The Theory of Mercury[5th CoS Worlds '23](Countdown to 2024)

To celebrate the new year, myself and other members of the QTM testing group will be trying to publish daily decklists showing off ideas we've built and explored but didn't end up publishing for one reason or another. Here's something I've been tinkering with in various forms for quite some time now.

You sit down across the table and check my ID. It's Mercury. You breath a sigh of relief and start to focus on your own game plan. You watch helplessly as the runner steals 7 points in a single turn.

Mercury is not the best crim ID, I'll grant you that, but I'm fairly convinced they're a sight better than most people give them credit for, especially in the meta leading up to Worlds. Agenda density in a world without Global Food Initiative is tending higher, and Hermes helps turn that extra access into a blowout in a way that wouldn't be meaningful if you only stole the points.

But how do we bypass ice to get that sweet, sweet ID trigger in the midgame? Well, here's the secret: we don't. We've got inside job, but you don't really want to IJ a central most of the time unless you've got a good reason. And that's it for bypass. Bypass is situational and a lot of work to see an extra card - instead of playing a card to bypass the ice, just slam down the Maker's Eye and break the ice the old fashioned way! Our ID is most relevant in the early game where we can force the corp to slow down, ice centrals, and keep their econ up to be able to afford to rez that ice. Our game plan is control crim.

Pick one central to run - don't let the corp rez ice on the other unless you have to. This isn't so we get more Mercury triggers directly! It's so we can get the Hermes trigger to blow that central open for a more impactful run. This is how we build the blowout turn.

We've got the econ suite in here to match. There's the usual run base stuff, but it's augmented by Liberateds, Casts, and a Fermenter. We need to be able to money up without making runs, because we're likely to have a hard choice between a server that has become more taxing than it's worth and RnD where we'd let the corp rez ice, and we only want to do that when it's impactful. Having that upfront money to challenge the remote keeps the corp honest in their pushes, and lets us punish them for overextending with tools like our Sneakdoor Beta. The Seven Point Turn was install Sneakdoor, use it to see 2 in HQ, steal a 2 pointer, bounce the 3 pointer, steal it, bounce the RnD ice, Maker's Eye. Sit back, click to draw, make good runs.

En Passant is a silly card. Play something better. That said, surprisingly often in the meta corps will spend a significant amount of resources defending an early Rashida, leaving an opening where they can't rez on a central. I'd been experimenting with Capybara, which created by far the most fiddly ice destruction suite I've ever tried to play, but the En Passants were good enough without it to stay in the list. It's a nice DooF follow up too - landing a DooF, checking out RnD while they can't rez, and taking an ice off the board for the future always feels like a pretty good turn :)

I can't believe how much fun worlds was, and how much fun CoS was. I'm so thankful for my teammates, Sophie and Eli, and to all of QtM for not talking me out of this silly idea.

See you all next year, and go play some Mercury!