Queen to RnD: Checkmate

linuxmaier 711

This is an angry deck.

Everything about this deck except the economy (at least it isn't running Account Siphon!) is something a corp doesn't have fun interacting with. Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter herself irritates the corporation by having to invest more heavily in their ICE, and her ICE destruction suite in the form of Eater/Cutlery and Datasucker/Parasite makes sure that their increased investment definitely goes to waste.

Keyhole is the lynchpin of the deck and it is a truly irritating card to play against, especially in person where you make the corp shuffle their deck 4 times in a turn. Keyhole never felt like a super good RnD pressure card on its own, though. One turn of Keyholeing might stink, but it's certainly survivable in a way that a turn of Medium or Indexing runs might not be. Keyhole isn't good at providing burst pressure the way The Maker's Eye or R&D Interface is either, since you get a pretty inefficient ratio of runs-to-agenda accesses.

Keyhole really shines when it's used as an oppression tool, running RnD over and over again and denying the corporation anything they want most in the world, be that ICE, economy, agendas or Jackson Howard. To sustain that kind of pressure the way Keyhole really wants to, you need two things. First, you need to keep RnD in a low tax bracket; that's what the ICE melting tools are for. Second, you need to make your repeated runs do work for you.

Desperado is thus crucial to this build, as it helps your Keyhole runs from breaking your bank while you're throwing the corp's bank into the trash. Couple that with John Masanori and you'll get some help drawing into other click efficient economy cards like Daily Casts. I'd say that for a dedicated Keyhole build, Desperado is by far and away the most efficient influence spend since it will make you insane amounts of money through the game and also give you an opportunity to gain economy while Keyholing if you managed to clear out RnD of ICE.

The other tools in the deck are there to keep it from failing too hard if the corp finds a way to neutralize your Keyhole (Crisium Grid is really good at this job). Medium means you can turn your Keyhole runs into future RnD accesses if they throw Crisium down, so long as you can ride your way in on the back of Darwin. Hades Shard allows you into Archives to pick up Keyholed agendas. Installing it early is perfectly fine so long as you're careful to avoid ending your turn with a tag; it makes the corp pre-emptively use Jackson before you throw the match point agenda in the trash, since they don't have a timing window for it once you throw away your 7th point. Mimic protects you from Swordsman and Utopia Shard can work with I've Had Worse to keep you alive through Scorches.

My experience so far with this deck would indicate that you shouldn't play it against friends you want to keep. Milling the corp out is a distinct possibility (and a satisfying one against Jinteki PE) and it leads to long games where the corp doesn't feel like they have anything productive they can do. Save this for your enemies, and cherish their frustration.

0 comments