Jail House Lock! (1st Swiss, 4th Australian 2018 Nationals)

firesa 676

24e0b4740875c44ce77d1a66a3efaefa43b41cae_hq.jpg

1 - Don't forget about Audacity

2 - If those two cards behind Data Raven are Prisecs you are probably dead

3 - Remember double Economic Warfare into Hard-Hitting News if you don't want to die

4 - Border Control is legal for this event, so don't get caught out

"Erm....what was the first thing again?"

This deck went undefeated in the swiss, and dropped a single game in the cut at the 2018 Australian nationals. The loss in the cut was 100% my fault.

I became fixated on finishing the game, for which i was set up with a single advanced GFI in the remote, and Audacity in hand. However, I allowed my opponent to farm TTW counters off a Hortum for one turn, which let him go for a final four card hail mary R&D run, netting him the four points he needed. I should have triple advanced the Hortum to turn the possibility of such shenanigans off.

The deck is 100% Seamus' deck and work, and if you have had an interest in Argus any time recently, you know his builds have been a significant contributor to Argus success.

Your Plan A is to score out. Play money, start jamming. If your first agenda is an atlas with two counters, you've almost won the game already, you're on the home stretch. Between border controls, prisecs, and data ravens, making a remote that no runner can safely go into doesn't require too much effort. But also trust your gearcheck, and the kill threat.

Don't discard your Too Big to Fails, you will likely spend your money rezzing ice, and jumping back up into high amounts of money from 0 is invaluable.

I wouldn't change anything about the deck. If you want 3 HPT and 2 Econ Warfare, that's fine. If you want 2 HPT and 2 Econ Warfare, and a second Archer, that's also fine. The deck is really fun, and offers a lot of interesting lines of play if you can get into your opponent's head.

Thanks to all my opponents for being great humans.

2 comments
15 Oct 2018 MrBuggles

Congrats on the result! 2 cards different from my current deck so I’m gonna ask about those:

1) Armed Intimidation over Oaktown - are you happy with that? I can see the reasoning but Oaktown surely helps you rush harder?

2) 3rd Mausolus over 2nd Archer - I will probably not rez two archer, but I like one to show up at some point. Were you ever wishing you had drawn one instead of a Mausolus?

15 Oct 2018 firesa

Good questions!

We found that because we like the scoring plan but also the option to sometimes kill, Armed Intimidation felt great as a way to be able to play along that line where you might win through kill (especially if overuses of stimhack get the runner down to a handsize of 3 which means kill is easy to set up). But also, as the deck can lose due to a last minute effort where the runner just takes tags and runs everywhere, the idea of letting them know that two points are sitting on the board for the taking in the form of oaktown feels...bad. As a multiple, oaktown is likely nicer, but as a singleton, the generally unexpected armed intimidation was great.

As for the third Maus over a second Archer, I think one can't be faulted for wanting a second archer. It's a great piece of ice on R&D, it's excellent on the remote, and having one for both places is extra nice. I personally just hate forfeiting agenda points, but switching one of the Maus for a second Archer would be a very legitimate choice if taking this deck to another event any time soon :)