Thule Subsivik [Startup]

Pouring one out for my boy Nanisivik Grid, unjustly punished in March 2023 for the crimes of AgInfusion. I've been working on this dumb Thule-NG deck since the start of the year and, having gone through 15 different versions of the thing, I'm pretty confident that NG isn't overpowered outside of the AgInfusion combo.

I'm not making any claims for this being the most powerful deck in the meta (more on that later), but it's the most fun I've had playing this game by a long way. And when it works, I think it's also a lot of fun to play against.

This is a pretty long writeup. I'm still relatively inexperienced in the game and have only played Startup thus far. I'm sharing all the things I've learned trying to make it good, which I hope will be useful to others at my level.

What even is this deck anyway?

The idea for this deck came from Andrej throwing some shade at Thule when Parhelion came out, saying its ability is passive and relies on the runner making mistakes. When Marbles suggested I try out Thule I said the same thing, and then got to thinking about ways to get the ID more aggressively dealing core damage to the runner.

I realised that the current HB ice suite has two options for core damage in Hákarl and Bloop. While getting them to hit also mostly relies on the runner slipping up, I figured that using Nanisivik Grid to make those routines fire despite the runner's best efforts would be fun to explore. It might be possible to get this idea working with ZATO City Grid instead, but I'm not sure there's any slack in this deck's influence to accomodate spending 8 on a couple of copies of that.

The other way to reliably put core damage on the runner is Djupstad Grid. We're running two of these and three Élivágar Bifurcation to go with them. Having two different grids in a build that only really wants to build one remote is a bit of a nombo. But the runner's best game plan against this deck is to be trashing your grids as if their life depends on it (because it does!), so it's unusual for one or other of them to stay in situ too long. If one does, you're probably winning anyway.

The setup you are looking for with NG is to get one on Archives and one in the remote, with a decent stack of facedown ice to throw at the runner if they try to run either. This is really difficult to achive, and why I'm pretty certain NG is not overpowered on its own. If you start building up facedown ice in archives before the NG comes down on it then a single run ruins everything. An NG on the remote alone is good for a single run, but they'll just run archives straight after, so only bother with that if they haven't seen it's in your deck and you have a single subroutine you want to land. With NG you only get one subroutine before they access, so you basically have to choose between doing something horrible to the runner or ending the run. The core damage or rigshot is sometimes the right call (I'm still salty I missed an opportunity to win by trashing the Hippocampic Mechanocytes that time!), but a lot of the time you'll be ending the run to protect NG and whatever is in the server. On a good day, you'll have a supply of EtR subs to slow them down for a turn or so, before you do something nasty to them. After you've had your fun, the runer will be up in your remote trashing and stealing everything, but particularly the NG. This is why we running 3 of them is essential, and there's also room for the Djupstads.

I ran this deck a lot without Snare!. While it resulted in some really fun matchups where the runner got down to 0 hand size, they often managed a zombie win because I just couldn't land that final core damage. They were amazing games, but I think the deck is much stronger for a way to do 3 net damage. I wish there was a way to include more than one copy, but we have do another way to reuse it besides Spin Doctor, and even as a single copy it's done work. You often find the runner will take one core damage from the Thule ability at some point and you'll be able to land one or two more with your little tricks, but by then they'll be well set up and unless you have the full NG/archives/remote arrangement in place it'll be tough to prevail. Snare is there to finish them off.

Ice

As this is fuel for NG, we need a lot of it. And if we can protect archives at all, we're also happy discarding it. We need ice with a lot of run-ending subroutines and also ice with the most disgusting subroutines we can lay our hands on.

I've already mentinoed Bloop and Hakarl. Bloop has the added bonus of being able to take out breakers intead of doing a core damage. Hakarl can end runs instead. As we aren't interested in the rest of the Harmonic suite (underwhelming subroutines for NG purposes, and not very powerful on the board unless there are lots of them rezzed), we can't actually rez Bloop, unless we use Send a Message. But Bloop can work fine facedown to intimidate the runner in the early game, and if they see it during their accesses they will hopefully be less cavalier about running while you set things up. There's an argument for swapping one or two Bloops for other ice that you can rez (probably Ansel), but you really do need to be ready to land a core damage when there's an opportunity, so I think this is probably the best configuration.

Installing ice facedown, never rezzing, and trashing it with an over-install can also be a solid play with this deck. I have not done this as much as I should because Jnet doesn't flag it up as an option, but it's one of only three ways we have to get facedown ice into archives. The other two require either a specific card (Hansei) or overdrawing during the turn to discard, so this is probably the most flexible. It's also much better to put ice on the table during the early game when you don't have a NG in play than it is to discard it. The ice is safe from being flipped on an archives access, and with 16 ice in the deck you should have plenty of opportunities to trash it later on.

Brân isn't super-synergistic with NG, because his first subroutine doesn't work. But he's got that important run-ending text, and the deck really needs beefy ice to hold things together. He's probably the ice you are least keen to dump in archives, but he does great slowing down the runner on centrals. If you can get the NG setup in full the runner's best hope is central pressure, so protecting them with strong ice is vital. You can also install spent NG fuel with his top subroutine on the occasions that he does get it to fire.

The three Bioroids in the deck land a bit more than I expected. Hakarl has its on-rez ability (and the opportunity to repeat using Élivágar if you ever find yourself rich enough to justify it), but I think in general people are expecting cheaper ice with Thule, particularly the harmonics, so they can be a bit reckless in running when they know you can't rez a Bloop. Obviously the Bioroids with 3 subroutines can also tax out a runner's clicks so they have to take a Core damage if they hit an agenda, which is neat. I think there's probably a viable deck that takes Ravana as well, but I found the times when it was the only rezzed Bioroid too frustrating to justify it.

Ansel probably has my favourite set of routines in the ice suite. A rig-shooter that doesn't just hit programmes, a pseudo-end-the-run where the runner gets to see all the treasures that are denied to them, and the surprise install. All of these are golden NG fodder. The last one has amazing potential for over-installing an agenda with a trap after the runner has committed to access. I haven't yet won a game this way, but I think that's mostly because until recently the only traps in the deck were Nightmare Archives, whose natural place in the universe is the runner's score area. This is the Snare play that I mentioned earlier.

Palisade and Magnet are the cheaper ice in the deck. Magnet is mostly Botulus tech, and Palisade is just above that all-important 3-strength on your remote. Cruicially, both have an EtR subroutine for NG. I did try running Rototurret in these slots. But even though it has an additional rigshooting subroutine, I found the times when its 0 strength made it completely useless on the board, and the extra 1 credit rez cost, far outweighed this slight advantage.

Enigma may seem below the curve on 2 strength, but it's a gem in this deck. Gotta love draining the runner's clicks on an early game facecheck, and there's an EtR subroutine, but the lose a click routine is also an effective NG core damage routine in Thule when the runner runs into an agenda on their penultimate click. Don't sleep on using your Élivágars to flip the Enigmas back facedown and trashing them with an overinstall once the runner is breaking them for pennies.

Agendas

These are pretty straightforward. Vitruvius is objectively better than Offworld Office in a deck where you don't have any fast advance tools, but the economy is really needed here. It sometimes really hurts to have to put that first advancement down and let the runner know it's an agenda, but I had to cut some imported economy to include Snare, so this was a necessary compromise. Until this final version, I was running two Send a Message, 2 Élivágar and 0 Vitruvius, but I think this is better. I think 2 was probably enough Élivágar and if there was a 2/3 that wasn't essentially blank I would run that instead of the third.

The Ontologicals are Thule's real ability, instead of stuff that's actually printed on the ID. Most of the time I want to shuffle them back into the deck if they turn up before I've given the runner a core damage. Scoring more than one from Djupstad in a single turn is an incredible feeling, but I imagine we all know this. Next week: how to suck eggs!

Assets

The two Nightmare Archives mean that, even if the runner hits your SaM on a lucky access, they will almost certainly still need to score 4 agendas. I would run 3 of these if there was any spare deck space. The install routine on Ansel means it's always great to have one in hand or archives. Snare can sit in HQ until the runner hits it and then live in archives until it needs to be brought back in place of the agenda a runner is about to steal.

I think 2 Regolith is the right number. You don't really have enough ice to protect it when your scoring remote is full (and if your scoring remote is full that means you probably need money!), so it sometimes it is either a dead card or you install it in a new remote, 4 credits for 3 clicks and then the runner trashes it.

The Assets are all useful for baiting runs. With NG you don't really want to be baiting them with agendas if you are hoping to do a core damage or shoot their rig, so having an asset in there instead is the ideal. Obviously Snare and NA are the best for this, but a Regolith and Spin Doctor will do at a pinch. They don't break the runner's spirit in the same way that NGing them for a core damage then springing a trap in their face, but it's still a great day at the office.

Operations

Again, these are pretty straightforward. We really struggle for economy, so 4 influence is going on importing it. Predictive Planogram is low-key my favourite card in the deck, even without any serious attempt to tag the runner. The deck will often be below 5 credits because we often need to rez things, economy be damned. A 0-cost economy card is a godsend at those times, and the flexibility of being able to burst draw (and potentially discard ice) instead is brilliant. Hansei Review, is more economy and a quick way to discard ice facedown (shout out to Marbles for this suggestion btw!). I had to reduce both of these down to 2 copies in order to import Snare into the deck and I am still sad about it.

The deck needs to do a fair amount of hand fixing. You don't want your Ontologicals before you have done at least one core damage. You want two NGs down quickly with a lot of ice going into archives around the same time. You don't really want the Élivágars when there isn't a Djupstad. Agenda flood is always a lurking danger, and SaM has a nasty habit of popping up at the worst times, like an uninvited houseguest. Sprint can help to mitigate that, along with the Spin Doctors. I took one of these out in order to only run a single SaM, and it hurt. You could potentially put it back and run 10 agendas or even cut one ice, but I think two is probably ok.

Boat is bad and you should feel bad: a note on the meta

As I said, this isn't the strongest deck in the meta. Having conceived of it, I've nurtured this weird little cuckoo until it's as fit and healthy as it can be. I'm pretty confident it can now hold its own. Until it meets the boat. I actually was partly drawn to NG because of the tantalising hope of firing subroutines despite the boat on the table. But the optimum NG setup is hard to engineer and still very fragile when the runner has the boat, let alone breakers too.

There are just a few too many moving parts in the deck and situations where the you just need ice to work for a turn or so. The deck has loads of ice, but it skews expensive and you want to be doing something with it other than loading every server with as many subroutines as possible and hoping the boat runs out of counters. It doesn't have any room to fit in fast advance tools, or any more economy, and it is trying to do something other than the few viable corp strategies to work around this one specific card. And I've come to the conclusion that this is a problem with the meta, not with the deck.

I'd actually got to the stage, before the ban list was released, that I was planning to hop into standard when the inevitable boat ban dropped, and try to make the deck workable in that format. Then poor unassuming Nanisivik Grid paid the ultimate price for AgInfusion's sins, and I gave up on it for a bit.

When Andrej released a video with a Thule deck that shared a lot of DNA with this one, I felt validated enough in my choices to look at it again. Then I realised the main difference is his deck is trying everything possible not to leave any agendas on the table for even a single turn, because you just can't trust your ice to work in this meta.

I think it's good the boat was released. It has been an interesting novelty to play with an overpowered card that renders every piece of text on ice irrelevant, except for the number of subroutines. But I don't think it makes for an interesting or varied meta in the medium-to-long term, and I think it would be a big mistake to keep the boat legal in Startup until it's due to rotate when the second half of Bell Tower drops. I've said my piece on GLC about this, so I won't go on about it.

So where does that leave this deck? It doesn't just lose a lot against boat, all of the fun drains out of the game. Perhaps you are lucky enough to play in a meta that isn't full of barbarians who insist on running cards that are overpowered to the point of being boring. Not playing the best cards is a strange thing to want people to do in a competitive game, but here we are. I've had a lot of fun testing this on Jnet with 'no boat please' as the game title. I reckon it can do pretty good against the rest of the pool without that one card, and I'm still not good enough at piloting it that I don't make mistakes, so it's probably better than my plays of it would suggest.

Hopefully the boat will soon get consigned to a much needed oblivion well-earned rest in Startup too, or failing that NG will get a reprieve when AgInfusion rotates out of Standard. I'm sharing the list because I've had a lot of fun working on it, and I learned a lot trying to make it work. I hope it'll be interesting to other people, and maybe some of you will be tempted to give it a spin.

The ideas might work in another ID, or with ZATO instead. It would need to be HB if core damage and scoring ontologicals remain the focus. But other factions will have fun combos with NG, that are probably under-explored outside Jinteki. I'll probably try some in the future. It would be a real shame if one of the most interesting and batshit fun designs in Borealis never got a chance to shine because of the overbearing dominance of one of the least interesting designs. This could be us, but you playin' boat.