Harmony Medtech Saves the World

greyfield 3915

This deck is undefeated so far in OCTGN testing, and the games haven't been close. I've been singing Global Food Initiative's praises continually, and this might be its best use - finally giving Harmony Medtech a good second 5/3 while simultaneously eliminating the need to play Shi.Kyu. Instead, you get to spend those slots the way you want to - with Daily Business Shows (a simply brutal card in this deck), more money, and occasional bombs like Cerebral Static.

Two Swordsman may seem a bit high, but Faust is frustrating enough to deserve it. Plus sometimes you can get an Eater or Atman as splash damage.

7 comments
21 Aug 2015 greyfield

Also I managed (despite trying my hardest to throw) to beat calimsha with this deck (tho he was playing the Paparazzi/DLR deck, not a real deck), so I can die happy.

21 Aug 2015 Lorgar

You have an interesting choise of ICE. Have you considered cheaper versions like Himitsu-Baku or Quandary for a early game rush? I want to build a similar deck but try out the X Level Clearances for quicker play.

21 Aug 2015 mawa

Well Calimsha kicked my Gagarin deck's ass when I found out that Ronald Five wasn't triggered by Data Leak Reversal, so it's not as if the thing is terrible :P

I'm interested to see no traps. I always assumed Medtech was built to pressure the runner into running over advanced traps. Is this just a straight Glacier version? If so, what are you looking for with all that draw? Finding agendas? Better Ice? Caprice?

21 Aug 2015 frost-duty

So I played 3 games with this deck and lost all of them!

I would be interested in your thoughts on my experiences. I found the main issue was that it seems to be very hard to get enough money. A lot of the ICE is fairly expensive, and if your clinics get trashed (which they often do) I found I spent a LOT of time clicking for credits. This is because I needed to have enough money to rez a decent scoring server as well as playing a few potential psi games and protecting other servers.

I also found a lack of ETR hurt. I was often sitting with lots of sentries that weren't going to actually keep the runner out, and so I couldn't get a viable scoring server going.

It felt to me like in theory is should be a rush deck, but I never had the cash or the right ICE to rush anything. I was just stuck waiting and slowly building up whilst clicking for credits, whilst the runner pounded my centrals trashing as many upgrades as they could find.

21 Aug 2015 sruman

Given you want games to be short. Have you considered restructures over the mental health clinics? Or perhaps medical research fundraisers (not a fan myself but influence free operation econ). Given ash and heft ice, I'm also curious about the money situation. Melange might also be a possibility.

21 Aug 2015 greyfield

@RubbishyUsername``@frost-dutySorry to hear about your bad results, frost.

I think the best way to explain the deck is to compare it to Replicating Perfection. True RP is a typical glacier deck. It wants to build a totally impregnable set of servers, slowly build up a tremendous money lead, and eventually push out a Nisei Mk. II to seal everything up for good. This deck isn't like that. It trades the slow inevitability of Mk. II and the constant drip economy of Sundew for an inherent lead in the agenda race. In a sense, I'd compare it to something like Greenhouse Rush - a deck that, as soon as it senses it has a lead/an impregnable scoring server, wants to go straight for its "win". That means the deck is more reliant on gear checking and psi games for scoring, but also means it can lean on small tempo advantages it gets over its opponent to capitalize. If you've got two unrezzed ice and a Nisei in your scoring server and your opponent's breaker suite isn't ready, I feel like that's usually the time to IAA the GFI and challenge them to have it.

Of course, it may be just opponent mindset. Most of my opponents left my MHCs alone (and instead violently trashed DBS over and over). If they're challenging you on that front, my usual strategy is to throw a token Pup or cheap ice in front of it to increase the effective tax for trashing the MHCs, so that even if they do manage to unseat your economy, over time the damage they inflict on themselves will be more substantial. Restructure could be a decent replacement, @sruman, but I don't think this is quite the right list for it - I ran almost exactly that economy in a Tennin Institute deck (which couldn't have played MHC), and found that for every time you perfectly lined up the Hedge Fund -> credit -> Restructure move and shot up into the stratosphere, there was a time you were clicking for credits for several turns in a row just to try to get started.

I'm not going to claim that this ice mix is perfect. In particular, at the top end (by which I mean Ashigaru, Susanoo-No-Mikoto, and Tsurugi), I could definitely see cutting at least one of those for something cheaper. After all, they're all good against different breaker suites, and thus which one you choose is metagame-dependant - Ashigaru is excellent against Faust and Lady, Susanoo-No-Mikoto is nigh-unbreakable but worthless against Switchblade, and Tsurugi is great against Mimic but lousy against Parasite. I'd be the last person to claim that you should take this 44 as gospel. All I'm saying is that this deck has been working wonders for me, and if you're good at psi games, it could be your thing.

26 Aug 2015 Watzlav

I'm glad that Harmony Medtech got this new impulse to be explored, as I always like that ID. I'll definitely be playing with this deck for a while. I made a few changes, most notably I switched Ash 2X3ZB9CY for his bioroid friend Ichi 1.0 and one Caprice for Marcus Batty to go with him.

I wonder why do you pack 3-off Cerebral Static? Is the Noise match-up that hard or is there something that I'm overlooking? I ditched it for 2 Tech Startups and 1 Melange Mining Corp. to pad the coffers a little. I thought about Sundew or Server Diagnostics, but ultimately decided against them, as there's too little ICE and I want to build a single scoring remote around Daily Business Show, rather than anything else.