Punitive Blue Sun works? - August GLC Modded Tourney (3-2)

bowlsley 660

[Modded is (currently) System Core 19 + the Ashes cycle only]

One of the biggest problems in the Modded format is how difficult it is to win as corp outside of Earth Station or GameNet, and even those two have trouble getting enough money going to stop the runners from rolling them over. Since putting in a solid showing with my Earth Station deck a couple of months ago I've been searching around for something a bit different to play with (July's tournament was largely an exercise in finding out just how bad asset decks are in the format), and whilst this deck started out pretty badly (1-2 over the first three rounds), it got a lot more solid when I remembered the should-have-been-obvious fact that Blue Sun's ability can be used on assets and not just ICE, and tweaked the deck accordingly. From there it got a whole lot stronger, and put a ton of pressure on the runners in the remaining games.

Some thoughts on the cards:

Punitive Counterstrike - It's a punitive deck, so this card is (obviously) a lynchpin of it. Ideally you want to build up a substantial credit total, draw into a couple of these (or one and an Archived Memories), and then dare the runner into stealing an agenda. It can be tricky to get them poor enough, so that's why you also pack:

Reversed Accounts - Sometimes this is simply bait for a runner - you stick it in the server, double advance it, they spend a lot of money breaking through your expensive chunky ICE only to find this, and then have nothing left to stop you from installing an agenda the very next turn - but sometimes they leave it, and that's possibly even better. You can advance it even further and wipe out a sizeable total of credits from their pool, or best of all, just IAA an agenda down naked next to it. Now the maths is not just "can I survive a double Punitive?" but "can I survive a double Punitive after losing 8 credits AND the corp has regained their most expensive ICE rez?"

Adonis Campaign - As I mentioned before, it took me a long while to realise how good this card is in Blue Sun. 3 credits per turn, without the restrictions of Daily Quest, before it runs out you can bounce it back to HQ, reclaim the 4 credit rez cost and reinstall it on the very same turn.

Roughneck Repair Squad - I tend to use these as one-shots, installed behind a single ICE on a separate server to the scoring remote, and easy enough for the runner to trash. Which is fine, I mainly want it to be able to clear bad publicity from my Trebuchets or Hostile scores and not much else.

Oversight AI - A staple of Blue Sun in Standard for a long time, but with one major caveat: don't use this on the outside ICE! Nearly every runner in Modded packs a Boomerang, and you're going to be very sad when they take out your newly-rezzed Hadrian's with barely any cost to themselves. Always have something installed on the outside of the target to make them think twice about running it.

Aggressive Secretary - A holdover from my Earth Station deck, this is much less relevant here, and the influence could easily go on another Archived, or maybe a couple of DRMs to help you push on in scoring windows (the Secure and Protects could go to make deck space). Contract Killer is a decent in-house advanceable asset if you want to keep tricking the runners after you run out of Reverseds

Once again, thanks to Dirjel and the lovely people of the GLC Discord for another fun tournament!

1 comments
10 Dec 2020 bowlsley

I've been playing this list again and this is how I've tweaked it:

-1 Aggressive Secretary -2 Secure and Protect

+1 Adonis Campaign +2 Reduced Service

If you can get it into a remote without being contested then Reduced Service seems to work well as an additional monetary pressure point for a later IAA. Remember that it's a cost to run though! I generally just err on the side of caution and rez it at the end of my turn, but if you're feeling bold you could try and rez it between their clicks.