Building A Better Boom

Weyland is an archetype defined by SEA Source + Scorched Earth, or in more general terms meat damage kills. This is a fact that both Runners and Weyland players struggle with during deck-building and play. The existence of Scorched Earth as a card single-handedly forces two to three Plascrete Carapaces to enter almost every competitive Runner deck. Expectations are important, and the BABW card on the table comes with a whole slew of them.

You've probably looked at the decklist already if you've read this far and obviously I'm playing only a single Scorched Earth. Don't be fooled, or do if you're a runner. It's a display model in 95% of games. I think whether or not to focus on Scorched Earth is a core choice for any Weyland deck. We've seen 'vegan' Weyland decks that play no meat damage at all, but I think that's really giving up a strength of the faction, especially with some of the new toys Weyland's been given.

The nice thing about giving up on Scorched Earth in particular however, is everyone else still has to operate under the assumption you are. Shadow traces are fought, Account Siphon or Snare tags are cleared, etc. Everyone respects Scorched, moreso with the Power Shutdown + Accelerated Diagnostics combo being able to bust even a triple Plascrete protection. This deck does its best to exploit those fears to score points. I believe the best Weyland decks present the threat of death while advancing agendas calmly in the Runner's face. "Take this, I dare you," your challenge implicit as your gazes lock across the table.

I decided to use Punitive Counterstrike instead of Scorched in this deck to save influence on SEA Sources and still present a credible meat damage threat. Power Shutdown can be used to extend a scoring window by cracking a Plascrete or safeguarding barriers by destroying Corroder. Shadows create an economic edge by forcing a break or draining the Runner's credits fighting the trace before they realize what they're up against.

Running almost all three point agendas makes Punitive Counterstrike much more threatening, as two threaten a kill with no reference to tags. Taking Plascretes off the board will make running a dicey proposition at best and this deck attempts to leverage the best of Weyland's economy agendas and operations to create money disparity, both to rez expensive ICE and potentially land a Punitive kill.

Finally, we come to ICE. ICE choice is mostly personal preference in my mind. Show someone a deck and give them a number of slots and influence to work with and you'll see a ton of different choices. This is already long enough without getting into the specifics of my ICE choice, but the generalization is that given this deck's economy I usually picked the more expensive, but more taxing for the runner, option for my slots.