Crazy Murderman (5 murders & 4th @ Danish nationals)

tl;dr: Proactive kill deck that aims to flatline the runner while they set up.

This deck carried me to a 4th place at the Danish nationals, going undefeated in day 1 by murdering all 5 runners it faced. My runner deck was Joy Dive Arissana

It's basically a Standard format version of my Startup Crazy Murderman deck that served me well a few months ago at the Copenhagen Startup CO.

GAME PLAN A

Murder the runner with your agendas + End of the Line / Neurospike while they set up. Malapert helps find the kill combo and Seamless Launch helps create time to trigger it.

Lot of runners have a really strong late game right now and seem ok to let an agenda or two go while they set up their unstoppable rig and take control of the game. Take advantage of this and threaten to kill them if they let you score early while focusing on rig setup, or can't find a solution to get into the remote quickly enough.

Archer and triple-advanced Pharos are the best ICE to protect the murderous agenda rush. Hostile Takeover is there mainly for economy and to turn on the Archer threat since this deck rarely tries to score out. Send a Message is also mainly an economy card that helps rez Archer and Pharos, but can kill in a pinch with double Neurospike. Tree Line feels like good value to quickly set up a big Pharos. Battlement was an experiment as a tech card against Slap Vandal and Botulus - bit like a Magnet that can also stop Quetzal. I didn't face any of those all day so can't say how good of a tech card Battlement is.

GAME PLAN B

Reactive kill with M.A.D. + End of the Line. Use this plan if the runner manages to break into your kill combo remote or if the right cards for the combo don't show up. Keep counting rezzed ICE, runner cards & credits to see if you should pull the M.A.D. trigger.

Formicary helps get more rezzed ICE on the table and sometimes helps bring the runner to easier kill range if they eat the damage early, when expecting to poke an undefended central server.

GAME PLAN C

Score out. Hostile Takeover and Send a Message support this plan and give tempo when scored. Azef is a support agenda for this plan, being easy to score with a never-advance bluff and can knock breakers out of hand while trying to rush out by scoring.

TOURNAMENT MURDER LIST

Round 1: Jinsei playing Sable got murdered after ending a turn with 1 card in hand and getting Azef'd.

Round 2: Kasper playing Esâ got murdered while ending the turn with 3 cards in hand and getting Armed Intimidation + EotL'd

Round 3: Rhahi playing Hoshiko got murdered with Armed Intimidation + double EotL

Round 4: Niels playing Hoshiko got murdered with Azef + triple Neurospike (!) Toughest kill of the day. He saw a Neurospike from centrals early and was good at staying at full hand size. I expected a Steelskin in hand (which he did have) and had 2x Neurospike in hand + Malapert, so I could cook up the Azef behind Archer & Pharos to go for the triple spike.

Round 5: SciCat playing Lat got murdered with Azef + double Neurospike.

TOP CUT

Jinsei got his revenge with excellent play with Sable and finally knocked out the crazy murderman.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This deck is more of a swiss round murderer than top cut murderer. Test games showed that this deck is relatively easy to beat if you know what it's trying to do and play around it, so open deck lists are a disadvantage. That's also why I adjusted it a bit to have plan B and C available instead of going all-in on plan A.

This is quite a thrilling deck to play, because you're basically hunting the runner all the time like a madman and trying to keep a calm poker face while doing it, hoping the runner doesn't think anything dangerous is about to happen. The murder threat can be put on usually on turn 2 already with a good starting hand.

Shoutout to @Xtreme for organising another great and successful tournament, to @Zombie for providing a cool venue for the event and hosting us there, @Jinsei for taking the title, and to @kagolskab for playtesting and deckbuilding help.

Thanks for reading and Always Be Running!