Trigger (240bpm)

Are you tired of playing good decks? Do you want to play a bunch of solitaire and then just win like all of your popular corp decks do? Do you want to unabashedly lose to every Jinteki deck in existence? Then Trigger is the atrocity for you!

Trigger is the deck that I've been piloting on jnet almost exclusively since MWL 2.0 was released, or at least various iterations thereof, and its current record across three different accounts totals 37 and 12. At least one of those losses is because I forgot my opponent was playing Medtech and subsequently I didn't opt to steal what would have been a game-winning Obokata and another was because I completely forgot to pop a DDoS straight into what I knew was a Komainu. Even with those two matches factored in, I'd consider that a pretty damn good track record. The fastest this deck has taken to combo out was 5 turns but on average, it's closer to 12-15 turns.

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THE INCLUDES

I want to use this space to highlight my more unique card choices and how they interact with the rest of the deck. It's worth noting, however, that this published list is running a singleton Black Orchestra in lieu of a third DDoS which is a change I have not tested, but answers the only troublesome AI-hate card I've seen, which is Turing. So with that note, why is almost everything 3x? Because of my first surprising card choice,

Paige Piper. Paige is a seriously underrated support player in this kind of deck. Seeing her early game means filtering out up to eight cards from your deck on average and potentially more, making your Duggar's turns that much more efficient, which brings me to card choice #2.

Duggar's: Tempo is the name of this deck, literally. Previous iterations of this build were running a wretched miasma of burst draw cards ranging from Fisk Investment Seminar, Diesel, and Build Script, but these were all too slow and didn't burn through enough of the deck to keep the pace I wanted to achieve with this deck. That's where Duggar's shines. In conjunction with so many useless burn cards and cards filtered out via Paige Piper, Duggar's effectively draws up a quarter of your deck every turn, and if you Hyperdriver into it, you can throw down 3 cards out of hand to help set up for a stronger turn after. Hyperdriver into Duggar's into dropping another Hyperdriver is immensely efficient draw power, and most corp decks have no answer for this pace.

Beach Party: Obviously if you're going to be drawing up 10 cards a turn and if you need 6-7 cards in hand to combo out, you need some way to host all of those cards in your grip. I played with this a few different ways: Bookmark, which ate up too much influence to use Hyperdriver/Duggar's and was way too susceptible to Best Defense, and Origami with burst draw events and Ekomind which was unreliable and took too long to find the necessary pieces (this iteration also ran Data Folding to capitalize on the extra MU). Eventually I settled on this underappreciated gem. It's still vulnerable to Best Defense like Bookmark is, but on the other hand you don't instantly get your combo pieces binned when it hits the board and you only need to see one copy to get 5 extra capacity. Its only drawback is of course the click loss, but this is again negated by the presence of Adjusted Chronotype.

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THE MATCHUPS

As mentioned in my little spiel at the beginning, this bane of this deck's existence is Jinteki, marred solely by the popularity and strength of Obokata Protocol. This could be alleviated somewhat by changing out a Career Fair for a Film Critic, but that doesn't help with other net damage-prevalent cards that will poke combo cards out of hand like Hokusai Grid, House of Knives, and Kakugo. If Jinteki is prevalent in your local meta, this is not a deck I would recommend. However, a surprising strength of this deck is playing into Cerebral Imaging. They're going to mill themselves of half of their deck anyway, so if you can mill them for the other half you just win. The combo, provided you have all 6 pieces of exodia, is 21 cards of mill. Most CI decks have about 18 cards in their deck by turn 12. You win these, believe in the me that believes in you. If you don't trust yourself though, you can always run a couple of Employee Strikes over the Career Fairs. But if a deck relies on ice? Fuck 'em. If a deck is gonna try to win off of a Hard-Hitting News? Fuck 'em.

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THE COMBO

As the corp, I imagine the combo feels like this:

The combo is pretty straightforward, nothing to see here: Once you have all six Fear the Masses cards in hand you Hyperdriver, pop a DDoS, play 6x (or 7x if you have a Same old Thing) Fear the Masses to mill 21 (or 24) cards, Hades Shard, win. It's the set up that matters here: mulligan for either a Sure Gamble or a Peace in Our Time, and/or Paige Piper. Remember that Paige only fires once per turn and when you install her, her ability is spent for that turn. This will matter when you're trying to filter your deck. Install one critical piece (Beach Party, Chronotype, Duggar's, Piper), and however many auxiliary pieces you want. Once your Beach Party is online, feel free to draw up as much as you want. Also, don't be conservative with your Hyperdrivers and/or I've Had Worses. You only need one Hyperdriver to combo out, use the other(s) to help powerturn with Duggar's and plays. Also if you're nearing the end of your deck don't be afraid to Duggar's without a Hyperdriver and throw away anything that isn't a combo piece.

On the combo turn, if you have everything installed prior you'll have one extra click-- use that after click 1 to SoT that first Fear the Masses, which will grant you a total of 24 cards milled after everything has been played. Otherwise you can keep your DDoS or your Eater in hand, play those click one, then spend 2-7 comboing. Then you pull the trigger on Hades Shard to close the game out like:

This is the first runner deck I've thoroughly enjoyed playing and refining since I piloted Barely Legal to a top 16 finish at GenCon in 2015 during the midst of the Butchershop meta, and the first deck I've thought good enough to publish on its own merit. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.