Hands of Blue v2 (1st Place @ The Yellow King Spring)

How often are you happy to see Corporate War? Do you see situations where you delay scoring to get over 7c? Curious on your thoughts of Corporate War vs NAPD here.

Corp War is my favorite agenda in the deck. It has beautiful synergy with Blue Sun. With the ability to bounce back rezzed cards on the board, you're virtually guaranteed to gain 7 credits every time you score it. Traditionally, this is scored behind at least a Curtain Wall, and you pop the Curtain Wall back, leaving you plenty of credits to advance Corp War and score it with 7+ credits in your pool. In Blue Sun, I've never had to delay scoring to get over 7 credits.

NAPD Contract is interesting. It was a no-brainer to not include in the original versions of this deck, which were reliant on Hostile Takeover and Archers. It simply wasn't worth including with the anti-synergy between NAPD Contract and Bad Publicity. Now that the Hostile Takeovers are gone, it's worth revisiting and playtesting.

How did the Scorched Earths do in this deck? With only one source of tagging and plenty of build up, I'm not sure about the include.

You missed the most important source of tagging: Posted Bounty :)

In an ideal situation, where you're sitting on an Atlas counter and you're faced with a Criminal/Shaper runner with no Plascrete... You install and double advance Posted Bounty. If the Runner doesn't run it, you advance and double Scorch them. If the Runner runs and steals it, you Midseason and double Scorch them.

In the right match-up, this deck excels like no other at putting the Runner into a lose-lose position.

How would you describe the issues that Val and Reina give you?

RIVER, WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!?

Great build! I'm always trying to find the best Blue Sun build. A few questions if you don't mind:

-How many tags do you find is the right number to shoot for when Midseasoning? -Do you have any thoughts on cutting Restructure? -How useful was Taurus and turning scorches back on? Did it have any other notable effects? How do you play your OAIs? When do you OAI naked vs. putting an ice in front? -Any thoughts on the merits of the 5 cost barrier choices Hive, Fire Wall, and Changeling?

@TheRyanBurke Primarily inexperience against both.

Valencia's Blackmails and Vamps gave me a fit. The lack of NAPD Contract in this build means there's nothing to throw out and advance to bait a Blackmail and open a scoring window. I snuck out unadvanced Atlases, but couldn't score anything else against Val -also tried rushing in the early game before they got all their Blackmails, but it didn't work with the Deja Vus and Same Old Things available to them. The additions of NAPD Contract and Executive Boot Camp destroy Val though - if she makes you nervous, just play a pure glacier variant of this deck (see bblum's deck linked in the description).

The Reina Headlock matchup is actually a very fun one for Blue Sun and I won the majority of Headlock matchups I had over the week, but they were tight games and I dropped one when I got too focused on trying to scorch her out instead of taking advantage of scoring windows. That brings up something that I didn't mention in the description above: I feel this is a very skill intensive deck, if for no reason than all the options and flexibility it presents you during the game, and it bit me squarely in the butt at the end of a long tournament where I made several poor decisions.

I was at the top table the last three rounds of the tournament, and all three matches were recorded. The guy that recorded them and myself are supposed to sit down at some point in the future, do some commentary, and put them up on YouTube. No idea when that'll happen, but I'll definitely add links here once they're up.

@DarlingSensei Good questions all around!

Hah, your first question is a much discussed topic here. The first tournament I won with this list was a double-elimination Invitational run after four weeks of qualifiers. I played against a Gabe deck in the upper bracket final, landed Midseason and traced for four credits above what he could spend (I think he had 13 credits, so I bumped the trace to 17 credits). I only had one Scorched Earth in hand. He paid the 13 credits, only getting stuck with four tags, and was able to get the credits necessary to dump the tags before I drew my second Scorch. I asked him this very question afterwards, and he said that tracing for 7 above how much he can spend is the point where he'll take all the tags. That seemed high to me. I won the lower bracket final and got a rematch with him, landed Midseason again and traced for 6 above his credit pool this time - he got a good laugh and sure enough, refused to pay up, taking all the tags.

To answer the question though, it varies. Against a Criminal or Shaper with no Plascrete on the table when you've got two Scorches in hand, you obviously only need to land one tag. Against Criminal or Shaper where you don't have Scorches in hand (or an over-advanced Atlas) yet, you want to hit them with enough tags that they'll have to spend multiple turns clearing. Because of I've Had Worse, you always want to land multiple tags on Anarchs (ideally, in case IHW saves them, they're going to spend a lot of time and credits clearing tags or you'll have an opportunity to recur Scorches and hit them again). In situations where you want to land multiple tags, I normally put the trace at four credits above their credit pool and link. If they take all the tags, you win as soon as you draw the necessary Scorches. If they prevent as many as possible, it typically guarantees that they'll spend 3-4 turns working their way up from 0 credits to clear the remaining tags - opening a huge scoring window for you (or giving you a chance to draw for Scorch and land the kill - or, most ideally, doing both by scoring an over-advanced Atlas and tutoring Scorch for the kill).

I actually never ran Restructure in this build; you'll see that Timmy's Lanri deck (link in description above) didn't run them and they're one of the few hold-outs from the Lanri build that I haven't yet converted to Blum Glacierism. Restructures are very good cards in Blue Sun, I'm just not sure what I'd cut to fit it in. With my above list, I'd definitely swap the Private Contracts out for a Restructure - Contracts was a hold out from when I was only running a single Adonis with no way to tutor for it and is relatively useless with two Adonis Campaigns in the deck.

Taurus is fantastic. It was actually more useful for killing Comet, Clone Chips, and R&D Interfaces than it was Plascrete Carapace. Won a game against one Shaper because I killed two Clone Chips with Taurus while the Runner had a Lady out with one counter; sneaked out the winning agenda behind two barriers.

Oversight AI play is very situational. Assuming I'm Oversight'ing a Curtain Wall (Tollbooth, Wormhole, and Nebula are also alternative targets if you're desperate), I'll almost always play it naked against a Criminal or Shaper. Against an Anarch, I'll normally put something in front of it (due to D4v1d).

On the 5-cost barriers, I think Hive is the obvious choice. PPVP Kate is one of your weakest match-ups, and Hive is a huge Lady tax, costing 3 Lady counters to get through in the early-game. I tried Fire Wall in place of Hive when O&C first came out, and while I appreciated that it didn't lose subroutines as the game went on, it's definitely a substantially less effective ice than Hive w/3-5 subroutines. I would run Fire Wall over Hive in any other Weyland identity, but Hive is too good with Blue Sun and the ability to recoup the rez cost once it is blank. Changeling is more of a meta call. It's substantially weaker at the moment with Shapers being the most popular faction and Criminals on the downswing. Most Shapers are still running a 1-of Atman and setting it at 4, so Changeling is a waste of credits against them.