Hellion - Santa Clara CA Regionals 3rd Seed 5/30

Because I was sick of trying to get RegAss MaxX to work for me, I decided I would just play something I knew when I took the five hour trip down to regionals in the bay.

Ultimately, I wasn't disappointed with my choice, finishing Swiss in third seed, thanks in part to this deck. By the final cut, the deck had lost twice (out of seven rounds) both to NEH, once due to flatline, which was huge misplay on my part and once due to points, which was close enough for me to feel pretty solid about (couldn't get my last score).

Although this deck looks like a siphon spam deck, it is actually pretty much a solid ice destruction, full adrenaline aggression deck. Siphon is a key card, but it is not the only card you recur. You want to run, force the corp to rez ICE and threaten keyhole, immolation script/retrieval run and wanton/account siphon in order to spread their ice thin. Siphon is important for getting their credits down, but some match ups you will be running circles around your opponent with pure aggression alone.

Games against glacier will be a dragged out war of attrition, if they can get off the ground before you tear them down.

Let me talk about the odd includes to the deck, as this might look kind of familiar to many of you.

Planned Assault - This card is pretty much a no brainer in this deck. I went back and forth on the Hades Shard, but ultimately chose to just run this. I wasn't disappointed by my choice. Early game it functions as an extra siphon, which lets you get your econ up to continue your aggression. Late game (or post LARLA) it functions as Immolation or Cutlery tutors. It was good. Better than the Hades? Maybe? I am going to experiment with dropping a single Femme over dropping this in future builds.

Immolation Script - I have seen this card panned all over the place and in most decks it definitely isn't a good fit. It has no place in traditional rig based decks. However if you are Noise or you are running Wanton/Keyhole/Cutlery/Knight and Femme, this card will do some work. In my test games I used it almost every game and in the tournament I used it probably about seven times between all of my games. Despite the limitations with Eater, this decks aggression was able to keep the corp spread out enough that most of the time Archives was just open to hit. Add to it that installing over a Femme or Knight target is a common enough play and this card begins to do some serious work. I would probably never run more than 1 though.

Plascrete - This was kind of my only real defense against Butcher Shop and I never actually got to use it in the tournament. The idea was to recur it using deja vus to pretty much utterly deny the scorch play. It never really went down like that, probably due in part to me just not being familiar enough with the match up. This card could be an I've Had Worse, not really sure.

D4v1D - Anti Blue Sun tech mostly. Unsure about the slot ultimately. Could reasonably be almost anything else, but man do I hate oversight AI. It helped me out in my finals game against Boot camp glacier, which ultimately only came down to a single card (I lost, but man was that an EPIC game!).

Joshua B - Yes, he is in my deck. Yes, he is kinda janky. But man oh man, did Joshua B do some serious work. Like I said, this deck is all about high octane, super runs, threatening centrals and destroying ICE. Joshua B is going to be one of the things that lets you extend your aggression and keep pressure up. Play him out and don't turn him on until you have the corp on the back foot. If they trash him, then you actually just taxed the corp two credits and a click. Most of the games I played, my opponent did not have the opportunity to do this. Every single credit mattered. Probably my favorite use of Josh was being able to play day job and still run somewhere or go from 1 credit to 10. He is a great support piece and will be a mainstay in my deck for now. Possibly as a x2 over a x3, but in pretty much all of my games, he was out there to stay!

Possible Changes: I had about four or five cards I wanted to add, but sadly I did not have the room.

Turntable - Janky and probably not worth the space. I never used it once in a testing game and didn't include it because of that. Still, it might win you a game every now and again that you would have lost. Interestingly enough, against RP the scored Nisei was never really an issue. Two of the four games RP decks I played against scored out Nisei MK II and I still managed to win, usually by decking them out.

x3 Liberated Account OR x2/3 Armitage Codebusting - The deck always felt like it needed just slightly more money and had to click for credits a lot. This was often fine as Joshua B's extra click really kind of helped me bridge the gap for Day Jobs and Liberated, but man would I love to squeeze more econ in here. Given how I ended up playing the game, Armitage might also be a worthy include, as I often found myself low on credits, but the corp was also almost always pretty poor.

Hades Shard - I probably would have won about two of the games I lost if I had been playing Hades Shard over my Second Femme. The card is too big of a threat not to run. It will be going in my deck in the future.

Singularity - I missed this card. Even if only a singleton, it probably would have been worth the slot. Being able to threaten through an Ash is pretty important. It doesn't do much in the RP match up, but it might also save you in the NEH FA or Blue Sun Glacier match up. Its a tough call, but I feel like a x1 of this would improve the deck.

x3 Wanton Destruction This card is my favorite for forcing a corp rez on HQ. I think of it as Rez Bait, preserving Siphons for a follow up run, once I know what my gains will be post Siphon. It also lets you wipe out a corp hand if you fear scorch or traffic accident. If deck space were not an issue, I would run x3 of this. For now, it stays at x2.

Final Thoughts: I am not sure if I got lucky against RP, but I did not drop a single game against RP and I played four games against RP, accounting for almost half of all of my Corp opponents.

If you throw caution to the wind and you run like you got a pair, you just might find this deck will carry you pretty far.

tl;dr Run often, keep the corp poor with your powerful run events, ICE destruction and keyhole. Almost always trash any corporate assets if you can. If the corp is broke, and you are broke you will probably be able to power through, especially since MaxX gets the "free" click to "draw" and with Joshua B going, you are basically getting a six click turn. Even if you have to click for credits, you will be ahead of the corp in terms of action economy. Do everything you can to make those nasty corps pay and this deck will reward you for it.

Thank you to all of my opponents. Best games of Netrunner I have ever played. Also a big thank you to Adam from Game Kastle, who loaned me a copy of Immolation Script for the event (as I couldn't find Chrome City before the event).