Cambridge Palana V 1.8

This is the most recent version of my obsession with Cambridge style kill decks, with which I have had considerable success, many thanks to Matt for the idea of putting it into Palana. I am primarily putting it up to show John from London City Grid, but also because I would welcome any thoughts upon it.

Palana solves the problem that PE decks have always suffered from: cash. You will still need to click for credits, and repeated account siphons can be difficult to weather, but this deck can often comfortably hover around the twenty credit marker, which is frankly, staggering.

The deck itself is designed to kill, pure and simple. Yes you can score out occasionally against runners who refuse to play your shell game, but you are more likely to kill them, using damage from a variety of sources. A combination of a bioethics rez, when they already have a brain damage, followed by a cerebral casts: if they take the tag, scorch and neural emp them, if they take the brain damage then you rez the four advanced ronin and neural emp them. The combo potential are endless, as are the ways to create kill windows. Pol op is surprisingly easy to work around as is councilman, it will slow down your kill, but not much more, the most irritating card for this deck is probably sportshopper, which again, can be worked around. Anything advanceable should be advanced to four as soon as possible, though against feel free to vary this. The most basic and simplistic runner mindset sees un-advanced cards as less dangerous than advanced, and a two advanced card less dangerous than a 4 advanced, so make sure to vary your approach and use it your advantage.

Agendas: The agendas are designed to either aid the kill, or protect themselves. Corporate sales team is an excellent little money maker, and about the only agenda I try to score bar Chronos Project which speaks for itself. Philotic aids the kill, and Future Perfect and Fetal AI are both painful to steal. A well timed fetal can also be lethal.

Assets: Jackson goes without saying. Bio-ethics makes this deck sing, it forces the runner to check un-advanced remotes, which will plant them into snares or psychic fields, and the extra couple of bits of net damage are often part of the final kill. Cerebral overwriter and project junebug speak for themselves, as does ronin. I am still torn on the number of ronins versus the number of junebugs, but it feels right at the moment.

Operations: Spam cerebral cast. As soon as you draw it, play it, this is one of your main jackson targets. You want the runner to be scared, and most runners, especially early, will take the brain damage. Yes, it means they are more likely to install a plascrete, but one point of brain damage makes a ronin based kill a lot easier. Hedge fund, mushin no shin, and restructure are relatively straight forward, as is neural emp. The two scorched earth obviously combo with the cerebral casts.

Ice: The ice package is one of the things I toy the most with, but 3 yagura tend to stay as to be frank, its superb. 3 Komainu seems like a bit much, but it's incredibly taxing and sometimes can encourage runners to run with smaller hands. Kitsune is an iffy include, but what I suspect will be a decline in AI breakers (i.e. Faust), I think trap ice could just work.

Any thoughts on the deck would be much appreciated, especially on the ice combination and the specific numbers of assets, which are what I tinker with the most. At the end of the day, this deck does not rely on bluffing in the way that traditional cambridge had to more, this deck sets up a position from which you can and will die, no matter what you do. I do not flatter myself that this is going to be meta changing, but it is a solid deck that can and does perform well against experienced players. And it is always a cerebral overwriter. Always.