Store Tournament Winner Dayton, OH - Sedition

ItJustGotRielle 2970

I've been playing Reina since she was released, and had noticed that I lost consistently against HB and RP glacier decks. I had trouble getting the Datasucker early, or I would take an opening hand with a Datasucker but then I would have no starting breakers, or poor economy... The usual anarch problem of variance.

In this deck I set out to create an anarch deck that does not use Datasucker or Djinn. I feel Reina has a unique style when used in conjunction with Deep Red, as they allow caissa held in your hand to act as pseudo-criminal events that remain in play until the ice is trashed.

2 copies of all 3 anarch breakers helps cut down on draw variance and ensures you will almost always start with 1 copy of one of the three breakers. This deck stuck with the basics to help deal with the classic anarch draw problem. Clone chips are paramount to the deck! Trashed caissa in your heap will come to your rescue in the greatest of ways when face-checking ice; having Deep Red installed means bringing a bishop out of your heap and onto a Tollbooth or Viktor 2.0 mid-run, or onto an Archer (with Ice Carver installed).

You strive to punish the corp for trying to over-ice by using Reina's ability along with Rook. Force them to pay the 3 (sometimes 5 if I have 2 Rooks in play on a 2-3 deep unrezzed server) credits to rez the ice, using the threat of a Clone Chipped Parasite to trash cheap taxing ice, or Knight to guarantee breaking the ice, as a way to pressure the Corp. Deja Vu helps support this style of play. You will find you are fishing for 2 things with it; either parasites to recur, or Knights after the corp trashes what turns out to be a Wraparound or Grim to try and keep your Knights off the ice. Your suite should end up being Corroder/Mimic/Yog and Medium, and if the opportunity for the power turn presents itself, trash whatever breaker you don't need in order to access R&D to Clone Chip in a second Medium and go hard for the win.

Caissa choices throughout the game vary. Bishop can function as a psuedo-Surge to help finish off a piece of ice unexpectedly to the Corp for the mere cost of 1 click, this also gets the Bishop into your heap and ready for Clone Chip play. Rooks are your favorite early caissa (obviously) but you have to know when Bishops start mattering more, since your caissa play will be limited to 3 once you get your full suite. Watch the Corps economy, operations and assets already played/in play, and look for their tempo to slow. This is your window to run hard and apply pressure; make the Corp make decisions about which ice they want to rez when they can't afford to rez it all.

I use Kati Jones as an economic slingshot. Midseason and scorch are both popular in our meta, so under threat of a Midseason or SEA Source, you have Kati stacking up. Face check ice despite this, using the idea that you have to score or make a successful run to your advantage to pressure the Corp. Steal the NAPD, make the Archives run to force Jackson, and then clear Kati. When played smartly, enough credits can act as a Plascrete in themselves. Lucky Find is a very strong card and its cost works perfectly in this deck. Three credits should be treated as your threshold, avoid going under this amount unless you have Kati stacked up to 6 at least if not 9, so you don't have to click for credits.

Liberated Accounts can be a controversial choice, but like I said, money is power for this deck. When you have your opponent on the ropes and you will have to stretch yourself beyond your means to keep the pressure up, instead drop Liberated for your third click and take 4 from it. Next turn, or any turn where the Corp hasn't recovered tempo, blast Liberated for the rest of its money. This surge of credits will make the Corp hold off on the scoring windows, usually pooling agendas into their hand, which you can use to your advantage.

I made what I considered a solid anarch deck, and then realized I had used six influence. Diesel is a better choice then Professional Contacts because you need to be free to exert your power through the power turns I described, where you drop 2 caissas and then make a click 3 run on R&D and man-mode your way through the server.

Since winning the tournament (and a little bit before it started, to be honest) I have been wanting to put HQ pressure in here, but am torn between Nerve Agent and Legwork. With Deja Vu and limited memory I'm leaning towards dropping a Lucky Find for a Legwork, since consistently through every game of the tournament I managed to force Corps to hold agendas in HQ under threat of caissa assault on a remote or R&D abuse.

11 comments
22 Jul 2014 ncaron

Any thoughts about including Cyber Threat when Upstalk is released? I am seriously looking at it for my own Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter deck. With a Rook on the target server and maybe even a Xanadu it's a huge lose-lose proposition for the corp.

22 Jul 2014 ItJustGotRielle

@ncaron I plan to pick up Upstalk tomorrow and start testing with Cyber Threat to see if it's a good fit. The power to avoid destroyers that it provides might allow me to cut a Clone Chip in Favor of another Legwork. I'm not sold on the impact Cyber Threat is going to have yet, but a Medium in play with a few counters on it will force a tough decision on the corp; let me walk in, or spend credits without doing anything to me or my rig. Especially might be effective given the prevalence of Tollbooth on centrals. Let me know what you think after testing the card in your deck!

23 Jul 2014 LegalizeStimHack

Fantastic write up! Having played my NBN Scorched News vs this deck I can say from experience that it is incredibly tough to deal with. I had to just throw my agendas behind a one ice remote very early in the game to even have a shot at a win. This deck is a mid and late game power house. No where is safe once this deck comes online, hence why agenda's end up in Archives waiting to be resurrected by our lord and savoir or pile up in HQ. All the runs that it makes are calculated and meaningful. You don't go for random accesses with this deck. I would highly suggest giving this a whirl, it was lots of fun to play against.

23 Jul 2014 Argamas

Congrats on the win! I'd like to record this deck for Stimhack. Could you please tell how many people attended and what the name of the winner was.

23 Jul 2014 Myriad

Only real problem I have with this deck is that you have no way of leveraging your advantage. The entire deck is built for a random access win due to the fact that you are running it with all fixed strength stuff and don't have enough MU.

Clearly it was not such a problem, but I would probably try to find room for either medium/keyhole and/or legworks.

23 Jul 2014 LegalizeStimHack

@Myriad I don't know if you looked at the list but the deck is running three Mediums. Also you said the deck is based around making random accesses because of the breaker suite? That doesn't make any sense, if it was running data suckers then I would be more inclined to agree with you. This deck runs when it wants and the runs it makes are high impact ones (power turns). Its not a random access when you are threatening remotes so much that agendas pile up in hand and you run HQ. Its not random access when you run Jackson to force RFG to increase the agenda density and then drop Medium and go R&D. This deck has no cards that reward running besides medium, so you don't run willy-nilly for random accesses.

23 Jul 2014 Myriad

I missed the mediums in the deck list when I glanced over them.

If it didn't have that, then it would be a deck that was built around random accesses. Because it doesn't have that, then nevermind. XD

23 Jul 2014 Myriad

The comment about a full breaker suite had more to do with MU constrictions. Its hard to squeeze extra cards in (Keyhole or Medium/Nerve Agent) when you are running the trinity of Anarch breakers. That is what I meant.

24 Jul 2014 ItJustGotRielle

@Myriad The "end-game suite" is Corroder, Yog.0, Mimic, and Medium. Deep Red allows you to Clone chip a Knight out when needed (for those nasty destroyers and APs) while keeping a Rook and Bishop out. The caissas are very flexible, if you have two ice types on R&D that Ice Carver and fixies/Knights can handle, you can make a run and before access Clone Chip a 2nd Medium in, trashing the core fixed breaker that you don't need. I did this a couple times at the end game stage where I have a pile of money and want to access anywhere between 8 and 14 cards and go for the win.

I will say, regarding Legwork, that I'm finding when Clone Chips are still in play runners are cautious about remote sniping and keep agendas built up in HQ... This leads to them getting a Jackson out to overdraw and trash them. So Medium dig, run archives to force an agenda injection/shuffle for the density increase, then Medium dig again. Are they not overdrawing/trashing? Then Legwork. I ended up cutting the 2 Diesel and a single Dirty Laundry to include 2 Quality Time and 1 Legwork; DejaVu allows for Legwork recursion in a pinch. I'm not sure how I feel about the Quality Time for draw yet. Since I liken caissas to Criminal events, it's a lot like having a hand full of events you want but don't 'need' that turn, and then still drawing 5 cards. It definitely has it's place in a pinch and let's me dump programs for Clone Chip though.

24 Jul 2014 ItJustGotRielle

@Argamas The winner was Kyle Gordon(me). There were 10 in attendance.

28 Jul 2014 AsteriskCGY

Express Delivery? I'll build and test this. Haven't ran Anarch really ever at this point. Always wanted a working Reina deck.