Low Orbit Ion Cannon (5-1 Madison Regionals & 3-1 Milwaukee

The last year or so has been very rough for Weyland. I’ve always liked Weyland decks and they usually work very well for me in tournaments, but I just couldn’t justify rush, glacier, or kill as all the other factions do it better.

However with the Mumbad cycle comes a new set of cards that change everything.

Do you feel bad playing IG, but do you still want to play IG? Then this is the deck for you!

SimonMoon definitely deserves a shout-out as helping with the inspiration of this deck!

The tournament stats have been great this season with 8 wins and two losses. 3-1 at the Milwaukee Store Champs (@aandries’s Andromeda deck was able to break the lock after a hard fight) and went 5-1 at the Madison, WI Regionals (a 4 deep hail mary medium dig grabbed 3 agendas the turn before I landed the kill).

The Deck

This is definitely a prison deck following the infamous IG that has been going around. The difference with this deck is that you can actually score out the win, you have hard (and taxing) ice, taxes the runner economically in a much different way than IG, and can speed up the kill with sea-scorch.

Basic win conditions of the deck involve keeping the runner so broke that they can’t really do anything. You can vomit out remote servers faster than even Whizzard with Imp can keep up with them. You can recur and tutor every asset you need and have a good shot at scoring out a 4/2 or an Atlas with a counter behind one or two ice.

My typical wins have been sea-scorch or sea-scorch-scorch through a plascrete. Bio-ethics is amazing, if you have two on the board, you can easily flatline a runner with a 5-card hand and a plascrete on the board. It also lets you ping damage to try and avoid the IVH that anarchs are packing.

Most often, I won’t rez bio-ethics until have two on the board or until the runner is broke. Popping Tech Startup or EBC can let you tutor the bio-ethics and drop all-three on the board even after they have already been trashed (with the Museum).

I will say that a single sea-source can be hard to come by without an Atlas token even with DBS to filter. Often after I have appropriately setup, I won’t fire the Museums so I can see more of the deck and dump stuff I don’t need.

You can score out if you need to, but I’ve never done it. I have gotten to 5 or 6 points plenty of times, but never scored out for the win. Every game has either been a net damage (bio-ethics or assassin) or meat damage (scorch) kill.

Card Choices

Agendas

I tried to avoid public agendas as you can often hide these in remotes. Oaktown is great, but here I would much prefer CST (Higher pay-out and is face down) in this deck. Oaktown is in there because this deck runs drip-econ for the most part and anything that gets more money is great.

Project Atlas is your third 4/2 because you really need this card to pull your sea-source. Without any Currents in the deck, this card also can be an easy way to clear our an annoying current (hacktivist and employee strike, I’m looking at you). GFI is there to lower the agenda density and force the runner to score 4 agendas instead of 3.

Assets are a bit trickier.

In order to really make this deck sing, you want to avoid rezzing assets until they are actually needed. This is to force the runner to check remotes and pay the tax, especially if you get cheeky and score a naked Project Atlas. Even Museum shouldn’t get rezzed until you actually want to use it.

Bio-Ethics Association is there to be an annoyance and can get rid of the runners key cards while keeping them taxed on credits and clicks. It’s also there to knock the runner into scorch range even if they have plascretes out. If the runner drops 2 plascretes….just scorch them anyway and shuffle the cards back in with Museum. I have used scorch just to knock key cards out of the runner’s hand (such as Apoc or Levy) even if I didn’t get the kill out of it.

DBS and Jackson are a similar function. You want to dig the cards you need quickly and it costs the runner a good number of credits to trash. Often I won’t even pop J-How when the runner goes after him just to cost them 4 credits and proceed to shuffle him back in with Museum.

Boot Camp and Tech Startup are your tutors. Key targets early on are MCH and DBS as this quickly gets econ, recursion, and filters out your deck. Later on you can fetch Bio-Ethics or any assets that the runner trashed (and you just shuffled back in with Museum).

MCH, MoH, MT, and even Pad are the usually horizontal-deck bullshit and a way to keep the runner broke so that you can get an easy sea-scorch. Also means you rez just about anything for free.

Operations

Make Money.

Kill the runner.

…okay, one thing to point out here. Why hedge fund over diversified? Hedge Fund is far better in the early game before you can setup your remotes and you can trigger it in your opening hand. Runners also tend to get more cautious when you are sitting on a lot of credits (especially if they know you are running scorch). You don’t want to out-pace the runners economically too far as they will be making more strategic decisions and consider that there is a chance that they may get kill and might not try to blow up your assets (which is your primary tax). Instead they will probably save their money for big runs. Weyland really can’t win on naked agendas unless they include Hostile Takeover (and this deck does not want to give the runner bad pub).

Ice

Ice destruction is a problem these days. The solution in this deck is to give the runner a bunch of cheap targets and then just recur them with Museum or Jackson.

Bailiff was originally Caduceus, but turned out much better than running after play testing. It’s decent econ on centrals (especially stacked). Spiderweb taxes Faust and Lady. Datapike was almost quandary, but it’s a great face-check early on and doesn’t immediately die to parasite (we already have Bailiff and Tour Guide for that).

Assassin is a great tax and can often hit out of nowhere. The downside is that this is the only ice in the deck that D4v1d breaks so you can’t deplete the tokens before they hit this. Tour Guide is amazing because assets spam. It is a hell of a tax on centrals and helps manage things like apocalypse DO NOT use this as the outermost ice (because DDoS and Inside Job).

Match Ups

Hacktivist and Employee Strike are a bitch. Keeping an early un-advanced Project Atlas on the board can help. Usually the runner will check every new remote once either of these hit the board so it is a bit harder to get by and you will probably have to build a scoring remote Assassin-Tour Guide, Assassin – Spiderweb, Spiderweb-Tour Guide is usually sufficient.

Shrike is also a bitch, it hoses you and there isn’t much you can do about it.

Councilman – Usually not a problem. For Museum you have a window at the end of the runner turn and before the start of your turn so all it does is cost you an additional credit. Bio-ethics, Pad, DBS are also non-issues because of the same. However, definitely rez Jacksons on your turn (or at the end of the opponents turn) if you see or expect councilman.

Anarchs

Noise can be very annoying to play against, but the Museum helps a lot here. Just be sure to purge the imp counters when you can. Use Bio-ethics to ping away key cards and to force him to spend his money on assets instead of installing things.

Against Whizzard, you need to spam assets like crazy until you can draw into a sea-scorch. He is a tough match-up, but eventually he too can run out of money. Try to always keep one Mumbad City Hall in your hand in case he goes after the one on the board.

Minh-Maxx (and other DLR) isn’t that tough, the decks usually have low econ and sometimes they will be forced to burn their fall guys for the money just to get rid of your museums. Bio-ethics also forces them to spend clicks coming after you instead of using DLR.

Apoc Max is tougher, no Crisium and no Hostile Infrastructure means that eventually they will pull it off. The usual defense here is to dig for the sea-scorch and have tour-guides on centrals to make it really expensive to pull off.

Shapers

Honestly, I have had no issue playing against shaper. An early astrolabe is annoying, but spamming assets like made (especially with Tech Startup) can sometimes deplete them of econ and force them to discard down.

Spags’s Hailey deck is a chore, but getting the Bio-Ethics up early to knock programs out of their hand isn’t a bad plan. Keep forcing them to make runs on remotes to burn cash and you can usually use the bio-ethics to pull a sea-scorch or sea-scorch-scorch.

Apoc Kate is a tough one. They have plenty of clicks available with hyperdriver and do have a good amount of cash. You need to tax them out with Tour Guide (Atman is usually their only Tour Guide solution) and either nuke key cards with bio-ethics and hold a sea-scorch in hand. Try to keep a Jackson and Museum in hand when expecting Apoc.

Criminal

All criminals basically get free money off of you from Sec Testing and Bank Job. That is absolutely fine. Get the Bio-Ethics up early as Crim tends to suffer if you can knock breakers out of their hand. Faire and Mongoose are usually the only sentry breakers, use this to your advantage. Account Siphon isn’t bad as you can mitigate it a bit with the asset spam. Otherwise, Siphon can work in your favor if the runner goes tag-me.

Drug-Dealer is a little annoying, but you do end up trashing a lot of the cards that they just drew. Be patient with them, score when you get the opportunity, and let them exhaust themselves on your recurring assets.

Changes

Hacktivist was a pain at Regionals. I was up a Minh-MaxX that was just evil. I did eventually just get enough money to trash the paparazzi and scorch them to dust. Thankfully I didn’t run into employee strike. Tech-Startup was usually the most useful tutor for the most part. I am considering pulling the two EBC for two Paywall Implementation.

I am considering dropping the GFI for GTO and grabbing two Sensie Actors Union over the DBS along with two each of Paywall Implementation, Tech Startup, Executive Bootcamp. Can probably end up hiding the GTO on the bottom of the deck, but it is a pretty big risk as this is not El-Ad’s Gagarin.

A single copy of Taurus might not be a bad include to deal with some of the more annoying hardware, but it is super niche.

Lizzie Mills was in the original deck and did good work, but I cut it as I didn’t feel that I needed it. With Salsette Island around the corner, I will probably add her back in. Aesop’s, Artist Colony, Crash Space, Earthrise Hotel, Off-Campus Apartment, Personal Workshop, Wyldeside, Wireless Net Pavilion are all decently popular and they all die to Lizzie. The pad pub isn’t absolutely terrible as you can tutor her again with both EBC and Tech Startup.