Siege Engine Geist v.1.2 (SC 2016, 9-1)

So, MWL 1.2 dropped yesterday, and I expect that it's going to change up the meta in a pretty profound way. Rumor Mill, Sifr, and Sensie all at Level 3 is going to push the corp metagame back toward glacier hard.

And when glacier reigns, Geist is king.

The hits that Geist takes, meanwhile, are irrelevant. Zu.13 was going to be replaced with Abagnale (Right now, Peacock is sitting in the list as a placeholder, but TD drops in like two weeks) as soon as that card hit in any case, so all that MWL 1.2 does to the list is... nada. We don't get the two influence back that I'd been hoping for, but the deck doesn't really need them for anything.

Much of the list is unchanged from SC season, because not a lot has come out recently for Geist. There's some oddball stuff that might be interesting, like Dean Lister, from Terminal, but +$2 and -1Inf as compared to Security Chip, which never made the cut, make me suspect that Dean won't make the cut either--and that's true for a lot of other stuff out on the periphery of the list. As I said in the 1.1 post, which I've archived below, the decklist is pretty well drum-tight. They'd have to print something that's strictly better than something in the deck to make the cut at this point. There's not a lot out there that could do the trick.

All that being said, since the meta won't stabilize for a while, there are a few cards that we ought to keep our collective eye on. Here are my bets for the cards that may well make their way back in:

Political Operative: PolOp was the original Caprice-killer, and if HB and Jinteki come back in an emphatic way, 2 PolOp would be a very smart slot to shut that nonsense down. I'd cut either 2 Crescentus or 1 SoT and 1 Forger to make it happen.

The Turning Wheel: Turning Wheel is a great card. If you're not running all the time, on every server, it makes your runs count for more--and that pretty well describes glacier matches. The influence cost makes it a bit painful, but Temujin is probably the right cut for it--the only other option, really, is Street Peddler, and Peddler's better than Temujin in Geist, sadly.

End of updates

This is an update to my Gencon Geist build, much of which is detailed here: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/36964/siege-engine-geist-gencon-2016-8-3-top-30-

A friend of mine and I took this build to a Store Championship in Detroit, and the only game either deck lost all day long was when my buddy got paired against me. It took down three different CTMs (one of which I played again in the finals, for four total CTM wins), a Silver Sun variant, a Gagarin museum, Hasty CI, traditional HB, Jinteki, and one last deck my buddy played which I've since forgotten.

In other words, Geist has game against the field, and a touch of Temujin seems to have been just enough to push him up to a solidly favorable matchup against CTM.

Much of what I've felt about Geist for some time remains to be true: he's a strong, tricky runner, and no other deck out there rewards clever play and careful forethought quite as much as Geist does right now. If you know your deck and have an idea of what your opponent wants to do, you can drop massive body plows to just about any corp deck in the meta. Since I've detailed most of my thoughts about each unusual card in the original siege engine writeup, I'll detail my changes here.

-2 Political Operative: Polop is a final way to shut the door on Caprice and Ash... neither of which see much play at all anymore. It's got utility elsewise, and enables tricky play, but it just isn't as critical as it once was. If you need both Temu and Polop in the deck, I'd cut a Spy Camera and a Same Old Thing

1- Spy Camera: A tough cut, but the deck is becoming pretty much drum-tight. You could probably swap a Crescentus out for this, but I really feel that's the wrong move.

+1 Same Old Thing: There are two reasons for this: Once in a while, you'll get levys and Same Old Things sniped out of your hand. In those situations, you probably lose. More commonly, though, a second Same Old Thing gives you the flex you need to recur Legwork more often, or double down on a Hostage if the Tech Traders just aren't coming.

+2 Temujin Contract: 3 is too many. You draw too fast, and they clog up in your hand. Also, there's nothing more satisfying in the world than, at the 4.2 window, popping out a Temujin from under a Street Peddler for free and drawing a card for the privilege. Temujin turning a 16 profit is fantastic. It turning a 20 profit is astonishing.

Seriously, though, you should probably give this guy a try sometime. It feels like playing lightning.