Season Finale Cliffhanger (GLC Dayton Qualifiers Top 8)

This deck was played at the Epic Loot and Games, Great Lakes Circuit Dayton Qualifier tournament, leaving me at 6th place out of 21. (Runner did not do so great).

Plan of Attack

This is a deck I built post clot, taking advantage of both the Fast Advance abilities of Astroscript and SanSan City Grid, plus the Never Advance abilities of four for two's against Clot.

The goal is to heavily defend centrals with ICE that is taxing, building a single scoring remote and scoring off SanSan's if Fast Advance is possible (3/2s are obvious, 4/2s can be scored if you have already scored an Astro, in a fast advance method) or using SanSan OR the Astro Token to never advance and score a 4/2. Market Research+Tagging abilities means that it is very possible to win with only scoring three agendas, while the runner must score 4.

Additional Strategies

Taxing is done in two ways. First is the obvious method of expensive ICE. Uroboros, Viktor, Tollbooth, Eli, are all great taxers. The second method of taxing is Tags - Data Raven, Gutenberg, Virgo all can leave the runner with a tag. Most runners, expecting tag punishment, will take the time to clear it - that is fine, thats 2 and a , and that works into the slower strategy.

Economy

Melange is your main source, truthfully told. Two or three (or even more) turns at the bottom of your scoring server is pretty nice, and protected by a Data Raven can be a scary thing for many runners to encounter without plascretes.

Successful Demonstration, and Celebrity Gift are choices over Sweeps week because of the lack of Sweeps being useful mid to late game. Sweeps is a great card, but I found while drawing it the runner, especially having to deal with my taxing remotes, would often have less than a full grip. Successfull is very easy to drop when runners encounter Data Ravens and bounce, and Celebrity Gift fits into the shell game (explained later)

Targeted Marketing I threw in last minute. It did work, and I would seriously consider replacing the Predictive Algorithms with it. Just naming Sure Gamble put's a major hit on most runners - and if you know your decks well, this card can really put the crimp on them too. It is seriously powerful, even if you never pull the money from it.

Other Cards

The Operations look a little all over the place, and truthfully told, they are. You could really clean this up and make it more consistent, but I like options.

Closed Accounts, Scorched, and Shoot the Moon are all punishment.

Scorched is a one off for when they see it, in hand or off the top of the deck. It could certainly be dropped, but the threat is nice and while it didn't win me any games this time, it certainly could. If dropped I would replace it with Celebrity Gift, maybe also finding room for a Crisium Grid (although Celebrity Gift goes very well with having tag punishment in hand to scare the runner)

Shoot the Moon was for Blackmail decks. Local meta has a couple of Valencia players, and a single remote style deck is really tough to play against Blackmail recursion.

Closed Accounts I would keep if none of the other tag punishment was. It opens up scoring windows and is pretty nasty against any runner who floats tags.

Tagging

Besides Data Raven, Virgo, Gutenberg, the main source of tagging is SEA and Midseasons. And the reason I included both was for flexibility. Dropping a tag storm and Psychographicing out an over advanced Beale or even just any of the 4/2's (especially Market Research) is rather strong. If someone wanted to clean up the operations, dropping down to just Midseasons+Psychographics would support the Market Research agenda really well, allowing for single turn scores of 3 points for only 4 advancements rather than 5 (or 7 or 9) on a Beale. - Some runners may remember that 13 tags is the dangerspot for a 7 point beale, so tricking them with only getting 4 (a number they also feel they can clean up next turn if they want) is very strong for scoring Market Research for 3 points.

But sometimes you don't want to let them steal an agenda (though in combination with Predictive Algorithm+NAPD means not only does that turn on Midseasons but also drains them of credits to fight the tag drop) so SEA source can be useful if they drop to low on cards in grip for Scorched or you just need that Closed Accounts.

In Conclusion

The operations could be streamlined. Doing probably would help with the consistency of this deck, but I didn't have any troubles with it day of. Hopefully this will be something interesting to base your own decks off of, and know this - even with Clot out there, Fast Advance is still possible... just pack some tricks to saving yourself if Clot is active.