Installing Flameout counts as setup [2-0 & 1st @ Olympia CO]

With thanks to lilli for some important cuts, and building most of the influence suite from scratch.

Some time in July I was browsing NRDB, noticed Flame-out for the first time, and thought wow, seven credits seems like a lot? It took a long time, but I finally got around to making the Arissana x Flame-out list that has been on my mind ever since, and I'm actually really happy with it.

The first question was how to actually use Flame-out credits, and I'm obviously not the first person to decide on Mayfly. It's also nice to get a discount on SMC, but the coolest trick is with Ika: Install it on Flame-out, boost it during the encounter, then move it over.

I've been having a lot of fun playing this. There's something about starting a turn with an empty board and threatening to get into any server which is very satisfying.

Gameplan

I'm trying to stop every early-game play the corp thinks they can get away with. Under no circumstances will a t1 Rashida be allowed to fire. The deck bounces back from low credits pretty easily, so it's entirely plausible to go down to 2 credits on turn one and still challenge the remote again on turn two.

From there it's mostly about continuing to shut down whatever the corp wants to do while looking for opportunities to make high value central sweeps with Cupellation and Finality. Paricia is around in case they start spamming.

The icebreaker suite is geared towards using Mayfly to handle most encounters, grabbing the other tools as needed. My first draft didn't even have a decoder, but I got kinda tilted by seeing five Vampyronassa in two games, so I added Euler. Ika usually just finds a good matchup and camps it.

At first it felt strange to pilot a deck with such a small amount of setup. When the corp backed off, I wasn't entirely sure what to do. But it turns out that simply drawing cards, installing Flame-out, and getting Aesop's fuel on the table is actually a really strong setup turn.

There are too many cards

There's something I've been wondering lately: If we're getting down to deck size by cutting card draw, money, and tutors, does that actually make the deck better? Well, maybe, but there are also some advantages to the way a larger deck dilutes tech cards, especially if we can tutor for them instead. Spurred on by some lists from the past year such as WT Arissana and 52 Card Esa, I decided that this would be a perfect deck to let loose a bit. Shaper has so much draw and search power available that the deck still feels very reliable, particularly on the first turn where I'm mostly looking for money and a tutor.

I also just thought it was funny to build a deck with 15 copies of Mayfly.

Thoughts on some card decisions

• 2x Pinhole Threading: Adrian and Void can really hurt the gameplan, so it's nice to have a reliable pinhole for the mid-game.

• Hermes: The card's just so good. The deck was originally on LilyPAD, but it had tons of influence to spare and the extra MU wasn't critical in my test games. I do miss the card draw, but it felt like Lilypad made the deck stronger in matchups where it was already strong, while Hermes makes it stronger in matchups where it's vulnerable.

• Cupellation: With the remote locked down they might be forced to sit on agendas in HQ, and I wanted a way to punish that. Since it's a program, it can be grabbed whenever the time is right and recurred if the corp doesn't respect it. It's also neat to be able to get a Warroid Tracker or Hostile Architecture off the table without triggering the abilities.

• Finality: This was such an exciting add by lilli. I had been debating the need to add R&D multiaccess at all, since so many points can be had in the remote and HQ. Conduit feels kinda trash with an ephemeral rig, and I was thinking about Cataloguer but I wasn't convinced. Then she dropped this banger of an idea onto the table and it felt perfect. It's hilarious to import R&D pressure into Shaper, but this really maximizes the odds that a single late-game run will put the, uh, final nail in the coffin.

Some other cards I've thought about:

• Revolver: An obvious option since most Shaper lists use it, but so far I haven't felt much pressure to ditch Ika.
• Fermenter: This has been on my mind since I saw DeeR refer to it as anti-spam tech. Aesop's has covered the need well enough, but this might be the card I'm closest to putting in the deck anyways.
• I briefly tried a version with Environmental Testing instead of Aesops, but I switched it back since Flame-out already gives the deck good burst econ. Now that I'm writing this, though, I'm looking side-eyed at those Sure Gambles... it's pretty straightforward to trigger Env.