Fugu v1.3 (2015 North Carolina Regionals - Undefeated)

Pretty sure I played you first round and got murdered the third turn. That was pretty great, glad to hear you went undefeated!

@skydivingninja Weeeell, my corp did at least! Faust Kate just couldn't deal with all the Astrobiotics around (I expected more RP), so I went 7-0 on my corp and 2-5 on my runner. Sad times, but I'll take 15th place in an event that competitive.

Also, I remember your Blue Sun stressing me right the hell out. Those were good games!

Yeah I wish Blue Sun did better. Tons of runners got set up super early and I very rarely got that good mix of early game tech to get ahead. Which would be fine if I had more than just 3 traps. :P Sorry about Faust Kate! Those decks can be pretty brutal once they're set up.

I took an NEH deck that only lost once to a weird Valencia DLR+JoshB+Fall Guy deck, and my runner lost almost every single match, so I feel your pain here. :)

So I take it you keep the Net Damage side correct?

@SidkahOh yeah, always. I've taken Greenhouse to mess with people here and there, but I picked Brewery for every game during Regionals. It won me a few games, especially when Lockdown fired.

@Chuftbot nice. I was gonna do a write up about Biotech soonish. I've seen a lot of Rush type builds but never a Kill version that was as successful as yours. Congrats.

Really like the deck! How does Data Mine work for you?

@Fearamus Better than it should. Chum makes it deadly, Lockdown makes it stick and whittles them down for a kill, and they're great to toss in front of a remote to make it look important. As a rule, runners almost never jack out once they've committed to running a protected remote. Data Mine is an easy throwaway that makes whatever nasty thing they're about to touch even nastier.

Thanks for the insight. I get the idea but I'll keep in tinkering with this deck. Most recently I switched one #Swordsman for a #Komainu. Thanks for posting!

I played a few games with this yesterday and had a real problem with it. I'm probably piloting it incorrectly, but not sure how to make it work.

Due to low ice, they usually got single accesses early and saw scary cards. So early on they know it's going to be a kill deck, and proceeded to just only ever run with 6 cards in hand. If they hit a snare, they eat it, draw back up, and try again next turn. I once even managed to set up a data mine + chum + kitsune + snare in hand, but even that crazy combo didn't kill them (6 cards down to 0). They just clicked up to 2 cards, and I either didn't have a scorch or couldn't afford it. What do you do to these ultra-conservative runners?

@Myth I love cautious runners. Kate and Noise players in particular like to rig up, draw to 6, and run when they feel they've turtled enough to outlast any damage you do. If they refuse to ever run a remote, mushin/hard score a Future Perfect.

This does one of two things to the runner. It either scares them into checking remotes, in which case they die or waste enough time setting back up that you can take advantage, or they refuse to ever look again because they think you're only going to play traps from then on. Both of these are bad answers. Once you're on game point (5 and up) they will get desperate and either run advanced cards or try to deep dig R&D, and both of those are suicide in most cases. If you're really worried about them finding something important and you have points ready to be scored on board, forfeit a False Lead.

Another really good pressure tool is Cerebral Cast. Toss these out on your first click after they make a run regardless of hand size. A cautious runner will take the brain damage every time, and that turns on all your other kill combos.

TL:DR, score an agenda or two and you can completely control the flow of the game. Scorch wins games, but it's just one of your win conditions.

I guess I just really don't understand the deck, then. I'm clearly doing something wrong. I understand the concept, but it didn't ever come close to working for me. It seems like if I try and score out, ever, there's not enough money to pay for a snare or threaten scorch, and certainly not ALSO click up a trap. The only times I did well with the deck were when I mushin'd the single GRNDL Refinery or got a shell corp onto a Cerebral Overwriter.

And if I don't try and score, they just keep running centrals with 6 cards in hand, eating a snare or a fetal as they find it, and just drawing back up before trying again. Once they get a code gate breaker, only Kitsune, Datamine, and Cortex pose any threat. The rest they never had any problem with having the money to break, because there's no tax.

I really do like how this deck looks, and I wish I better knew how to play this style. I don't suppose you know of any videos that show similar decks in action so I can see the choices made?

@Myth I'll do you one better. My last round of swiss was recorded here:

www.youtube.com

The second half of the video is my Faust/Kate deck completely falling apart and never drawing a breaker or SMC, but the first half does a decent job of showing how this deck plays.

Thanks! I do see what you were thinking and it helps.

But against the people I play, they never would have legworked against a biotech deck unless you were broke and unable to pay for snares. And siphon is strong around here, so that's likely to happen. Perhaps it's just not a good meta call to try this around here... I'll play it a couple more times and see how it does for me, but might have to retire it.

My results of local tournament by using your deck:

• Kaplan run in Lockdown -> Psychic Field -> 2c win psi-game; my turn flip id -> kill

• Kaplan with Chameleons and 3x LLDS Processor was hard to kill, but 1 Chameleon died from Data Mine. At the end runner decided to use Chameleons for barrier and sentry but chum was code gate -> 4 net damage -> accesed snare from HQ. Then Scorched away on my turn.

• Kim meet Kitsune -> Snare! -> forfeit false lead, 1 card left in hand . Flip id -> kill.

No one decided to run in mushin + advance servers, so i easy scored future perfects.

It was fun! Thank You!

@nopoison I'm so glad it worked out for you! And thanks for including how your games/kills went, it's always interesting to hear how other people pull them off.

I had somewhat mixed results with this deck. My meta is either stronger or just different. I saw the youtube game, but it doesn't reflect the playstyle here.

My finding was that while the deck could occasionally kill with Junebug and standard Snare/Scorch combo (like most people here report), everything else is a fuzzy state. The problem is that the Snare/Scorch combo can as well exist outside of this ID and deck.

When playing against this corp, every player worth his/her salt, just didn't facecheck ICE, until they got sentry breakers or even full suite. Therefore the Chum and Kitsune shenaningans are off. This deck is low on ICE, which means that you rarely can protect your remotes or at least fake it. Sure, you can play a shell game, but it's too random, if people will also randomly check them. There's a good chance you will score FP naked, but that's just 3 points, and it's hard to get the other 4 with 1 pointers. By the time the second FP is in your hand, it is often too late. Noone in their right mind would also go past not broken Lockdown.

The problem with Biotech is that apart from that 2 net dmg, other choices are subpar (as you've noticed yourself). Mushin can give you 3 tokens (or 4 if advanced manually after). 3 vs 4 is a little difference in mind games, if you're giving your whole turn anyway. J Ho saves you from Noise most of the time, unless its milled. When people see these cards, the only sane assumption is that you've picked (as well you should) the 2 net dmg.

There's nothing to defend Shell Corporation with. Sure, you can put it alongside Junebug, but that's obvious move and costs you Junebug install and some advancements to protect. HQ/R&D ice are too porous to keep Shell Corp on. GRNDL feels like a nice trick, but it's rarely useful, as you indeed don't need money.

I can definitely see the potential, but I feel something is missing here - happy to hear more about the strategy approach. I think careful players will avoid most of the standard traps, while you might not get your threat tools (Ronins, Mushins, Junebug, Cerebral) on time to fake the game state.

I think that second or even third Ronin could be important to not only threat it, but also actually make it happen. Crick is pointless here, imho, though I understand it's role. Cortex Lock is good only against weaker, rushing players. I feel like False Lead is the star of this deck. Not sure about Chronos, as it's just 1 copy and too random - you might never get it or you might get it at the very beginning, when it's doing no good. I would go with 3 False Leads. Philotic is the same - by the time it's useful, they're already winning and it might not show up anyway. I'm also thinking about Whirlpool, but for it to be effective, you need 3 cards combo in the right order (Whirpool -> Chum -> Trap) and that's with assumption that they don't have AI breaker. But still, something missing. In essence, there's no way of protection during mid/late game and there's not enough assets that could pay off if unchecked. The rest is just Snare luck.

Btw @Chuftbot, I think we've played together during one draft event @ Atomic in Durham.

I had mixed buit rather positive results too - along 8 games I flatlined 5 runners - 3 with ID, 2 with Scorch. But I like feeling of this deck - bluffs and traps everywhere. Will definitely play more, maybe do some tinkering.

But thanks for bringing Biotech to life, I love this ID. Good job. :)