ETF is better

Rumor has it that the superfriends are dead.

Where does glacier go in a post truth era? Off the grid.

The Concept

The plan is to setup quickly and make lots and lots of money sitting behind fortress HQ. Key early game objectives include:
- make cash
- draw cards
- construct fortress HQ
- don't lose (i.e. keep half an eye on R&D)

Generally these objectives all play into each other quite nicely because installing cards makes you money. Installing ICE stops you from losing, taxes aggressive runners and serves your long term objective: fortress HQ. It all fits together pretty naturally.

I tend to build a single remote server sporting a single piece of ICE. This is the money server (and later a scoring server) which either makes a lot of money very fast or taxes the runner for a similar amount of money. Generally you would rather have the money yourself but the objective is to maintain a tempo edge over the runner.

So, all being well you have a good wodge of cash, have installed 4-6 ICE (at least 2 on HQ) and have drawn plenty of cards in the process. It's go time. Switch off the lights, install Off the Grid and start scoring. If the runner wants to stop you they have to:
- install a rig
- run HQ, trash Crisium Grid
- run HQ again
- run your agenda (breaking the single piece of ICE if you rezzed it earlier)

This costs.... 35 creds is probably the minimum outlay and most runners will need to pay more.

Most runners can't pay that and even if they can then it is often very hard for them to calculate whether or not they can definitely steal your agenda. Spoiler alert: attempting but failing to steal your agenda is very bad. Most runners wuss out at this point and let you score.

However, at some point a savvy runner will accrue enough cash to get in and spoil your fun. This is absolutely fine, just keep on trucking and force them to come in again. The thing that makes the deck so strong (IMO) is that once everything is up and running you don't have to pay very much to make the combo happen all over again whereas somehow the runner has to find 25 creds (again!). Or, if you are lucky, the runner get really really poor just after making a run (hmm, I wonder how they got so poor?) and you get to release the electric tigers which is a really really bad thing to happen to them.

Pros and cons

For me the advantages of this setup over traditional superfriends Caprice Nisei and Ash 2X3ZB9CY are:
- HQ is really hard to get into. Forget vamp, account siphon, apocalypse... those things aren't happening.
- less weakness to superfriends hate cards: Rumor Mill, Pol Op, etc.

Cons include:
- the runner is definitely going to check into your HQ at some point. Probably several times. This is ok but you need to keep in mind that they are quite likely to see the odd agenda when they come looking for your secret hideout.
- sneakdoor beta is probably bad. Like, eww. Don't play vs Gabe.

Card Swaps

Global food is better than the fragments. I opted for Jackson because I wanted the card draw but it would be pretty reasonable to switch him out for a more robust set of agendas.

Hellion Beta Test isn't going anywhere. I contemplated Ash but in this case the electric tigers are better. You don't have to install them or pay the trace up front. They don't protect the agendas quite as well but I think that is ok given that the aim is to win via aggregate finance rather protecting each individual score.

Enhanced Login Protocol, Shipment and Friends in High Places are all... these feel like good tech cards. I think they should stay but would love to hear some arguments for alt tech cards or a rework of my econ/ICE structure.

The Future

Jackson and the fragments get exchanged for Preemptive Food. Presumably the ICE and other options get shuffled up a bit but this is all bread and butter HB stuff. Most of the good HB cards aren't going anywhere.

ETF is better

It just is. I really wanted this to work with another ID but... they aren't as good!