Skorp Red Planet Takeover (5th Australian Nationals)

Chicken Slayer 462

Look, at some point in every card game player's life, they probably feel the urge to embrace their inner Timmy and play some kind of combo deck to do something silly. Like play advanceable ice and score some Government Takeovers.

Thankfully Mass Commercialization, as fair and balanced as an inclined see-saw with a credit swing to match, is here to tell you not to let your Memes be Dreams.

Not gonna lie, this deck was originally a Cache Refresh deck out of Builder of Nations that did so well at its job that I figured it might have some legs in the standard format. Turns out that it does, carried on the broad unyielding shoulders of Mass Comm.

This deck is a glacier deck that pretends to be a legitimate Skrop deck demanding legitimate Skorp answers like ensuring your breakers don't get Hatchet Job'd or Hunter Seeker'd, requiring you to dig out your Employee Strikes, that sort of thing, right up until the point where you make a towering pillar of Ice and start advancing it. Turns out at some point Weyland ice become much less of a joke and gained some teeth.

Then you start playing Mass Comm's and your opponent starts crying.

Deck realistically has two modes of winning. Number one is, of course, scoring the Government Takeover. That plus a hostile == GG Ezy.

Number two is to score two Grafts or One Graft + the Takeover. This is often actually easier than scoring the Takeover because of the lower advancement requirement, but also because if you score a Graft you can tutor for the tools necessary to score the second one.

This deck is missing Priority Construction from Crimson Dust, which I couldn't get my hands on before Nationals (and generally forgot existed) for the reload after scoring something and also for its capacity to just fart some extra advancement counters onto the table.

Why play this nonsense instead of Moons

Fake Answer

Because with SIFR Whizzard on ebb and Moons + Criminals on the rise due to everyone losing their shit over Bloo Moose, the time was clearly right to play an unconventional glacier deck to prey on people forgetting to bring OP breakers and means to bust into 3-5 ice deep servers. It was a strong meta call for the day.

Last part turned out to be true, by accident.

Real Answer

I'd recently come back from Europe and hadn't touched Netrunner in Weeks. The night before Nationals I got about half-way through sleeving Moons after deconstructing a bunch of decks, decided that was too much effort and went with the deck that was already built.

I figured if nothing else it'd be funny.

Why Skorp instead of an ID that supports Advanceable Ice?

Two reasons (well beyond the 3 extra Influence for Jacksons). The first was obfuscation. People see Skorp and have to prepare for a very different game to what this deck demands. They start digging for Strikes and Film Critics, get their breakers ready to stop early rushes, building up a credit lead to stop Hatchet trances, that sort of thing.

It's arguable in fact that this deck should feature some Skrop tools to keep runners honest anyway like a singleton Hunter Seeker (even though it's a Takeover deck) to further complicate matters but, eh, I figured Money is Better.

The second was because there's several cards which obstruct what is still effectively a Fast Advance strategy like Clot or Siphon Lock and removing those from the game is a pretty effective means of solving that problem. Though more realistically, the primary thing you actually want removed from the game is any multi-access event: you're still playing a Takeover deck, which makes cards like Deep Data Mining horrifying to play against. Trying to siphon lock a deck with Mass Commercialization is an exercise in futility

In addition, being Skrop helps vs the things that traditionally hose these sort of big ice glacier decks (ie: Parasite and Cutlery) by making the ice destruction into one-shot effects. Comboing them with Employee Strike still sucks of course but it's more tools the runner needs and, hey, the popularity of those cards is kinda at an all time low. If you run something like BoN into that, you have no real recourse beyond just accepting that your ice is getting blown up repeatedly and there's not much you can do about it.

Also from experience BoN or Constructing Cyberspace are both equally fucked over by Employee Strike, which is kinda popular right now.

Deck went 4/1 on the first day and lost the one game I played in the cut. Both losses were due to a last ditch Legwork/RnD Equivocation attack through big servers right before I was due to Combo out, which comes with the territory of running Government Takeover.

How do I score the Takeover

Biotic, Install Agenda, Red Planet Couriers. Score 3/6 points for the low low price of 9 credits!

If you're ballsy, Biotic, install card, react to the inevitable Clot with an immediate PURGE. Remove Clot from game. Alternatively, install over with a Jackson, then next turn if they haven't Emp Striked you, purge that shit off your table.

It isn't really that hard, lets be honest. One issue though is if you score anything and don't immediately win you'll experience a brief dip in tempo as your counters get ripped from your ice to fuel your takeover of Mars. This is especially relevant for Wormholes that haven't been Rez'd as they'll go back to 9 credits which might be awkward. More importantly, you'll briefly lose the ability to Mass Commercialise for double digit credit values, a tragic problem that should be fixed at the first opportunity.

Notes in closing

I think the record for a single Mass Comm was 26 credits. I definitely ran out of credit tokens in one game. Realistically though, the money becomes super irrelevant after a certain point: you only need 9 to combo out so mostly you just build up fat stacks of cash and make the runner look on with envy.

Beanstalk is there over IPO because, look, IPO is basically unplayable trash compared with Mass Comm. This is not a good thing for what it's worth.

Truth be told, this deck could do with some trace mechanism I think to exploit the massive credit lead it can build up over the runner and the Skrop ID to punish them, but deck slots become an issue. I experimented with 2x Enforcing Loyalty in place of one of the Archived Memories but found it inconsistent.

Realistically the deck could also do with a more consistent tutor mechanism beyond Score Graft. This wasn't particularly an issue on the day but going forward it can be if faster OTK decks (or even decks that can just efficiently break the ice and keep it all under control) become more the rage in the meta.

Finally the deck is good fun and, ripping out a lot of the FA tools, serves as a good shell for other combos. Playing Mass Comm, Archive Memories, then Mass Comm again is a great way to make friends and get punched in the throat.

Enjoy!

4 comments
1 Sep 2017 firesa

Nice deck, loved the fakeout approach. I assumed a bunch of games both day 1 and day 2 were on camera? Would love to see how games actually played out :)

2 Sep 2017 SHIEL

What would you cut for Priority Construction? Or would you add a Glenn Station or something and go up to 49?

2 Sep 2017 triorph

This was legitimately a scary deck to play against. Got the employee strikes and film critic out and then all of a sudden realise that actually this Skorp ICE costs a lot of money to get through, so I'm flobbing my siphons and then he bounces back with the Mass Comm.

4 Sep 2017 Chicken Slayer

We're processing the video for one game right now. It kinda plays a bit durdly, not gonna lie :P

@Rhaplanca1001Not sure: Some of the Hedges/Beanstalks perhaps: think you'd only need 1-2 at most for the reload or the initial build up of tokens considering that Construction only builds remotes. You definitely not want to go to 49: it screws with the deck's agenda density regarding the 3 pointers in the deck and, honestly, I've never been a big fan of Glenn Stacy hiding a Takeover. Too many moving parts (a reason I also don't like this deck idea out of BWBI).