Silicon Valley (Endless Death) - undefeated Victory Pt Store

Derivative of ScrappySPJ's Portsmouth Store Champs list, which in turn came from Zeromus' Worlds 2015 deck. Read their descriptions. Goal is a Hiro+Neural+Ronin flatline.

5-0 on the day (1 timed win), carrying me to 3rd place. Flatlined Noise & Whizzard again & again, the only runners I played. If you're looking to kill Anarchs, this is a deck with cards in it that do that. I was going to write a tournament summary but every game goes like this: I durdled around making money & drawing cards, the runner did or did not check remotes, the runner did or did not run Archives, then I flatlined them. If they checked remotes, I baited them into Overwriter & Snare!. If they hit Archives, they picked up News Team & probably died to Philotic. If they didn't check Archives, I got blatant with my Ronins until they had to. Chairman Hiro was stolen a couple times but won three games. He's near impossible to trash, even for Whizzard. CVS purged several Imps & a Medium that got out of hand. GGs all around. The deck is not super powerful & many games were close, but there are always enough angles of play to find a flatline. I only got to play my corp once in the cut, winning, & I think I could've gotten a little further had I managed to play it again.

Restructure the Startup

I cut Architect. It's great in low ICE lists, because indestructible, but three influence is too much for card you won't see half the time. I'd rather distribute my influence.

News Team felt better for two influence and facilitated Philotic flatlines. It's another annoying asset to dump into Archives, which helps when you can't find Shock early, & makes runners fear tag punishment. Yes, it dies to Artist Colony. The card was ridiculous before and is at an all-time low in value...which still makes it a great card. Go figure.

I agonized over the spare influence pip:

• Executive Boot Camp is another asset tutor, though it's hard to find uses for the pre-rez ability & Tech Startup does similar work
• Anonymous Tip has no downside & accelerates the deck; it's a safe choice that just amplifies your other cards
• DBS helps in a similar way, drawing into your pieces while bottoming agendas, but runners still trash it, even against IG, so the benefit is limited

Finally, I settled on Blacklist, staple of annoying asset decks. Why? Actually, my partner, who does not play Netrunner, looked at all the above cards & told me to. They got it right. It can tactically limit recursion of the most problematic cards: Imp, Deus X, Account Siphon. The easiest way to lose is to be siphoned into the ground, or to have your Ronins or Snares neutralized by Deus X, or to let Imp trash everything. You might not rez Blacklist immediately; rather, wait until a pertinent moment, when you have the kill assembled while the runner cannot prevent it & trash Blacklist at the same time. It won me one game flat out.

2x CVS because Anarch is everywhere & I want to see them early. Forcing a purge on Noise whenever he goes to reduce trash costs is wonderful, arguably more valuable than the Shock! net damage. I faced 3 Noise & this choice was instrumental in my wins.

Hostile Infrastructure is a tech card for Apocalypse & Keyhole, both of which pose problems, but I only saw good stuff Anarch so they were mostly useless. They're expensive enough to be annoying & runners are forced to trash them so they can buy time, but the piddling net damage does very little to further your win condition. I didn't win a single game where a runner screwed up by being reckless & ending their turn with too few cards in grip due to Shock/Snare/Hostile pings. The only work those do is to weed out I've Had Worse to increase the probability when you go for the combo.

Only one each of Diversified Portfolio (bad early, not extraordinarily profitable, should be cut entirely) and Melange (great Tech Startup target). The kill combo costs a grand total of 5 (2 rez Hiro, 1 advance Ronin, 2 play Neural EMP) so there just isn't the need for much economy. These are fine for rebounding against Siphon or Lamprey & unneeded in some games.

I truly disliked Turtlebacks in the original list so swapped for PADs. Perhaps it's a play style difference, I didn't like throwing all my cards on the table. Turtlebacks incentivizes pushing assets out of your hand every turn, which clashes with the ID ability's desire to overdraw. Your turns are typically "draw-draw-install-discard two" (PAD is more consistent than Turtlebacks here) or "draw-install-install-no discard" (why play IG?). The advantage is it's on-demand economy, so on turns where you're broke you can simply throw a bunch of cards on the board to recover. That's worth consideration, your results may vary, etc.

Only 2 ICE & both pieces were chosen for their resiliency. Himitsu-Bako cannot be Knifed & only dies to Parasite if a Clone Chip is available, while Lotus Field cannot be Parasited. If you see them early, you can use them as gear checks to buy time. Honestly, they may not be needed. I think I rezzed Himitsu-Bako once on the day & it was insta-parasited immediately.

In sum: possible cuts are Diversified, the ICE, Hostile, maybe a Sealed Vault? If there's no Apocalypse/Siphon Anarch in your parts, you have a lot more flexibility with these tech slots. I'd look to add Psychic Field, or somehow find influence for Archived Memories (which was in the original lists & is obviously great). 3x Cyberdex would not be unwarranted. Sigh. This meta.

Let's talk about the damn Museum

Kala Ghoda corp cards are clearly suited to IG. Museum of History lets you cycle cards back from your stacked Archives, while the 15-ICE requirement of Mumba Temple is easy to meet for most IG lists, & the fairly low 3 cost of both is protected by the ID ability. Heritage Committee is super fun & helps with overdrawing plus protecting RnD without ICE.

But ultimately, there's not much to rez, so Mumba Temple doesn't pay out enough, while I felt Museum was counter productive in too many circumstances; it makes it harder to draw into combo pieces by continually diluting RnD & generally slows down what's meant to be a quick deck. Yes, this is a quick deck when played well, because your goal is simply to assemble a three-card combo. It's not meant to be an endless grindfest. My sole game that didn't end in a flatline (timed win) was because I couldn't find a Neural EMP & I probably should've been overdrawing more, not recycling more cards I didn't need. Museum IG is a deck it's just not this deck. I'd love to hear thoughts from people playing flatline IG lists with Museum but my feeling is it's suited to lists that actually score out or go a very different route (e.g. Power Shutdown).