A Sacrificial Construct - 2nd at Florence, Italy SC

I've messed around with Jemison a lot ever since it was released, with moderate success (see A Ramp To Mars and The Vanity Project). This is yet another build I've been messing with. It felt good enough in testing that I thought I'd drag it out into the light to an SC, and it did reasonably well, only dropping one game, which I'll get to later.

I went back to a model with a small kill package, because sometimes you get a slower draw and the runner can get ahead of you and lock the remote pretty effectively. Sometimes they fall backwards into murder because they didn't realize that's what was happening until it's too late. However, I think that it's very important in Weyland to have some kind of respectable threat if the runner can get rid of 3 tags but has to keep the 4th. Killing resources is cool and all, but I really like Exchange of Information in a deck like this. Just like CTM loves to do, exchanging a 1-pointer (or a 0 point Standoff) for a Global Food is completely brutal, and often game winning.

Beyond that, I wanted this build to play a lot of Weyland's agenda sacrifice cards. Obviously Oberth is the best at FAing agendas, but there's a lot of play in throwing an unadvanced Food or an Atlas behind an Archer and letting it sit for the turn, especially if HQ isn't as safe as you'd like. If the runner runs the Archer, rez it, sac a Takeover and advance the agenda twice. On your turn, advance another 3 times and boom, you have a Food or a double counter Atlas for cheap. Corp Town is great right now, with all the resources runners rely on, and if you play your cards right you can also use it to FA an Atlas with a Standoff (0 counters) or a 1-pointer (1 counter).

The agenda package

Honestly, I'd almost prefer to play High-Risk Investments over the Foods for monitary reasons, but it really does just lose you the game sometimes running three real 3-pointers. Also, with no Hunter Seeker, it made sense to have Food as my restricted card. Hunter Seeker isn't great in non-Skorp right now because 1/2 the field is on SacCons and the other half is on dumpster breakers. Anyhow, Food is still a great agenda, and gives me a great Exchange target. I need several large agendas since I'm running so many small ones.

Atlas is still Atlas, and I'll almost always try and FA out a double counter Atlas if I can using Oberth. One counter is fine, but 2 really helps facilitate the win. Atlas Counters are still amazing, and I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone that.

Hostiles and Standoffs are the meat of the deck's sacrificial nature. Being able to FA 6 different agendas to use Jemison's shenanigans on is really, really nice. As a bonus, they give you money too! Bad pub still really sucks though, so try and not burn through the Hostiles unless you're really sure you need them. If the game gets to the point where Archers and the like aren't a hard barrier, but a tax, you don't want the runner to have a bunch of free credits from nowhere every time they run. Always fire the first Hostile off, though, since the money is needed and you absolutely are going to sac it later.

Finally, there's the 2 False Leads. These feel very slow to score, but they often end up winning the game, so I still love em. They combo hilariously with HHN, forcing the runner to keep 2 tags for the BOOM! I've also won a ton of games by having an unadvanced Food in the remote, and saccing a False Lead after the runner's second click as they're gearing up to make a run, double advancing the Food at the same time. You can also use them for the regular shit like rezzing an Archer, but I'll always try and use a Hostile or Standoff instead if I have one and it makes sense.

FA Tools

Oberth is probably the best tool, especially when you use Jemison upon rezzing it. The other main one is Shipment from Tennin. This has a bit of anti-synergy with Bad Pub, and is another reason not to go crazy with the Takeovers, since free credits to run encourages the runner to run (surprise!). A lot of the ICE is spiky and taxing enough, though, that it finds time to get used, especially in the early game. I usually use them to FA the False Leads, since I'd rather use Atlas' to get counters. FAing an Atlas is perfectly fine though, since points are still how you win. the game =P. As I mentioned, Corp Town can be an FA tool as well, and Archers and Tithoniums can help a Never Advance strat.

This deck, while being able to FA, still creates a server and scores agendas the regular way quite often. Throwing a Food behind an Archer and on top of an Oberth is great, since you can either advance it out once the Archer stops them on the following turn, or you can use the Oberth to advance it out the following turn. Or you can just double advance it with the intention of hard advancing it out the turn after that. It's all about judging what the runner might do and if they're able to get in a server to decide what tools you want to use. After all, if you rez an Oberth, can you rez the Archer afterwords to protect it? If not, then consider hard advancing your larger agendas.

ICE

I wish Weyland had more interesting Barriers. Tithonium is frickin' awesome and I'm very happy with it, but rezzing Spiderweb always feels boring. I feel like it should still exist, though, since it does tax 3 to most breakers. However, I'll almost always have a bad pub, so it's just a 2 tax then. Vanilla is there just to be a free ETR, but they should honestly be Ice Walls. Everyone is playing Aumakua, and it can just walk through Vanillas to farm counters even after a purge. Who knows, maybe the Vanillas and Spiderwebs should just be 3 ICE Walls and a Meru Mati to make people install their breakers, and then be ignored after that. I guess I just want more barriers that people don't want to faceplant.

Hortum is amazing, on the other hand. It's not like it's painful for the runner to hit, but the cash refund always feels good, and the potential immunity to AIs is always welcome. Mausolus is a nice taxing ICE for centrals that has a hilarious Jemison interaction. If a runner ever runs with just 2 cards towards a Mausolus that they're planning on just walking through, or perhaps its unrezzed and they don't know? If you have an unrezzed Oberth or the Corp Town, sac an Atlas to rez it when you rez the Maus. This instantly places 3 counters on the Maus, killing the runner. You can do the same with a 1-pointer if you've advanced the Maus once. Hortum works the same way, to a less lethal effect. Mausolus also can give a tag to the runner to set up exchange plays, possibly comboing with False Lead to make them keep the tag.

Archer is still Archer and is fairly good. Veritas is just another ICE to throw over centrals to move the money differential in your favor. Archer was a last minute inclusion because I kept feeling like I needed more ICE, and that I wanted something spiky. It's okay, but also more expensive than I'd like.

Money

HAHAHA WHAT MONEY. Seriously though, I feel like the deck is too poor, and it's probably the largest issue. It'd be easy to shift around a few cards to make room for it, but I feel like there's just no good money options for Weyland, and using Beanstalk Royalties feels fucking awful. I threw in a Melange, and that's been fairly decent, but it can also get trashed easily out of centrals and is also slow as hell to use (and also shits up my scoring server). If Weyland can just get one money card that feels powerful, I think this deck gets way better.

The Game I lost

So I mentioned the deck dropped one game, and that I'd come back to that. That game I was faced off against what is probably this deck's worst nightmare. My opponent absolutely murdered me, and it hurt the whole time I was dying. It was also fricking hilarious, just because of how hard he wrecked me.

So, my opponent was playing Leela. That's bad enough, since I'm at least a little bit of a Fast Advance deck. I have six 2-advance agendas that I really want to score out of hand, and Leela punishes that very hard. Secondly, he's playing Gangsign Leela, with Aumakua. Gangsign is bad, since I run 14 agendas, and will usually have one in hand. When I tried to score one the long way, he Fisked my up and, naturally, I drew some of my 14 agendas. He then drops an HQI. Yeah, this was bad. But not hilariously bad, not yet. It was hilariously bad when he played Turntable. Motherfucker, I'm playing ZERO POINT AGENDAS. Turntable is the worst card printed when it comes to my situation. I think I scored like 6 points this game, and when the game ended the score was 7-1, with me having 3 agendas in my score area and 1 sacrificed.

That's a wrap

I think after this I'm going to put down Jemison for a while. I've messed with it for a long time now, and it just doesn't quite feel there, no matter how I build it. I think with one or two good cards the deck might be amazing, but it just ain't there at the moment.