an accountant, a broker, and a warrior queen walk into a bar

just went 3-0 with this in kevintame's hacktivist jnet tournament and it seemed like a good excuse to publish.

accident 419 got a couple upgrades in uprising. bravado is the biggest, but makler as a credible alternative to corroder and boomerang as a repeatable, flexible IJ with corp grant and run event synergy are nice as well. with IG rotated, i think this is at its highest value yet in the meta

this deck is one part aggro and 3 parts tempo tempo tempo (the mathematically inclined reader will note that this is 9 parts tempo in total). very fun to pilot, but not necessarily something you'll pick up for the first time and win a bunch of games with.

if you're unfamiliar with the archetype, basically the goal is to try to put the corp into debt at every opportunity. most obviously, we do this with a cred denial suite of corp grant, pad tap, 419/aumakua, and diversion. these aren't enough on their own to beat most corps' econ, though, so we have to supplement them with aggressive facechecking and what i'll call "value extraction" (pls someone tell me there's a better phrase for this). bravado and deuces let us facecheck a) for profit and b) smartly. datasucker, turtle, paragon, ttw, and mining accident allow us to extract value from central runs. we're not really run-based, just trying to stay 1 credit ahead of the corp's least taxing central, which forces them to commit more ice, putting them deeper in debt — not enough money to play econ ops or protect assets, not enough ice to build a remote and defend centrals adequately, not enough clicks to secure the remote and score out.

cards

bravado: does everything laundry didn't. facecheck for profit while staying ahead of hhn in the early game, punish ice overcommitment in the late game. it also encourages early BC pops if the remote isn't particularly taxing. i think this turns the argus MU from slightly corp-favored to slightly runner-favored

makler in, corroder out: at first blush, makler is pretty underwhelming, but it does a surprising amount here. first, the inf buys us a stimhack and the third deuces, which greatly improve glacier MUs where we get a bit behind if it goes to the late game. second, with datasucker and BP support, the 1c refund adds up very quickly (and it breaks gold farmer for less than anything other than clip). if this sounds win-more to you, swap the corroder back in

speaking of the third deuces: it's conceivable that with the full playset, we can drop the hotels for a 3rd class act and buy ourselves a slot. i tried it for a few games, but went back to 2x CA, 2x hotel for comfort

2x falsified: ngl, i'd love to have 3x, but it's not quite at its best here. we're not remote lock like the typical engolo builds. if you make the above change, this is almost certainly the card to spend that slot on

boomerang over IJ: i didn't play this at the tournament. lazychef pitched it to me afterward and he's absolutely correct. works with run events, targets specific problem ice, procs corp grant, shuffles breakers we had to bottom early on with paragon/CA, is repeatable. it does everything

citadel: super flexible hate card. definitely better than the 3rd casts. sometimes it's a second hunting grounds, sometimes it eats a punitive or keeps the corp off hpt from 0-2 creds at start of turn. sometimes it just says "lol nah" to ctm

datasucker over rezeki: sucker tokens are almost always worth 2 creds with this rig once you're set up. 2 > 1. sucker > rezeki. also charges turtle twice as fast

bad matchups (and what to change if they're dominant)

PE: slot a buffer drive over the third deuces. we're too poor for caldera but, as usual, this folds to careful play. land accidents and don't play any other cards

azmari: almost impossible to win the econ war, lots of bad ice for our breaker suite, but not a guaranteed loss—consider finding room for the third falsified and another stimhack. commit to centrals or the remote; don't try to do both

blue sun: chiyashi and absurd econ. gotta hope for a bad mull and buried OAI/building blocks. not sure if any deck or play adjustments will make much of a difference here. if this is the meta, play engolo and rezeki or just play shaper