OFF THE TOP ROPE (Throwback event, NANPC Boston)

This deck was constructed for the Throwback format side event at NANPC Boston (standard + 1 playset of a card that was not banned when it was rotated).

The basic idea is that Brahman has good base stats (it’s an AI cleaver), and comes with what is ostensibly a downside of returning a installed non-virus program to the top of your stack. Playing it fairly means significant tempo loss as you have to redraw and reinstall the card you bounced. We can mitigate that downside by using Prognostic Q-Loop to reinstall from the top of deck for a 1 credit premium. The last piece of the puzzle is the recently released Coalescence, which is an economy program that differs from its predecessor Cache in that Coalescence is not a virus and thus is eligible for Brahman to target.

Technically these three cards (Brahman, Q-Loop, Coalescence) is the basic combo, that when assembled is a ton of moving parts that nets you 1 credit as a refund for each ice you break using Brahman, by using up all of your Q-Loop activations. But there’s a lot of stuff that works well with that:

• LilyPAD means you’re not just locking your own deck by looping coalescence on and off the top of your deck. This card is very very important and there’s a lot of card draw specifically to find this. Having LilyPAD means you’re drawing 2 cards per turn cycle clicklessly when you’re set up.
• DZMZ helps with MU and provides an extra credit per turn. Q-Loop can be used on the corp’s turn as well (although you cannot take money from Coalescence on the corp’s turn, if that matters), so this is fantastic drip econ once the three core cards are setup. The discount pretty much maxes at 2 with this deck (which means each Coalescence flip off the top gains you net 3 credits), but the deck really likes finding this so it might be worth a third copy.
• Arissana lets you drop Coalescences from hand to feed the Brahman in the event you draw them and don’t have them conveniently on top of the stack.
• Environmental Testing is extremely easy to pop once you have the core engine runnning.
• Leech is the only really good way of discounting the cost of using Brahman, which is kind of important because there’s a lot of 5+ strength ice in the format. Would’ve been really nice to have 2 of these.
• Muse is obviously very powerful, but you can rebuy it repeatedly to keep recurring stuff onto the board from the heap. Repeatable Physarum recursion is silly (although bypassing an ice doesn't trigger Brahman, which is sometimes a downside), and Hush is just good. There’s also a Slap Vandal, which might be cuttable but is really nice into a couple select pieces of big ice (Trebuchet, Boto)
• Propeller is fantastic when you can recur it cheaply. Did a ton of work when facing Redino’s Bulwark Outfit list.
• Euler is OK and theoretically very good with recursion. Never got installed in my games. Probably cuttable unless there’s good code gate AI hate you're anticipating.
• Ika is not that good in this deck. I wish there was something better, but Living Mural is still really not it. Maybe Na'Not'K?

This is probably a lot of analysis for a silly deck, but this format was extremely fun to brew decks for. If you haven’t tried building a deck in this format I encourage you to give it a shot.

Thanks to everyone involved in running NANPC and NANPC Boston (NotAgain, Ysengrin, Whiteblade, Stream team), and all of the local folks who gave feedback on this silly pile of nonsense.