Built Oaktown Tough (HB Kala Ghoda Glacier)

"Who the fu-" Whizzard's curse was cut short by the jarring feeling of being dumped back into meatspace. It took him a moment to even recognize what had happened, and a few more to piece together WHY. That wasn't a bioroid trick, that was a Psi game. "You got a Caprice clone? That's cheating."

Jinteki must have made them pay an arm and a leg for her, though. Which meant that whatever was in there had to be WORTH protecting. Well, fine. Whizzard hadn't gotten this far in life without learning a few tricks of his own. Time to use a cheat code.

=====

The code was dancing at his fingertips. Eli, Ichi, even that new number from Kala Ghoda couldn't keep up with him. Whizzard didn't like to stimhack often, but he was really starting to see the appeal.

Here came Caprice's mind games again, and this time, he knew it was coming. Slipping past the last of her baffles, he felt a tickle at the back of his mind, the sensation of being traced.

"Ash, you're old news." The trace fell apart, broken to pieces in an instant. But already, Whiz could feel his mind slowing down, his processors struggling to keep up. The crash was coming soon, he'd have to make sure he made this count. Easy enough, nobody tore through code better than the Whizzard. Ash's root, Caprice's connection, files linking this server to a "new" software company down in Florida, it was all here. And with a wave of his hand, it was all...

Nothing happened. He waved again. The files were untouched. Mocking him. Just as his connection began to fade, Whiz saw three words, in a bold, purple font, floating right at the edge of his vision.

Built Oaktown Tough.

"Son of a BI-"

If HB:ETF has one strength, it's rewarding you for things you're going to be doing anyways. But in most decks, you can only go so far with installing, even for HB, before the ability stops being an economic boost, and starts just making up for the ice-stacking penalties.

This is not most decks.

Packing an absurd ELEVEN Upgrades, this is the HB deck you play if you like having money. Lots of money. Being able to install Shell Corporation, Oaktown Grid, and Ash all in the same server, central OR remote, means that your economic engine is almost impregnable. In most cases, it'll cost the runner even more to break Ash's trace and trash your upgrades than they spent to break your ICE.

Which isn't to say the ICE is a slouch, either. Between Eli, Tollbooth, Assassin, and Kala Ghoda's new hotness, Vikram, you can make it prohibitively expensive to get into a server with even a couple ICE. Add in a Corporate Troubleshooter and Lag Time, and turn your economic engine into a brutal faceplant on demand. This only gets better with Advanced Concept Hopper and Subliminal Messaging putting the runner in a brutal Catch-22 where no matter what they do, you're getting paid for it.

That's not to say the deck doesn't have weaknesses, it certainly does, and almost all of them are in Anarch. Whizzard, Demolition Run, David, Imp, Parasite, even Keyhole can slowly tear you to pieces, so if your opponent's playing orange, plant those Lotus Fields on R&D and Archives. The combination of Ash and Caprice is pretty good at keeping them out even without much ICE, but expect to be facing an uphill battle fairly often. Other things to watch out for are Sunny (who laughs at the Ash traces), Demolition Run (start rezzing early if you see one coming), and the thankfully-rare Hades Shard.

Once Liberated Mind drops, Brainstorm is going to be an autoinclude in this deck, especially in combination with Troubleshooter. Lateral Growth will be another useful card, probably taking the slot that Lag Time holds now.