Armed surprise 3th @Montreal Circuit Opener April 2023

Armed Intimidation for a fast win. The list is a spin off Baa Ram Wu Sophie's Choice deck.

Mulligan plan : maximum one agenda and you want ices.

Game plan : Flatline the runner with Neurospike or BOOM! after scoring Armed Intimidation.

In Montreal Circuit Opener, it won against a super rich Hoshiko and against reg Zahya. But lost to tag me Zahya because handsize protected the runner (did a value BOOM! anyways).

While using the original deck, I was sometime struggling for two things :

1. Lack of credits to pull off the combo.
2. The stopping power of ices against the current strong economy and breaker suite of the runner.
3. The consistency of finding ices.

This led me to put more taxing ices (one more Afshar) and get an ice that can boost itself, my old favorite : Surveyor. To place ices under for cheaper, I opted for Formicary. It is a cheap ice that can move around and can foil the math for breaking ices. A janky ice for a janky deck. Getting a 6 or 8 strength Surveyor really help (except against Afterimage). Of note, Surveyor can sometime let us get our combo out, by giving 2 tags.

To get credits, I chose to ditch the Standoff in favor of Hostile Takeover. This allowed me to trigger Malapert Data Vault while getting 7. The first card to import is usually Neurospike.

Baa's deck is so much fun, but I strived to make it a little more easy consistent. Archer is strickly better than anything, and Surveyor could be replaced by it. But I wanted to have a way to score out, in case Heartbeat was there (it is quite popular, in April 2023).

According to Metropole Grid agenda math, both suite of agenda (Baa's 2x GFI + 6x 2 points) and this one (3x GFI, 3x 2 points, 3x 1 points) require 20 accesses to win 50% of the time. But Baa's deck is weaker to Mad Dash, needing 14 accesses, while this deck require 17 accesses. But it cost us one influence, which is why I let Magnet go.

Digital Rights Management is really good for out combo. You can get the pieces together fairly easily, so having a "fourth" Armed Intimidation help a lot to find the agenda. This deck does not have a long game usually and being able to use our combo before the runners can setup (and make our ice as solid as wet toilet paper) is important. While Orbital Superiority can combo out, it is much easier with Armed Intimidation.

The other big part of our economy is NGO Front. I often only put one advancement on it, to save a click. Because of our ID, this make 2 to gain 6 (3/), while putting two advancements will make it 3 for 8 (2.67/). Just because I want to go faster in making my setup.

The reason you want to have Neurospike in hand is because sometime, you'll need the 2 extra damages to flatline the runner, if you have to use End of the Line, or to finish the runner when they chose to lose their hand from Armed Intimidation.

The deck weaknest is Steelskin Scarring and Heartbeat. Both prevent our combo. Usually, you will then see the runner take the 5 damages from Armed Intimidation and still have 2 cards. In that case, you just slowed the runner a bit, possibly to have time to score out or try again. For Heartbeat, you'll want to flatline the runner before they set it up, otherwise, you can still do it for value (making the runner trash their board), which is useful in itself. Again giving you the time to score out.

Big shoutout for Baa Ram Wu, who played on their channel. It is a fun deck to experiment with.

Big thanks for everyone who played and especially to is44ru for organizing the event!

Cheers!