Police State

presheaf 621

This deck is built around the interaction between HHN and Zealous Judge. Specifically, even if the Runner can afford to spend their turn clearing all the HHN tags, Judge allows you to put them in sticky situations. That's very funny both playwise and thematically. If the Runner slips up even once and gets their face on the news, even if they're able to cover the tracks, use the courts you own to get a warrant and keep demanding dirt on them until you have enough to justify taking them down. Nobody is above the law.

To be fair, Judge is a bit awkward. I built this deck to play it more than I put it in the deck because it's strong. That being said, although having it on the table when you fire HHN doesn't autowin, once the Judge is behind a bit of ice, it starts getting tricky to clear tags and trash the judge. So although most of my wins come from the raw power of HHN/Econ Warfare/HPT combined with must-trash assets, there have been games Judge won because it turned a turn where the Runner could barely afford to stay safe into one where having to deal with Judge while clearing tags became too much for them.

Weird choices

Executive Search Firm may need a bit of explaining. The observation that this fetches Rashida is due to tooplark. The fact that it gets Mills and Judge too was enough to convince me to try 2x, and it's been okay. I would not be unhappy cutting a copy, but I've also not been unhappy to see it yet except against Freedom. If they trash it, you got about an Econ Warfare worth of value, so playing it basically always puts you ahead.

Malia is probably an open secret at this point, but she's really, really good for stealing just a bit of early tempo from the Runner. Against Anarchs, she freezes the Liberated Accounts just a bit, meaning they need to either risk HHN to trash her (giving you a free Econ Warfare swing ish), or wait with draining the Liberated until they can get money either way, in which case you froze 6c and one of their clicks. If that tempo means they trash your CBGs a turn later or skip checking a Rashida, you're very happy.

Future considerations

It seems like a waste not to play some strong single tag punish with Judge. Judge/HHN pretty reliably lets you stick a single tag on the Runner if they can't gain clicks or clicklessly remove tags. So it seems worthwhile to play Closed Accounts or Exchange of Information, especially because you're on Consulting Visit. Once I figure out which cards are crucial and which can be cut, I'll try fitting a copy of both. This may require reworking the agenda suite to 5/3s, Hostiles and Standoff to make sense.

Conclusion

If you enjoy the playstyle of forcing the Runner to engage with your game plan and punishing them when they try, try this deck out. I really enjoyed my games with it. It definitely suffers a bit from being "like CtM, but worse", but I think with the right tweaks from better deckbuilders it might rise to "like off-brand CtM".

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