Winning HB (Core) Ark Assembly QM (1st Place - Fun 4 All, MI

1st Place Runner deck at Fun 4 All in Ypsilanti, MI on January 28th, 2017.

14 Participants

4 Rounds, Top 4

I've been playing this deck for several months adapting from Ben Ni's Rush EtF from SSCI last year. HB has the best tools for the new Sifr meta. If you want to play a fair deck, this one gives you a fighting chance in almost every match-ups.

I played this deck (with only a small change) over 2 store championships winning 6, losing 2, and tying 1.

Wins: 2x Sifr Whizzard (1 Dumble, 1 Temujin), 2x DLR Leela, DLR MaxX, Reaver Professor.

Losses: DLR MaxX, Medium Andy (Timed Tie vs. DLR MaxX).

Notable Card Choices:

• Ark Lockdown - Is so good in this meta. It deals with so many problems. Get rid of Shapers' only Parasite. Just have to purge once for Clot. Against Siphon Anarch, remove it. Yes, it's fine to Ark for just one Siphon against non-Criminal. Against Anarch it's fine to just remove a Parasite; they often don't find 2+ for a while, and have to rely on Deja Vu to recur. I haven't faced Val with this deck, but it'll probably work for Blackmail too; just bait it out, remove 1 and now their SoT/Deja's will stay in their hand for a while. Ark'ing conspiracy breakers opens up huge scoring windows. Oh, and there's also Levy!

• Lotus Field, Architect - Live through Sifr + Parasite.

• Crisium Grid - As you can tell 6 out of 9 runners were on Siphon.

• NEXT Suite - I wanted to spend 3 or less on ice that is not resilient, but can still be taxing in the mid-game. Only 2 Bronze, because you're not going to get it over 4 strength to deal with Yog; it's only there to force a Parasite or Yog, and make Silver a bit better.

• Macrophage - Is actually pretty good. Most runners are on Medium. It wasn't super great for me because I faced 5 DLR decks that don't care. But in the other games, I removed a Medium from Andy and a Parasite from Whizzard (and stopped him from going to R&D), and really annoyed Professor that was recurring Cache and Parasite.

• Swordsman - Probably better than it's been in a while; deals with Faust/Eater/Atman, especially if you Ark their MKUltra.

TIP: Rush out a GFI early. Do it if you have like 70-80% chance to be successful. You've pretty much won if you can pull it off, but if they manage to steal it, it's not the end of the world. (Also, I think I've seen Turntable once in the last few months; I guess Anarch have gotten cooler consoles.) This is not a FA deck; it's mostly a rush deck that can close out with Biotic. You want to score out agendas over two turns, because it's a whole lot cheaper than FA.