Lobstermodernism (5-0 King of Subways)

Why is this deck called Lobstermodernism? Because it's important to have the excellent posture of our bottom dwelling brethren to play this deck.

Anyway, as I said in my write up of Rasher Decisions (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/49957/rasher-decisions), I was a bit down on actually playing Netrunner. With King of Subways coming up in two weeks, Dan and I still didn't have a 3rd teammate – and then I got a message from @tolaasin asking me if I would be around the weekend of KoS, because he was maybe coming to NYC for business. I said yes, and and he brought enough enthusiasm that it actually got me excited to play as well.

He asked me what I thought the best Weyland deck was and I told him I'm pretty sure it was Skorp (which I thought was the best deck pre-Rashida). He asked me whether he should play Argus and sent me a horrific pile of garbage that Dave Hoyland told him was good. I told him he couldn't play that, but I had seen @creditzathotmail play Argus at Canadian nats on stream and I actually thought it was the best Argus deck I'd ever seen.

https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/49409/i-drew-the-nuts-against-jason-deng-and-boomed-him-on-turn-4- I looked up his list again, and fixed the most obvious stuff (going to 3 Project Atlas [I think Oaktown has merit, but Armed Intimidation is a travesty of deckbuilding]), adding Audacity and Fast Track, cutting Tithonium, Wake Up Call and MCA Informant). From here Tolaasin asked me about the fact there was no Archived Memories and I agreed it was way better than Ark Lockdown, so we swapped that. This got us to a list which was about 7 cards off the original and 1 card off the final one which you see here.

With Turntable in the meta the 3rd Standoff became a bit of a liability, and so it was cut, and we waffled (discussed at length) a bunch of different options for what to replace it with (2nd Bryan for a while) and ultimately decided to go with a second Vanilla which I think is right. With only six operations in the deck, Bryan often doesn’t have scope to fire, but taking one is still worthwhile.

The Key idea of this deck is that you want to go fast and abuse the fact that Hard Hitting News is strongest at low credit totals. Its your early defense which is nice because it needs to be respected or your opponent can just get way behind right way, so unlike a lot of other decks that rely on Ice more you have a threat that is hidden (turn 1 running always has the possibility that you can run into Econ - HHN and just lose). Archer is the best ice in the game atm so you play 3 of them, and you're playing 3x GFI so your deck is pretty resilient to accesses. You want to just push fast and force your opponent to spend money so they are threatened by HHN (or if they don't come you want to score an Atlas with 2 counters which is worth 4 Pts).

This is the best Weyland deck with a kill threat by a lot (and High Profile whatever will get immediately slot in it over Boom), and I think is one of the strongest decks in the meta and has a lot of game against Val (it has vanguished granddaddy or Argus Seamus twice while he played Val).

Anyway, shoutout to @tolaasin for bringing such enthusiasm to KoS that it got me excited as well, and for going 5-0 on the day with this deck.