Silver Bullet Shaper Lizard Bullsh*t (1st @ Dublin GNK)

"Hold on, shouldn't it be lizardshit?"

-No, it's bullshit. Coming out of a lizard.

"What? Why?

-Because that's Shaper bullshit.

This is a fun and versatile Shaper deck with a Reavershop engine and lots of silver bullets for different matchups, that turn into money & draw in matchups where they are not needed. A key strength of this deck is it's numerous lines of play in a true Shaper bullshit fashion, which allows creating fake scoring windows for the corp in order to bait out agendas. You usually have a way to get into servers somehow. The question is often if you should.

The Reavershop engine is usually set up in the first 2-3 turns. Mulligan for Aesop's, Hostage and Technical Writer. Then use Kabonesa's ability to find a Sahasrara and Reaver via SMC. You're good to go and start putting pressure on different servers in various creative ways.

I want to take a moment to praise my favourite card in this deck: Flame-out. Not only does it trigger Technical Writer and provide good economy, it also allows a lot of bullshit to happen. Some of my favourite plays:

• Fetch SMCs on it early game and save money while burning the SMCs to find your Sahasrara and Reaver.

• Use Kabonesa to pull a strength 5 lizard out of your bag, burn credits to break ice, and then bounce the lizard to your hand before it gets burned or removed from game.

• Test Run a strength 5 Lady on it, burn a few credits to boost strength, break those Chiyashis for free, and bounce the Lady on top of your deck to repeat it next turn before it gets trashed.

• Use Clone Chip to pull a strength 4 Ika on it, burn credits to boost its strength and then move it on that huge Surveyor, then break it for one real credit. Ika stays alive on the Surveyor because it's no longer hosted on Flame-Out.

• Corp stole all your money and hit you with Hard-Hitting News? Use Kabonesa to pull out Misdirection on it, burn 4 credits to remove all tags and put the Misdirection in the bin for another use instead of removing it from the game.

• Once your Flame-out is empty, sell it to Aesop for 3 credits and a Reaver card. Then install another one and put money on Technical writer.

As shown in the above examples, Cybertrooper Talut is fantastic in this deck, since your programs are installed, bounced back to grip/stack, burned in flames, sold to Aesop and reinstalled so many times. Saves a lot of money and the extra link is nice. Use Hostage to find if you already have Aesop's down.

The obvious silver bullets include Clot against fast advance, 2x Paricia against asset spam, Misdirection against tagstorm and Deus X against Mushin & net damage. Tutor out and recur when needed. Install for free with Sahasrara and use for money & draw with Technical Writer, Aesops and Reaver when not needed.

You can win the game from almost any server, depending on what makes the most sense in a given situation.

• Remote: Create a fake scoring window or use Clot to stop fast advance, then use Shaper bullshit to get the agenda.

• R&D: Use 2x Nyashia as tutorable R&D Interface to dig deep. Sell to Aesop's Reavershop once empty, recur and repeat.

• HQ: The Gauntlet gives you an HQ Interface or two, plus very much needed 2 MU, all in one card for one influence.

• Archives: Often goes undefended against Shaper. Tutor out your Sneakdoor Beta when least expected for a surprise HQ raid.

For a while I thought this decktype will at least temporarily be dead after the second rotation, but with the recently spoiled cards, it seems like it will live on in a different shape. The rotating Cache, Sahasrara, Paricia, Lady, Cyber-Cypher and Clone Chip will probably be replaced by Rezeki, Gauss, Euler, Simulchip and more Compiles.

This deck carried me to 1st place in an 8-player GNK in Dublin, with 3 wins and 1 loss. A massive thank you to Mark for organising yet another fantastic Saturday afternoon and a big shout out to the wonderfully diverse, fun and welcoming Irish meta!

Thanks for reading and if you take it for a spin, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!