Iain Stirling: A Study in Slow-Roll

Iain has been a pet project since Honor and Profit was released. Piece by piece, card by card, he has been getting tools that allow him to play faster and not get run out of the gym before establishing an inevitable late game lock. About a month ago, I had a list that was very solid with the only shaky part of the deck being the non-Overmind breakers. As soon as I saw the Data and Destiny spoilers, I immediately saw the solution.

The deck itself is a pretty simple control build with a pretty simple decision tree. You have Overmind and Inside Job in the deck to give you the ability to challenge remotes in the early game to prevent the corp from scoring out an AstroScript/Nisei/Project Atlas, etc that allows them to start chaining agendas quickly before you can get set up. Note: Overmind and Inside Job are there ONLY to challenge remotes. If the Corp isn't trying to score, you shouldn't be running centrals until you feel you are at a point where you can't be stopped and can make one or more multiaccess runs a turn while having enough passive economy to refuel you to do it again the next turn. With the new GS breakers, you have a late game breaker suite that doesn't soak up memory and breaks through anything for a reasonable price.

I would keep any opening hand with the Supplier or Hostage and even better if you have a Career Fair. If the Corp isn't forcing you to act, you just continue to slow roll and build your rig. Pretty soon, you will be drawing all the cards and gaining all the money. At that point, there is no Corp board that can stop you. Drive By is there to help you deal with Caprice or Batty, but Sneakdoor is very useful in getting you accesses in a way that neutralizes HQ upgrades.

While some accuse him of being too slow to play competitively, I will tell you from experience that the deck actually plays quite fast as long as your opponents aren't slow players. The turns pretty much script themselves: Opponent does nothing? Install things, draw more things, make money. Opponent builds a remote and tries to advance something? Inside Job or install Overmind and run. Run out of things to install or draw? I guess you may as well run a central server and find some agendas. I hope this deck inspires some people to dust off Iain and give him a shot - this deck is a lot of fun and I'm so happy to see that Iain is finally supported at a level that lets you compete with the top tier corp decks.