Human Trafficking

Sunny Lebeau is not a nice person.

Sure, she's got a little kid. She's got a great partner. She's got a sweet job with Globalsec, and she's even got a nice little side gig teaching information security at Breaker Bay. Thing is, Sunny's also a human trafficker. She learns where her students live off campus, and sells them to Aesop for a very handsome profit.

This deck is an answer to a couple of very, very different questions. The first is specific to Sunny Lebeau: how on earth can you afford enough clicks to draw your drip econ, install it, and still put reasonable pressure on the corp before Near-Earth Hub just fast advances out and wins? There are a lot of Sunny decks floating around trying to answer that question with Quality Time and Earthrise, but doing so sacrifices the economic gains that makes Sunny powerful in the first place.

The second question is simple: Who can afford to actually run an Off-Campus Apartment deck, given how much influence you have to throw at it to make it work? Everybody's been trying, and Andromeda has been the most successful, but the issue is that it takes a lot of influence, no matter what faction you're in, and it takes even more setup to make it worthwhile.

Sunny answers both problems handily. She's got the influence to bring in every cheap one-influence Connection in the game, plus a full set of Aesop's, and her highly efficient barrier and sentry breakers almost removes any need for influence use elsewhere. Seriously, there's only five influence used in this deck on non-resources.

Off-Campus Apartment draws cheaply, consistently, and powerfully through the early game while Sunny's broke, and protects her from Jinteki and Scorched in the late game once she's going. It also enables a great toolbox of generally-handy cards, which lets you threaten widely and run frequently. Jak Sinclair and John Masanori are a particularly dynamite team in the early-to-mid game in this respect, setting up clickless draw and server-checking for the low, low cost of three credits--and they can be sold to Aesop once their usefulness has passed. Fall Guy is either Apartment protection or extra Sure Gambles, depending on your matchup (i.e., whether or not there is tagging/resource trashing). Drug Dealer is usually sold the turn after he appears for a nice little profit and two cards, but if you're hungry for more or are facing Personal Evolution, he can feed you cards all game long. Street Peddler is ridiculous, but then, she always is. The rest really speak for themselves.

The biggest challenges the deck faces is stuff like Corporate Town. If you don't have a Fall Guy out, a single Town or resource trash on the Apartment can be disastrous; fortunately, the deck's economy is so strong that you don't usually have to use him for econ. Lots of big code gates are a real pain too; Striker is just plain awful, and while Zu.13 does an excellent job with the significant majority of code gates out there, stuff like Crick and Tollbooth are a real pain over the course of a game. A very hard and fast early game by NEH can still outrun Sunny, but an early Jak and a small amount of luck are often enough to turn the game; for the same reason, when TWIY* gets a strong opener, the game is often done by the time Sunny has enough setup to fight back.

On the other hand, virtually any glacier matchup is an auto-win; you get so much clickless money that, for instance, the long game that RP plays of click and credit taxing just plain doesn't work. Sunny makes too much money and her breakers are too efficient. Most defense-oriented HB decks will find themselves in the same situation, and even Blue Sun gets out-economied, in a long game.