Passchendaele (2nd Place Newark, DE ANRPC)

“I died in hell – (They called it Passchendaele)” - Line from Memorial Tablet, poem by Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon, Royal Welch Fusiliers, November 1918.

Do you want your opponent not to have any fun at all? Do you want to see them deplete their entire stack looking for agendas that will almost never come up? Do you like making money hand over fist? Then this might be the deck for you.

I've been working on this deck for a while now, and I can honestly say it's my favorite Corp deck I've ever played. It plays the attrition game, taking away all of the runner's resources until they have nothing left. At that point, you start scoring all the agendas you've managed to squirrel away everywhere. It creates a monstrous tax on both cards and money, which a lot of runners have a hard time fighting against.

I was incredibly happy with the deck's performance at the Newark ANRPC Qualifier. The only change I would make is that I might swap either the Cyberdex or the third Caprice for a Snatch and Grab. Kati Jones makes enough money to give the deck some pause and killing Aesop's Pawnshop is a nice added bonus. It should be good to get rid of Film Critic once Old Hollywood lands as well.

Usually, I aim to get 2 Crick onto archives, 2 ice onto R&D, maybe 1 onto HQ depending on the matchup, and 1 or 2 ice as a scoring server. Your upgrades are resilient enough with the IG tax that they generally serve as extra pieces of ice. That being said, icing up is not the first priority of the deck. Feel free to leave your centrals open for a while(with the exception of Archives. It should be the first server you ice). You're only playing 9 agendas in 54 cards so the odds aren't great for your opponent.

Instead of securing your centrals, focus on your asset spam. Getting a PAD or two online early is incredibly important in this deck. Since we're not running Hedge Funds, the early money from the PADs is really necessary. Try to get a Melange set up behind a piece of Ice as well. Taking 7 and pitching a card is an incredibly strong play out of this deck. The Server Diagnostics serve as your late game econ, obviously only coming out once your ice setup is complete. These can be Sundews, but Server Diagnostics will both always pay out the turn you rez them, and can't be denied with Security Testing. Once they come online, the money gets ludicrous. In more than one game at the Newark ANRPC qualifier, I had turns where I gained 7 credits in drip econ every turn.

Runners will almost always approach the game in 2 ways. The first is to attempt to ignore the assets and Archives and attack your centrals. This is almost always the wrong way. Central attacks on this deck, without getting rid of the Upgrades, will usually deplete your credits and cards without yielding much in return. The second is that they will aggressively hit archives before going to go trash your econ. This is usually more effective, and results in a harder game for you. Interns is your best friend in this case. Putting back something that they just paid loads of money to get rid of is super disheartening. The archives aggression can only last so long, however. I've usually found that once 2 or 3 Shocks are in Archives along with a Hokusai, the runner usually gives up on it.

The deck's biggest weaknesses are early centrals pressure, Stealth Criminals, and Whizzard. Early game, you aren't running enough ice to keep the runner out. While the odds aren't great for the runner, Agendas will make an appearance at the most in opportune time. However, you can't afford to slow down to secure your centrals or else you'll be way behind once you reach midgame. Mostly you have to grit your teeth and bear it, but knowing when to draw heavily and when to sit back and only take what you're given is important to your survival. Use your Jacksons to hide agendas in Archives as long as you can (It's really funny when people realize that your Jackson costs 8 to trash if they don't want to call your bluff on Archives). Stealth Criminals will gain a lot of money from Security Testing and then be close to impossible to tax on your centrals. There's not a whole lot we can do about that. You aren't running enough ice to be able to protect all your assets. This matchup will usually come down to who gets luckier on random accesses. Whizzard is a nightmare for this deck. He essentially will pay normal prices to trash all of your things. I haven't found a good way yet to win this matchup that doesn't include getting lucky with a Snare.

In all, this deck is absolutely brutal for your opponent. They're faced with so many bad and expensive options that it's hard for them to find a good line on your game. If you've been looking for a war of attrition deck, this is definitely what you're looking for. As an added bonus, it's got an amazing matchup against the Faust Quetzal deck that's getting more and more popular. I hope you guys enjoy playing around with the list!