Susan Got Offered a Free Trip to Camp (3-0 GNK)

Shulmey 44

This deck has been my baby for the past few months, and so I figured I would share it. It went 3-0, and then one more game went to time, ending in a tie. If you love corp decks that present the runner with lots of bad choices, but are tired of playing Butchershop, I highly recommend this. It's probably tier 1.5ish, but takes a lot more practice to get decent with than butchershop.

Tips for playing the deck:

1) You don't need Ice on Archives unless you're playing someone using Sneakdoor Beta (read Gang Sign Leela). Toss a couple Space Camps and Shocks in there, and the runner won't run it to turn off your ability. Typically you will have enough Shocks and Space Camps that you can toss a few in Archives and still hold 1-2 in hand.

2) Susanoo is your best piece of ice. She's also the reason you don't put Ice on archives. If she fires, it means the runner now has to hit all the traps in archives. Remember that she's unique, so you can only rez one of her, but you REALLY want her to get rezzed in order to turn on Wormhole as more than just ETR ice.

3) You want to ice R&D and a scoring server pretty strongly, and HQ with a semi-taxing piece of ICE, maybe 2 if playing against criminals. The secret to running this deck is to make everything taxing so that your ability turns on every turn (them running archives with traps in there is fine, too).

4) How to score: Put a card face down in your scoring server and leave it. Most people will think it's Caprice/Ash/Batty and not run at it. A lot more people will think it's a 4/2 or 5/3 agenda and not run it. Next turn, use your ability token on the agenda and score it out. It's a great feeling to be at 4 points, install TFP without advancing, and then on the next turn, use Tennin token, a single Trick of Light, and advance twice. Scoring a TFP in a single turn for 3 credits...

5) Regarding An Offer You Can't Refuse, most people say it's trash, but being able to give yourself a point for 4 credits is actually very strong in this deck. It means you don't have to score a TFP, which is very nice. And if they do accept your offer to run your server with the Chum'd Susanoo that drops them onto 2 shocks and a space camp, that's a bonus (I've never seen anyone accept the offer).

6) Learn to trust your Archives. After the runner knows there are 3-4 traps in there, he probably will be VERY hesitant to run it. If you get Agenda flooded and the runner is afraid of Archives, often it is safer to trash the agenda while you are praying for Jackson than to leave it in your hand, especially against Criminals (Leela specifically) or an anarch with an Imp out.

7) This is applicable to all corps, but watch for scoring windows. However, don't break your bank scoring something out before you should.

8) The biggest enemy of this deck is David. If you see David out, your goal is to run him out of counters ASAP, and the way you do that is by stacking multiple high strength Ice (advanced Ice Walls work for this too) on your scoring remote, and then installing assets/agendas face down without advancing them.

Cards that I have considered changing:

Quandary, maybe for an enigma? It's just an early game gear check, sometimes you can quickly score out a Nisei behind an Ice Wall and Quandary on turn 2-3. The upside of Quandary is cheapness.

Crisium Grid - Great against criminals, it keeps your ability turned on, but I think there might be better options.

Lotus Field - Would probably drop to 1

NAPD - May change this to Philotic or Braintrust, especially with Film Critic being a thing now.

Melange - If you have another econ card you like better, go for it. If you take out Crisium for a second Commercialization, you could definitely drop this.

Snare! is a flex card as well. I've had it flatline people, but mainly it just slows them down a lot.

I played with only 2 shocks for a while, and it was ok, but the third one really adds consistency to your archives danger.

I also used to have more ice, but as I've tuned the deck, I've realized that since I'm only putting ice on R&D and one remote (and a single piece on HQ, usually), I would have games where I was just holding 5 pieces of ice in my hand, not wanting to play any of it. Trading it out for more econ made the deck way effective and siphon resistant.

Hope you guys enjoy this. I know I have.

8 comments
21 Aug 2015 mawa

If you want a solution to David, how about swapping a Firewall for Tyrant or Hadrian's Wall? The big downside is that they are pricy as hell, but the ability to pick off multiple counters must be great for this deck and you don't look like your suffering much for money. If they don't have David, then you can advance them to some unbelievable strength and challenge them to break in to your server again. It's not like Criminal emergency shutdowns are as widespread as when those cards were new.

21 Aug 2015 Shulmey

I used Tyrant for a while, but Parasite just absolutely murders it, and decks that have David pretty much always have Parasite. Hadrian's is a decent option, but the 3 influence means I'd have to lose the Crisium in addition to the Fire Wall for it. It's probably worth testing out.

21 Aug 2015 Bigguyforyou518

I've been doing extensive testing on my own oddly similar deck, and here's what I can report:

5 advance-able ice (with no other advance-able assets) is not enough to ensure you have targets when they hit your early Space Camps. Consider Shadow as another low-influence way of holding tokens, and a very solid taxer (people are always paranoid about getting tags, regardless of what deck you're running), or consider an advance-able trap like Project Junebug to hold your space camp tokens in a place the runner will never go (remember to actually rez the Junebug against criminals so it doesn't get hit by Drive By).

An Offer You Can't Refuse is terrible, those people who told you that were right. It's the card that brought me back to my Tennin Spacecamp deck, thinking it would revive it, but it just sounds better on paper than it actually is. Early game, you don't want it, because it's expensive and you haven't had enough time to set up your scary archives. Late game, unless you're sitting at 6 points, the runner will always just give you the point, which actually isn't all that helpful by itself. Unfortunately, it's a card that's going to sit there taking up HQ space until you can find the perfect time to use it, and then the runner will just say "...nah.". It would also be a lot stronger if you were running something like Ichi 1.0 for an alternate rig destruction win condition (they can't click to break it). Gotta admit though, it's hilarious to drop a The Future Perfect at 6 points and use An Offer You Can't Refuse (3x spacecamps in archives) and Trick of Light to score it right out of your hand.

Other thoughts:

  • Commercialization doesn't seem like it's going to get you much except in a very ideal situation, meaning it's another hand-clogger.
  • Security Testing (a very common card) shuts your entire strategy down completely
  • No smart runner is ever going to let you plop down a card inside your scoring remote and NOT either a: run it, OR b: deactivate your Tennin ability. Your agenda suite forces you to rely on this technique (except on your 2nd and 3rd Medical Breakthroughs), and I'm sorry, but no one should ever let you get away with that.
21 Aug 2015 Shulmey

@Bigguyforyou518 I agree that I've had games where some of the issues you've mentioned have cropped up, but I would also say that after extensive practice with this deck, the deck provides ways to play around those issues. I haven't had problems only having 5 advanceable ice. Maybe 1% of games have I had that feeling. If I'm not seeing the advanceable stuff then I probably have an agenda installed behind a Susan and a quandary.

Offer You Can't Refuse very rarely results in someone running. I mostly use it when I'm at 4 points to get myself in range of winning with another 2-point agenda.

A 1 or 2 of Project Junebug is probably a decent addition.

I wouldn't swap out Commercialization. In fact, I might add another one in. 4 advancement tokens (which almost always happens) means it's a hedge fund from 0 credits. Often it hits for 5-8 credits.

Sec Test hasn't been a problem. Against criminals, you just ice archives as soon as sneakdoor or Sec Test hits the table. No criminal is going to pay through a strength 3 ice wall or crick every turn just to disable your ability. Once you've iced archives, you just hold your traps in HQ as much as possible rather than tossing them into archives. But against Gang Sign (which is the most common criminal archetype I've seen lately), you would do that anyways.

On your last point about "smart runner"s, if someone is running your remote every time you install a card in it, just install a snare, space camp, or shock. Then do it again. Also, you can double ToL a Nisei from hand if the situation presents itself and no scoring window is open. If I can get a runner to pay 4-5 credits to turn off my ability, I consider that a win in most situations. Especially if on my next turn I just ToL, Advance, Advance a Nisei.

So I see your concerns, but in practice they just haven't been an issue.

21 Aug 2015 Bigguyforyou518

@Shulmey

Sec Test hasn't been a problem. Against criminals, you just ice archives as soon as sneakdoor or Sec Test hits the table. No criminal is going to pay through a strength 3 ice wall or crick every turn just to disable your ability.

Not to come off as argumentative here, but any security testing criminal who understands how Tennin Institute works would absolutely pay through a strength 3 ice wall to turn off your ability (especially if you just dropped a facedown card in your remote). Don't forget that Security Testing comes with Desperado, so whatever you think you're taxing them...it's actually 3s less.

More to the point, now, in addition to heavily icing up R&D and your scoring remote as usual, you're also reinforcing HQ (which you said you do against criminals) and now reinforcing Archives (possibly with an Ice Wall that you manually advanced 3 times).

I'm not trying to be annoyingly hypothetical - this is basic criminal strategy: force the corp to spread their ICE thin. With only 13 ICE, that's going to spread you very thin indeed.

21 Aug 2015 Shulmey

@Bigguyforyou518 I completely agree with your argument in the context of a single run. If there is a server that they can pay 2 credits to get into in order to turn off my ability for a turn, they will probably do that since it still gives them a credit. I have noticed that if I just pump the strength once or twice more, a good runner will have to find a different server to get into because spending a credit and a click every single turn just to turn off Tennin won't be worth it, and the fantastic thing is that as soon as they stop running every turn, future runs become more taxing.

Maybe your meta is just a lot more criminal heavy than mine, but I feel like criminals don't have a good answer to so much of my ice that they just haven't been an issue.

Also, Crick is still in the deck only because of Criminals running on archives, and Crisium Grid is generally most effective against crims as well. I used to play a lot of criminal and I hated playing against decks like this that could tax every server and at the same time punish you for not running.

21 Aug 2015 beam1306

When I read Security Testing, it make me think that Security Testing doesn't work during a run in the Corp turn. It start with "When your turn begins" and follow with "run on that server this turn". So it must be the first run that append the turn the runner selected a server.

21 Aug 2015 Shulmey

@beam1306 That's correct, Security Testing only works on the runner's turn.