a mull into five agendas. On the whole, I think everyone was super happy with how it played, and Worlds was excellent fun as always. NetDad is glad to have finally met The King in person, and playing the NetRunner Randomizer with ManInTheMoon made the last day even more fun.