Nisei's Round Table: Rush or Die

Ok, my curiosity got sparked; one more deck for old times from old times. I remembered my old greenhouse deck and thought: who really needs jackson?

In a land of myth and a time of magic the destiny of a great kingdom rests on the shoulders of a young ice, his name: Merlin.

So, this is a spikier version that essentially wants to score a T2 nisei and ride the spike from there. There are certainly more threats today than there used to be; but there's also a lot less to worry about when there's no siphon. This deck likes to leave HQ entirely undefended and R&D only lightly defended. Most of your resources should go into building a scoring remote as soon as possible and then putting the runner in do or die situations. There's a lot more die in this deck than there used to be.

In fact, you may find that one anon tip for the 3rd merlin is appropriate. Without yog, merlin is much more of a bother for opponents than it used to be. And lancelot is only conditionally good for the tax of having to reinstall breakers. The runner should be pretty poor early game and not usually on their breakers. Current runners usually can't run effectively until turn 3 or 4, so you should be able to get an early nisei. If you find yourself not getting early nisei's you need to throw caution to the wind and literally just build remotes until you figure it out.

The nature of this game is that you will lose a percentage of games to some amount of bad luck. You're playing the psi game with ice, you're playing the psi game with your hand with R&D all of the time. The final moment of the game relies on you successfully setting up a single turn of strong work compression that the runner cna't overcome. 2 nisei counters, plus a batty should be enough; but if your final agenda is Obokata & Ben's in place you may not even need all of that. If Obokata & Ben are in place then you're primary goal is probably to batty merlin for net damage.

Does MAW suck? Yeah, it kind of does. But it's six to install, so you just have to play fast and smart. Does turtle suck? Yeah, it kind of does, but the speed at which you're going may open swordsman up. Feel free to replace guard with swordsman #2 if there are too many turtles. Does opus suck? Not unless you're being a turtle. It's 5 to install which means you usually have three turns to do what you need to do. Does film critic suck? Yeah, it does. It really does. Just go faster than they can find it.

You're real enemies are things like inside job, smc, and super fast runners. Most runners are going for some sort of control game and you can lock them out.

Only use agroplex in a discretionary sort of way. I'd recommend putting it in your scoring remote so you have an excuse to overwrite it with another install after you've gotten what you need. The problem is that it also benifits your opponent. You could replace it with more jinteki event draw. That may actually be the correct move. Or just replace it with swordsman.