Legality (show more) |
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Standard Ban List 23.09 (latest) |
Standard Ban List 23.08 (active) |
Rotation |
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Pre-rotation decklist |
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Core Set |
What Lies Ahead |
Cyber Exodus |
Opening Moves |
Second Thoughts |
Mala Tempora |
Fear and Loathing |
Upstalk |
First Contact |
Up and Over |
All That Remains |
Order and Chaos |
Breaker Bay |
Chrome City |
Card draw simulator |
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None. Self-made deck here. |
Inspiration for | |||
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First we destroy, then we score! | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Magnum Opus? Holy Grail | 7 | 4 | 0 |
Blue Hole Sun: Battlezone Dubai Tournament | 4 | 2 | 0 |
The Black King v2.0 | 3 | 2 | 0 |
The Black Knight - Kc. Ver. 1.08 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
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"None shall pass"
Think Blacklist is just a tool for keeping Clot in the bin? Reckon Shaper Bullshit means you can never build a safe remote without Ash and/or Caprice? Don't think you can possibly win a game with 5+ BP? Think again.
I've always enjoyed decks that include program trashing as a big part of their gameplan, I love tearing down the rig a runner has carefully constructed and making previously porous servers strong again. While I've worked on Weyland trashing decks on and off ever since the release of Power Shutdown, it was only the addition of Grail ice that has brought them up to genuine competitive consideration (outside of a meta composed of nothing but recursion free criminals)
The SanSan cycle added some key cards in the form of Blacklist and Oaktown Renovation, and as it stands the deck has serious game against any faction. Even recursion heavy shapers can find themselves locked out of your servers these days.
Card breakdown:
ID
It has to be Blue Sun. You don't have any fancy OAI/Curtain Wall tricks, but you still have virtual immunity to parasites. Don't underestimate this, anyone playing heavy parasite recursion would flatten this deck out of any other ID and it's just not worth it. Being able to move your dangerous ice around, pull back grails to support ones in more relevant places and more easily hit Restructure money are also nice bonuses, but it's Parasites that keep you here.
AGENDAS
This agenda suite is ideal for this style of play. Every single one either funds you to score the next one, or searches it up for you. Oaktown was a massive boost, it's amazing being able to score an agenda on turn 2 or 3 without completely destroying your tempo, Fracking provides a massive burst of econ, HTs are trivial to score, give you a bit of a cash boost and obviously provide the ideal Archer food and Atlas fetches up the next agenda.
The ideal scoring pattern is Oaktown, Fracking, Atlas, with a counter to fetch the winning Hostile, but you can and should try to score everything you draw pretty much straight away.
ASSETS
Blacklist is the key to beating Shapers, they have far too much recursion for a deck like this to function while they have free access to it. I'll discuss the matchups in more detail below.
Jackson Howard is Jackson Howard, but deserves specific mention for the awesome synergy with Power Shutdown. There's no better feeling than safely shutting down a Grimoire.
The bootcamp is generally used for one or the other of these and is largely included to free up the influence that would otherwise be a 3rd Blacklist, and there's a 1-of Private Contracts for the times you can't find any op econ or push an agenda out quickly enough to stabilise your economy.
UPGRADES
Just the Crisiums, for Siphon/Keyhole hate. You hate econ denial and these are the best counter in the game.
OPERATIONS
Hedge and Restructure are your bread and butter economy, you will definitely need one of these if you can't score an Oaktown or Hostile first up.
Power Shutdown is obviously pretty central to the deck, and you should try to use it at every opportunity. Even if it's not a key component you're hitting, if there's something 0-1 cost out just go for it, you have more and they are the first thing you shuffle back in with Jackson every time.
Subliminal Messaging is a fantastic backup econ option, people often have to dig pretty hard to find all the answers to your ice which can give you a lot of turns where you can pull it back, and there's always the cute play of fetching it with Atlas to score an agenda they thought you were too poor for.
Patch is possibly the weakest card in the current list and may get replaced, but it's pretty great for stealth matchups where putting it on any of your codegates adds an extra stealth credit tax and should definitely stay if you're expecting to see a lot of these.
ICE
Grails/Grim/Archer - These are how you win. Kill stuff. Kill it again. Pull the ice back and move it around so they never know what server might be about to make them lose yet another thing. Don't be afraid to pick up Grim sometimes, bad pub doesn't matter if they can't get in and not knowing where it is can be very powerful.
Enigma is vanilla but clearly better than the pisspoor in-faction options for a Code Gate. Gets the nod over Ice Wall as it can't be insta-parasited with Grimoire out.
Changeling is wonderful for it's non-destroyer strength 4 sentry option forcing an extra gear check against anyone relying on Mimic. With Datasuckers being prime Shutdown targets, it's often the ice that you lean on most heavily if the runner has managed to get an otherwise full rig out.
Swordsman was a recent addition but has proved invaluable, if Noise gets rich and drops a Crypsis it's your one way out and it's worth it's weight in gold in any Eater matchup.
MATCHUPS
Pre-Paid Kate
It's all about the Blacklist timing. The three key cards you want to cut off their access to are Datasucker, Sharpshooter and Atman. You're unlikely to catch them with all 3 in the bin, but if you can pick up 1 or 2 you can often trash the others later as they have a hard time dealing with all your ice without this trio. You can generally leave HQ open all game unless you're particularly flooded, and just focus on R&D and a remote. Don't be afraid of dropping blacklist in what was previously your main remote and building a second one, you can always move some of the ice around if need be. Forget about competing economically, don't bother rezzing ice just to make her spend money, only do it if it'll hit something or keep her out, and never, EVER rez if she has an SMC out and you have a Power Shutdown in hand. You won't win every Kate game, sometimes they do just shit out an entire rig including a sucker with 'Labe and Clone Chips for Datasucker Shutdown protection too quickly for you, but with careful play it's much more winnable than you might think.
Noise
Rush. Rush like you've never rushed before. Drop agendas behind single ice. Anything with an ETR sub. Rez anything that trashes a program even if it's an empty Cache, you want to keep them off the board so your Shutdowns will hit Suckers or Clone Chips. Always pull back your low strength ice at every opportunity so he has no chance to parasucker them to death. It's an extremely favourable matchup and you should win most games where he doesn't get too lucky with mills. Weird thing about the Noise matchup: You actually want them to find Aesop! He helpfully clears out the Caches that are getting in the way of your Power Shutdowns.
Reg-ass MaxX
LOL Blacklist. Both Zu and NRE versions are extremely vulnerable to Power Shutdown, and they lean heavily on Parasite which is fine by you. Don't let a Sucker live for long and you'll be fine.
Siphon/Keyhole MaxX
Blacklist is still great but you need both it and a Crisium ASAP, plus the money to defend HQ, R&D and at least 1 remote, which is tough unless you can score a very fast Fracking. Given how hard it is to defend everywhere in time it may well be less than 50/50 for you but luckily this archetype seems to be largely dying out. If it's big where you are, squeeze some cheaper ice in so that you can defend more servers for less cash. Ice Wall would be incredible here.
Other Anarchs
Even with their improved draw, they still have #Anarchproblems and without being able to lean on Parasite will struggle to find all the answers to your ice quickly enough, so score quickly and Shutdown those suckers! (have I mentioned enough times how you REALLY HATE DATASUCKER yet?)
Leela/Classic Andy
You got this one. They're just too fragile to trashing and don't have enough Faerie uses to get them through the game, especially when it's such an easy Shutdown target. Barring a bad start giving Leela a chance to do her stupid 'score off R&D, bounce HQ ice, siphon' turn one nonsense they're in a rough spot. The only variant that might give you bother is an Andy running Clone Chips and surprising you with them, but they aren't common and still pretty vulnerable to Shutdowns.
Stealth, either Andy or the new Hayley breeds
Shutdown the cloaks and stealth chips, and tax out the Ghost Runners. You have a lot of ice that eats stealth credits, you can usually tax them enough that they run out or can't find the last Ghost Runner in time. Interestingly, Dagger is far more effective against you than Switchblade due to needing less stealth so hope it's a blade version! Archer makes a nice surprise at the bottom of a server vs Dagger though, and combined with Blacklist can often hand you the full lock.
Edit - Forgot Headlock matchup: Score Fracking. Win. Don't fail to find a single ETR ice all game like I did last time I played one and lose to random pokes at R&D with no programs left. That sucked.
26 comments |
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12 Jul 2015
DarlingSensei
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12 Jul 2015
Vapo
PC over Investors/Melange was due to safety in R&D (and on the board, for that matter) and not usually needing to use it for long enough that the everlasting nature becomes a benefit. You don't tend to hang around, one burst of using PC down to 4-6 creds and pulling it back is generally enough, it often gets discarded from hand later on. Patch should probably be replaced, the original theory was Atman protection but Kate always seems to discard the Atman early and get it stuck in archives, and the only other matchup where it has any value is Stealth. Swordsman has been great, I only put it in this week after deciding the Lotus Field I had in that slot before was unnecessary and it singehandedly won me a game in York where Noise managed to get about a million credits and Crypsis out depressingly quickly, and it should have won me another when I got it on HQ Vs Headlock, but that was the game I couldn't find a single ETR :( I don't think Subliminal has forced any bad runs, most players are sensible enough not to be forced into runs just to stop me making a single credit, but most games where I've drawn it early it's netted me a bunch of credits. With so much Kate around, who has a tendency to spend a lot of turns digging and setting up and run in bursts, I think it should be seeing a lot more play than it is generally. |
13 Jul 2015
kollapse
Seeing how Marcus Batty is the thing to worry about now, would that be a reasonable include with all the program trashing (or net damage for that matter) subs? Not sure what to swap out for influence though, barring the Grail suite. |
13 Jul 2015
Talism
nice, will have to try your build, ive been tooling around with a housekeeping/shutdown/blacklist deck out of gagarin, blue sun might be the better id but was trying to avoid it :P |
13 Jul 2015
Vapo
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14 Jul 2015
Drchatter
How do you deal with blackmail / Valencia? I tried this deck out and had a really hard time getting around it (albeit it was very nice in other runs :) ). Oaktown starts being a dead card and there's no ash/caprice to end the run. |
14 Jul 2015
Vapo
Here's what I think should work: Basic advice vs Blackmail - They only have 3. Go fast and you can probably score quicker than they draw them. Build a 2nd remote and get a Blacklist in it, this will suck out one of the Blackmails for sure or leave them only having access to 3 all game no matter how much recursion they have, which is just not enough to win. If you can manage to score atlas with token (go for an Oaktown first to see if they're holding Blackmail, if possible) fetch the EBC. Not only do they have to blackmail EBC that turn or you can start forcing out breakers, you can still fire it to fetch a Blacklist, which will require another Blackmail! If they're doing more than just Blackmail recursion there's some other options: Vs the common full rig types - take advantage of the fact that most of them aren't running the full Blackmail recursion package and just rush. They suffer even worse than most from #Anarchproblems due to the increased deck size. Vs Grim Feast - Crisium (or Swordsman + ETR) on HQ so they can't Vamp, shut down those Suckers and keep pulling ice back so they can't Parasite, and try to avoid taking extra BP early on so you can tax them out on Keyhole runs until you can find another Crisium/Swordsman to go there. |
14 Jul 2015
Drchatter
Another question what do you think about Taurus over Grim or 1/1. While both can be a dead card, Taurus can get 2 hardwares out esp if they have a console + recursion -> can reach power shutdown targets or they have to break the trace so you gain a credit swing and still trash one hardware. You also don't have to deal with the BP as a small but sometimes annoyingly significant bonus early on. |
14 Jul 2015
Vapo
I hadn't considered Taurus, it's a nice idea but I think it might struggle because of the economics of it. Repeatedly pumping traces will bankrupt you very quickly, and given that it's mostly PPVP Kate that runs cheap hardware you can't hope to get more than 1 even if you pump the trace, they're just so much richer than you they'll be able to afford to match it most of the time. If more Stealth Hayley decks turn up it could have a place though, they seem to run quite poor and clearing away the chaff to enable a Refractor Shutdown seems strong. If you were going to try one I'd lose a Patch or Subliminal rather than one of the existing ice, Grim is crucial for locking out Shapers and Crims who rely on non-reusable methods to break it. |
18 Jul 2015
rubyvr00m
Excellent write up, I'm glad to see someone being creative with blue sun after getting wrecked by multiple punitive/scorch kill versions. Program trashing and "heap lock" is a fresh approach and a smart tech call against PPVP. Thanks for all the tips, looking forward to testing this deck a bit in my local meta (and likely to their sheer disapproval :D). |
18 Jul 2015
hieronymus_mosh
This is it. Damn. Absolutely love this. I've been playing Argus Grail for a while, and even though it's been fun for me and annoyingly difficult for runners, it's never quite been good. But this? The Blue Sun ID ability as anti-Parasite and to play Grail mind games: Perfect. Two questions: Have you not found Patch useful? I love it. Just because it's way easier to shutdown a Datasucker than an Atman-4. Did you ever try The Twins in this deck? The times I've spent an Atlas counter to get the third Merlin... Beautiful. |
21 Jul 2015
Nathan 0
Ended up stacked five deep on R&D and HQ, plus a six-deep protecting Blacklist and no other ice on the board. He was still hitting HQ and R&D at will using his five bad pub and a standard (high cost) breaker suite/drip econ. If every piece of ice gets exposed on the run I don't see how you can ever wear down the runner's econ. I was way ahead of him with nothing to spend it on, and Clone Chips crushed my Power Shutdowns and my Blacklist, which sat on the board the entire game, did virtually nothing except make him play even more cautiously. Decoyed Howard Jacksons and Executive Retreat and just couldn't open a window. Final score was 0-9 after 27 turns (I had sacked two agendas for Archers). Game never felt winnable. |
21 Jul 2015
Vapo
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24 Jul 2015
Narbalicious
So I know its a lot of influence but why no Sagittarius for the basically guaranteed program trashing? Obviously NRE mimic is a thing so its not promised, but you could grab some serious trashing with it. |
24 Jul 2015
Vapo
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24 Jul 2015
Isvan
Have you considered putting in a singleton IT Department? It's only 1 influence and you can search it up with Executive Boot Camp. It's pretty much a must-trash a lot of the time and can force runners into some really awful situations if you follow it up with Blacklist. |
24 Jul 2015
Vapo
I just tried a 1 Blacklist 2 EBC version to save an extra pip but I didn't like it, EBC is sometimes too clumsy for Blacklist but seems fine for IT dept, so worth testing for sure. Might want Datapike over Enigma for that version? And probably a 2nd Subliminal over Private Contracts. |
24 Jul 2015
chiefyk
Woah! I've been playing this style of deck since Grail&Blue Sun came out. It's incredibly strong, but the inclusion of Blacklist is absolutely brilliant. GJ on the win! |
28 Jul 2015
Danny
Played this deck at a local GNK, changed -1 Patch +1 Interns. Went 4-0 with the deck and love it. I have been working on Weyland program destruction since I started playing (8 weeks ago) and have had mixed success. I really dislike playing Blue Sun Oversight combo but this deck is really fun. |
28 Jul 2015
Danny
I won one game with it because someone face checked an ICE with only a D4v1d in play and it was Merlin w/ Merlin in hand. Turn 4 flatline. I also won a game against Maxx that I was super agenda flooded because I top decked a blacklist the turn he intended on playing Levy. |
11 Aug 2015
blackb1rd
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27 Aug 2015
matthopkins
I'm also wondering how best to deal with Faust... It can sometimes take a while to get a couple of grail ice deep on the scoring server, with some in hand, to make all of them have 3 subroutines. I think I'm going to change enigma to spiderweb mainly because of this. Lastly, a friend suggested putting in two chronos projects and taking out 1 fracking and another card. What are your thoughts on this? I could see it working, especially as they probably won't run your scoring server if it has an unadvanced card in it, and with this deck it could straight up win you the game. Anyway, thanks again for the great deck, it's amazing as you built it, I'm just trying to give it my own twist! |
29 Aug 2015
Vapo
Faust is definitely a problem. Enigma to Spiderweb seems like a reasonable start for tackling it, along with the usual anti-noise advice of just go faster than him. I was running 2x Swordsman with just 1 Blacklist (and an extra EBC to find it) for a little bit, that setup is definitely better against Noise but loses something vs Kate where you absolutely need Blacklist, EBC is an awkward tutor. There's one big problem with Chronos Project - it doesn't work if you have a Blacklist out! (Removing cards from the game involves them leaving the heap so CP just fails to fire if blacklist is out) If it wasn't for that they would absolutely deserve a couple of slots |
Outstanding! I've been playing something similar for a while, but I was stuck on the OAI Curtain Wall combo. Slimming down the ice mix really speeds it up in a great way. I also had three pointers that ended up being a huge liability.
One card I've had success with in this type of deck is Housekeeping. It really keeps all those annoying little cards that block your shutdowns to a minimum and makes it terrifying for runners to check potential grails early. I also enjoy Cyberdex Virus Suite to help those archers hit hard when they need to and blow out any parasite datasucker shenanigans.
I wanted to ask about a few of your choices if possible as well. Why private contracts over capital investors, melange or adonis? I've tried them all in various Blue Sun builds and would like to see which fits best here. How has patch been for you? Has the swordsman pulled his weight? Finally, how has subliminal messaging helped bait the runner into bad grail hits?
Great list!