Immortal Sun Glacier: Corporations Are People Too

This started as a fun proof of concept, and ended as one of the most successful decks I've built in the past few months. At first I figured I'd throw the new Downfall cards for Weyland into the ID that seemed like it could make the most use of them, have some fun, then go back to what I had been doing after it inevitably got rolled. But something happened that I did not expect: I started winning. A lot. Most games were not even close. And those that were close typically ended with a lethal Counterstrike. At the time of writing, the deck is on a 13-win streak. And there is a lot of room for improvement in this list - it's not even using its full spread of influence!

The core idea of the deck was to reduce agenda density as much as possible within reason, effectively making it as hard for the runner to luck into a win as possible, while maintaining a reasonable amount of ice and money and maintaining a strong win condition. To this end, there are 8 agendas in 59 cards - go ahead and call me insane for running 59, but it's been working, and working well. The strategies that 6/44 agenda comp Azmari players might be familiar with on defense are just as effective if not more so here. Since they're all 5/3s, the runner has to steal three of them to win - and they're quite hard to find in a deck that defends its centrals so strongly as this one.

For the agenda suite: 3/3/2 SSL/SDS/CWP. You could easily tweak the numbers here, but I went for one less copy of the agenda that doesn't do something when stolen from centrals. SDS Drone Deployment has been extremely good, usually eating something marginally relevant on the occasional steal and smashing something extremely relevant on the fairly common score. Shooting a Criminal's only Engolo is a glorious feeling. SSL is a good card and you all know what it does. City Works Project is in my opinion weaker than the other two options since it's blank in centrals, but it sets up Counterstrike well and is generally a pain to get out of the remote. I have considered Eden Fragment to save a decent amount of money, but am reasonably confident that CWP's remote spikiness is better. Save the Fragment / Media Blitz plans for the jank tank. If a 59-card deck isn't jank enough for you, that is.

My current of choice is Death and Taxes, mostly because I really hate Crowdfunding. It's usually used as a counter-current or dropped when multiple cards are about to be trashed on the Runner's turn, but feel free to run it out early against Tech Trader decks if you aren't too worried about Grant. Scarcity might be better. Your call.

Drudge Work looks a bit out of place, and to a minor extent it is. But it can be bounced by Blue Sun after burning two counters, can save agendas that were shuffled or milled, and in combination with an R&D stacked with Surveyors, makes it incredibly annoying for the runner to accumulate points while the deck sets up. If for whatever reason you're afraid of decking out, this card singlehandedly prevents it and, in combination with the ID, provides an infinite economy engine that fixes any agenda floods that might happen in the absence of fired Gatekeepers. I tend to ship agendas drawn before the remote is ready, but usually stop using Drudge once I'm ready to score or kill. Feel free to trim one or both... if you feel lucky.

3x Hedge, IPO, Rashida: I'm playing Corp, what did you expect to see here? No NGO Fronts because they're not necessary. You don't need to bait the runner when their remote running options are "no" and "yes, but then dead." Or, more commonly, both.

3x Oversight AI and Building Blocks, 3x Orion and Chiyashi. Ah, here we go. This is the main draw of Blue Sun, and the main source of additional economy cards to balance out the larger deck size. It is not uncommon to be sitting on 30-50 credits as a result of these. Since your ID ability bounces, Orion being unique is nowhere nearly as large a drawback as it might seem at first glance, and Building Blocks is both a source of free money and a way to further load up Surveyor servers. God, I miss Curtain Wall.

Blue Sun may look like an Oversight one-trick pony, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Its true strength is its ability to ensure that its ice are always where they're most effective, and this is best exemplified with Gatekeeper. It could probably go down to 2 copies to free up influence if needed, but it's been excellent, both as a fixer on occasion and a reasonably taxing gearcheck otherwise. The other ice that benefits specifically from the bounce ability is Sandstone. While it looks mediocre, it patches a prominent hole in the ice suite, notably that Paperclip and Laamb make every other barrier here very sad. Like Gatekeeper, it could probably ditch a copy if you needed space, but the ice count is actually rather low for a glacier deck once you adjust for deck size.

Border Control and Surveyor are both standard Good Cards, but they have additional utility thanks to Blue Sun. Border Control is often used as a central gear check early then moved to the remote later, no Thimblerig required, and since all your ice is getting bounced to wherever it's most useful, it's often derezzed, but Surveyor doesn't care about that - it defends centrals with X=6 or X=8 for a measly five credits. Mausolus is wherever you need it to be, whether that's on Archives to discourage Crowdfunding, or on a central server to make them irritatingly taxing to get into repeatedly. Floating the tags from Surveyor and Mausolus has happened enough to make me want to slot a High-Profile Target, but usually killing off their resources is enough to close the game. Excess Orion can still boost the strength of a Surveyor while unrezzed.

The main win condition of the deck is scoring three agendas via the combination of heavily iced centrals, Crisium Grid, and Reduced Service. The first Crisium goes on HQ most of the time because of the raw power of Criminal tech. The second either goes on R&D if you're expecting Khusyuk or similar digs, or goes on Archives if you don't want to commit a second piece of ice to the defense of your Reduced Service. An additional tax of 8 credits just to begin a run is no joke, and if they remove the counters by making runs over several clicks then you can just bounce it and reset. The single remote typically consists of 1-3 Border Control, 1 Reduced Service at 4, one other ice (Sandstone is usually ideal, since bouncing off it to chip it down won't farm TTW counters) to discourage using the server for farm when Reduced Service isn't online, and either an asset to generate value or an agenda being pushed into your score area. The threat of Border Control on your Reduced Service remote is almost more powerful than the Border Control itself, but use them wisely, as you only have three shots. No Preemptive Action here.

The secondary win condition of the deck, as is expected of any deck with 5/3s and buckets of money, is Punitive Counterstrike. Archived Memories serves as a fourth copy. Make money, wait for them to make a mistake, and be sure to recite the flavor text before you play it.

Happy hunting!