Has regular glacier felt too fast?

Welcome to the Ice Age!

typical lockout lengths

my warning to Jai R1

internal Bost during R1

internal Bost after R1

my jnet policy after initial testing

my final victim's suggestion during testing

some shade being thrown by Snare Bears

Overview:

The main idea of this deck is to setup an oppressive lockout with:

• Ablative + Trieste + Stegodon

Is the runner at 6 points?

Do you have the lockout?

Don't worry, but sit back and get ready for the longest game of your life!

The lockout:

Explanation:

1. Setup:
   
   • Stegodon scored
     
   • Threat >= 3
     
   • Ablative outside of Ansel 1.0/Ravana 1.0, and/or other annoying Bioroid ice you want for your lockout servers.
     
     • Note: you'll typically setup R&D + Scoring Remote as your two lockout servers by tossing an Ablative on both.
       
   • Trieste in HQ/Archives
     
2. If the runner runs the server you get to rez Ablative pulling Trieste onto the board
   
3. If the runner continues you use Trieste on one of the Bioroid ice behind it costing them clicks.
   
4. If they jackout and run the Trieste you use Stegodon to derez the Ablative loading it ready to install Trieste again for the lockout
   

With this basic setup, and the additional protections of Ganked! if they commit to access resulting in a board wipe/flatline, and Bio Vault to prevent even further accesses you can get into a lockout position where a full rig runner can't get anymore meaningful accesses.

Strategy:

One piece of abnormal strategy I've found is that since threat 3 is so important to this deck it will typically give up 3 points to turn on Ablative before scoring the initial Stegodon.

Getting Thimblerig rez'ed can also be surprisingly powerful in games your ice doesn't show up in the order you want to secure the lockout even further.

Games:

Swiss:

R1 (Win): vs Jai on Hoshiko [No Replay]

• Sadly didn't save the reply.
  
• Game report:
  
  • Overall, I robbed this game
    
  • Jai had a solid rig setup early, and was able to snipe the Stegodon the turn before I was going to jam it
  • Without drawing the second Stegodon I had to play to my one out which was for Jai to hit an unlikely Ganked! when digging R&D, causing a loop on Ravana.
  • This unlikely scenario did happen which caused me to get a board wipe trashing out his whole rig, plus installing every card I could from my heap.
  • At this point it was pretty hard for Jai to dig himself out, but with Maw it actually came close.

R2 (Win): vs imyxh on Padma [Replay]

• Game report:
  
  • This game went a bit different than typcial
  • I ended up scoring out 2 of my 5/3's since the runner wasn't putting too much pressure on my remote.
  • After this the runner was setup though, which meant I had to play it a bit more cautiously scoring out my final points.
  • I spent multiple turns setting up a taxing split of scoring behind Loki pushing Trieste into my other remote with a Bio Vault for extra taxation.
  • This ended up being more taxing than the runner had credits for, allowing my to score out the final point I needed to win.

R3 (Win): vs TurnLeft25 on Ari [In Person]

• Game report:
  
  • This game ended with a Ravana 1.0 + Ganked! flatline picking the core off Hákarl 1.0 and install off Ansel 1.0.
    

R4 (241 Runner Side): vs maninthemoon

Cut:

R1 (Loss): vs Jai on Hoshiko [Replay]

• Well not playing the deck more than the 3 times I was required to across the month since the tournament began finally caught up to me :p
  
• I had avoided practicing this deck for my sake and others, just due to the agonizing slowness of the matchups.
  
• Game report:
  
  • My lack of practice showed up here by me mulliganing a great hand in retrospect.
    
  • The hand it was replaced with was quite bad
    
  • I additionally misplayed forgetting about my deck's own threat of Ganked! so pushed my Stegodon too early thinking Jai would have swept HQ.
  • Jai correctly executed the steal of Stegodon and after that point the game was basically over.
  • In retrospect I think I could have executed this game a lot better, and possibly made it a closer battle. However, props to Jai for executing so well against it!
  • Was a little unfortunate to have the deck go out on such a poorly piloted game by myself, but overall a solid run :)

Thoughts:

my final victim's thoughts during testing on competitive viability

Well if it isn't clear by now this deck is too slow for regular tournament play.

The only reason this deck list worked is because async games are typically untimed. Although, your opponent can always ask for a time limit to be put on the game. 

With the abnormal play pattern of giving up points before setting up the inevitable scoring lockout, this deck would typically flounder in any regular tournament play and lose on time.

This deck is fun to play and feels incredibly powerful when you get the lock setup, just please be courteous to your opponents if you decide to play this deck and give them a forewarning about possible game lengths. Not everyone is up for an hour+ game.

Looking forward:

Rongydoge had an idea of adding NEXT Activation Command to the list which would prevent the runner from even being able to click the Bioroid subs within the Trieste lock.

I hadn't considered using NEXT Activation Command before, but do think it'd fit in/be worth exploring as I found I was mostly using Hákarl 1.0 for the ability to prevent Bioroid subs from being clicked rather than its power to derez as I initially thought.

Credits:

I had the initial idea for the lockout with Stegodon + Ablative + Trieste. However, @maninthemoon helped massively building out the AoT glacier shell around it.

Shoutouts!

• maninthemoon for running the async tournament. The only place this deck could exist!
• jai for steaming our matches
• Any opponent I played in initial testing for sitting through the hour+ slog.
• Snare Bears for engaging with this deck list almost more than Bost :p