Trash to draw, derez to cripple

WaltDixie 21

This deck is the first I feel comfortable showing in public. It's heavily based on mrdudesir's You're are doing it wrong deck. Similar decks are floating around now but I've playing this for ages. Apart from adding the obvious Tech Trader and testing out Spy Camera, the deck is still the same.

The derez strategy is the key to this deck. Muertos Gang Member is crucial to that. Forged Activation Orders means that you can use Muertos very soon in the game. Even if a cheap ice is rezzed, Muertos has its use to draw 2 cards (or 1+2 if on off-campus). This can be quite major against kill decks!

A second Forged late in the game is then used to kill any ice you want to avoid. Crescentus is a second way out for this.

Icebreakers are few because of the fast draw in this deck. I've tried using trashable breakers but I didn't like it - I've find that Geist can be quite good in medium/long games if you don't use trashable breakers. Inside Job and Femme Fatale are there in case people notice you still don't have those breakers.

Underworld Contact is there to support mid/long term econ. Again, I decided against a Technical Writer economy because of medium/long games.

Account Siphon is important less because of economy and more for destroying that of the corp's. Traffic Jam is important less for slowing down fastro but more for destroying any corp current that you don't want. SOT is mandatory in case your Levy is one of three cards on Street Peddler and always finds a good use if not.

Spy Camera are added as 6 cards above 45 and I like it... MUCH MORE than using Shaper cards to attack r&d.

Tried out Councilman and Political Operative but was a bit underwhelmed so far. Though Operative will be important if Elizabeth because popular again.

Main weakness of the deck is against fast advance, provided they have a secure defense on HQ and that one breaker doesnt show. In this situation you want to draw aggressively by trashing muertos, Fall Guy etc etc to find that breaker you need. Also, Film Critic here helps against some fast advance strategies but still seems just the least bad of the available bad solutions that sync well with this deck.

Main strength of the deck is when you can kill the economy of the corp, using derez and Account Siphon. Any kind of glacier deck tends to drop dead because of the derezs. Any corp requiring several ice-protected servers tends to go down the same way.

Finally, three rather simple rules to follow which will help to avoid losses are: (1) Focus your derez suite on HQ. A reliable entry for Account Siphon is mandatory to secure an easy economy AND source of draws - and obviously helps scoring. (2) Always have your tag defense in place. Forger is there mainly for this purpose. Even if there's no risk for Scorched Earth, you are weak when your key connections get trashed. (3) Focus everything to cripple the economy - if you can, you almost always win. If it's clear that you can't AND can't syphon, draw even faster than otherwise to get everything set for focused attacks - your win rate will still be good though surely less guaranteed.

2 comments
24 Apr 2016 Kikai

You disregard Political Operative and Councilman, and then describe FA as the weakness of the deck. These are your first line of defence against SanSan City Grid!

Much stronger than Traffic Jam.

24 Apr 2016 WaltDixie

True but it doesn't help that much imho. Councilman - if Corp has enough Creds he just rezzes at end of my turn AND beginning of his turn. Pol Op has more potential but forces me to build my deck on HQ access.