Cryptic Whizzard

Here's my new Whizzard deck that I am playing around with for a couple of weeks now. I really like the control it has to offer and it's pretty fun to play.

Why this deck? The idea was to build a Whizzard deck that could leverage a lot from Gravedigger but not focus on one area. Instead, I wanted to take the best of everything like you would normally do.

That is why I decided to go with the old Datasucker/Parasite as my main ICE destruction. Knight is a powerful tool to get where I want and it will cause the corp to trash ICE too, which is exactly what this deck want.

General thoughts:

It feels a lot like a old anarch deck, it's slow and fast like your used to be in anarch before O&C but with a little bit more punch in the econ area but now the board control with Whizzard is way more potent. There is so many asset and upgrade with a high trash cost that a lot of corporation just started to use that as a stragegy to overwhelm the runner or make him go bankrupt or leave them be.

Well, it's not going to happen here.

While in most of those situation, trashing those asset can still hurt a Whizzard deck because it might throw you off tempo and ask you to spend money to get in the server and still have lost more than the corp gained. Gravedigger solve that.

I played around 30 games with various version of this deck and I can tell you that most corp's player just stop installing their cool asset when Gravedigger hit the table. They start to realize that they are going to dig their own grave by doing so.

Playstyle: The deck resolve a lot about board control but also about making as much run as you can. You need to know what you can expect from your opponents and most notably what ICE your going to encounter. This deck is going to ask you to think a lot. Deciding which ICE to parasite or which ICE to use Knight on is very important in most situation and it's very dependent on the match up you have.

For those decision, I have found some very interesting tips help a lot:

Yog.0: In some games against Rush/FA HB deck that use the NEXT ICE, I was actually killing is code gate ICE so I wouldn't need to install Yog.0 at all. This was a big misplay because later I was paying some credits to deal with his way easier to kill NEXT barrier. You want to use Yog.0 because he's your biggest money saver in those match up. The Personal Touch is there to make it even more worthy. Bye bye Lotus Field, Chum, RSVP and Merlin.

Parasite should maybe be aiming at Barrier and Sentry for the most part.

Knifed: One of the best weapon against Eli 1.0 and Blue Sun match up. I tend to use 2x before but I really wanted a Stimhack in the deck.

Stimhack: Why would I want a stimhack in a deck that beg for more and more ICE destruction? The answer is simple: NAPD.

I wasn't able to decide if I will go 2x Stimhack, 2x Knifed or 2x Inject so I decided to go with 1x Stimhack and 1x Knifed for now.

There was a bunch of games where it was on match point and I was low on credits after a big run or whatever. My opponent waited for that occassion to put a NAPD into his scoring remote for the win. There was nothing I could have don't other than play a Stimhack.

Also, a big medium run where you see 2-3 NAPD is quite frustrating, Stimhack is the best way to deal with this problem.

SMC vs Test Run: I debated that question for quite a while and I recently I ended up using SMC. I don't think neither of them are necessarily better than the other in this deck but they add something that is different which I see a meta call or more as a personal preference. Here's the difference:

Test Run is going to give you more Heap recursion and also a better chance against Blue Sun or any big ICE deck. Test is just way better for D4v1d and Parasite but very inconvenient anything that what to stay on the table.

SMC here is better for 2 things, getting your breaker or Gravedigger or Medium and also to kill a ICE during a run, just like with Clone Chip. As this deck want to run a lot, this was my favorite all around choice. It will be better too for using Clot when it will be out.

Knight: this card is even better now after O&C. There is much more big strength and one subs ICE in the game and I see a lot been played on OCTGN. I am thinking of Wormhole, Checkpoint, Nebula, etc. It's also your best weapon to counter a early Lotus Field. It was a preferential choice because the corp will want to remove ASAP which means, more Gravedigger counter! This is what leads me to the new most awesome O&C cards that have been given to Whizzard.

Gravedigger: Gravedigger do so much with Whizzard, that's incredible. A lot of time when I install it, the corp just started to slow down the asset install. It is already one good things because I don't have to spend any other effort to slow the corp down. It's also a very strong addition for any deck that want to play slow like RP for exemple. Gravedigger gives to Whizzard a better strong advantage to use his ability and make it threatening for the corp like it wasn't really before. I love it, a lot.