[Blue Sun] Off the Grid Ceremony Combo

Decklists
1

Hey guys, been testing this archetype a lot since Kala Ghoda and have found it surprisingly strong–I’ve found that using dedication ceremony + Hollywood grid is better than traditional mushin varieties of off the grid. It might be enough to push this deck into a new level of strength. I’m very happy with my latest iteration:

Off the Grid Ceremony

Blue Sun: Powering the Future (Up and Over)

Agenda (7)

Asset (3)

Upgrade (8)

Operation (14)

Barrier (9)

Code Gate (2)

Sentry (5)

Multi (1)

  • 1x Orion (Order and Chaos)

15 influence spent (max 15)
21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Kala Ghoda

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

Here’s a previous build in netrunner db, together with a lot of discussion on card choices:

This latest iteration seems to be much stronger. Government Takeover has fixed the agenda flood issue, while adding two more slots (plus removing the necessity for research station!). Because this deck limits R&D and HQ accesses so much, I don’t think it’s a huge liability especially since late game we can often use Atlas to fetch it vs a deep dig (which incidentally maximizes r&d agenda point reduction per atlas token!). Archived memories has proven to be a power-house–the ability to chain Oversight is amazing plus it helps increase our general recursion vs ice destruction decks and Noise. Losing Toll-booth hurts ICE suite, and forced some rebuilding, but memories seems to be well worth the ICE downgrade. Still not sure on datapike vs enigma, but I figured that with only 2 codegates might as well make them marginally more impactful–wormhole seems a plausible code-gate as well, but Assassin seems strictly better tax in most cases and so I use it instead (but keep datapike for minor tax + gear check + early game ICE). Spider-wall has proven to be a very solid early-game binary ice that helps create critical mass of Faust+Lady hatred while taxing 3 for Corroder. Together, Assassin and Spider-wall (together with hive of course!) creating enough late game longevity to cover the loss of Tollbooth. At the same time, AM allows for more room to hard-rez Curtain-wall which is extremely impactful.

Dropped Dedication ceremony to 1. It’s dead until late game, where we can search for it with Atlas. The addition of AM has made this even more correct. Fewer dead draws early to mid game is crucial in this deck–late game has a way of finishing itself off if everything goes well.

Interns is often somewhat dead and slow, but I think it helps a lot of bad matchups and bad situations. It also helps chaining Oversight when runner denies it (especially effective if they use D4vid!). Some room to move to 1, but I think it’d be hard to upgrade this.

Forcing in 1 or 2 CVS is likely correct to shore up the Anarch matchups, but I hate including tech slots until the rest of the deck is worth playing on its own. At this point in testing though, I think it might be time to try to force them in :slight_smile: Probably best options are -1 datapike, -1 interns, or maybe -2 datapike + 1 wormhole, possibly -1 spiderwall. Hard to drop anything else at this point, so will be excited if others have ideas.

At this point slots seem extremely tight to me, so I figured I’d offer up the deck to you guys. Give it a spin, it wins games :slight_smile: It’s reasonably skill dependent–a lot of efficiency you can gain early with good technical play, and late game novel spots often come up where you’re often forced to take creative lines to score out. I really like the remote-less game (one of my first solid corp decks was CI tax) so I find this deck really fun to play–but your mileage may vary

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2

That’s actually kind of interesting. The Dedication takes the place of what would otherwise usually be a Mushin combo. I could see going up to 2, but slots might be tight. I’m not sure 2x Interns and 2x Archived are needed, but I suppose Archived can also get back Oversight and the like. In my jank heart, I almost want to see a couple Casting Calls in that slot, just to be able to throw the non-Public agendas out there as well, but that’s probably going too greedy. A couple Tollbooths might not be bad either, just as more taxing ICE.

You might want to look at @bblum’s new Bootcamp Glacier build for ICE choices; I think there might be something there that you can apply here as well. Obviously Archer is out the window, but the 1x Curtain Wall 2x Orion idea seems like it has merit. You’re on 3x Curtain 1x Orion; it might be good to go to 2 and 2.

Anyhow, though, this seems interesting. It always seems like a kind of slow deck, since there’s so many combo pieces before you can score, but at least you really only have to worry about R&D and HQ for ICE. Anyhow, as I said, this is kinda cool. I might try out something similar to see how it goes.

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Why would Orion be better than CW? It’s only 1 more cred when oversighted and is easier to break for runners. Sure it face-check taxes, but 15 cred rez often makes this prohibitive. I’ve found a hard-rezzed curtain wall on HQ (or sometimes R&D) to often be necessary and I’d hate to be stuck with Orion instead since it’s more expensive, easier to break, and lower tax. Maybe I’m missing something?

Toll booth is definitely awesome in this deck. But influence is tight, and I’ve found AM to be more crucial (and Caprice makes some un-winnable games into winnable on top of supporting our usual game-plan which seems too important to skimp on).

4

Hey, ask bblum, I didn’t make the deck =P I guess the face-check program trash is a big enough deal vs Anarchs that it’s worth it.

5

Yeah reading bblum’s description it’s the face-check tax for Orion. Seems a bit less critical in this deck since we’re more looking at lasting taxation/lockout and there’s a much greater chance we want more than 1 >14 cred ice rezzed. Plus getting oversight money more easily denied likely hurts this deck a bit more since we really want to fire as many oversights as possible (AM is mostly used for oversight actually, hence why I’m still at 2 interns) since we don’t run asset econ. Still, definitely worth re-considering :slight_smile:

On the plus side, we can use our 1 hollywood advance when scoring out to make Orion a bit cheaper and there are some fringe cases where we advance HG more than once (without winning).

6

There’s also the possible benefit of fast advancing your last agenda out if your Off the Grid is already installed when you install and Dedicate your Hollywood a la my Titan deck. Not something I’d imagine you want to pull for, but a nice thing if it happens.

The part that makes me nervous about this deck, though, is the agenda suite. Running a bunch of 5/3 agendas (and a 9/6 agenda) is always risky.

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Most games end with the 5-point HG->PA combo.

As for agendas, this downside isn’t so bad when runners get so few accesses since they are so expensive. But yeah, obv this is still a downside compared to runner always needing 4 steals. I think in this deck the upside of keeping Hive strong and lowering number of times you score is worth it to use HG over a more traditional foods based agenda spread. Gov’t takeover is a bit high variance, but the hope is you draw it into HQ and at that point it’s safe–and it makes the deck run much more smoothly by avoiding agendas flooding HQ and giving more deck slots.

8

With Cutlery being prevalent in Anarch they can bounce off Curtain Wall and Knife with D4. And since you’re Blue Sun it’s like they took 14 creds from you. With Orion since a lot of the builds don’t run Corroder, D4 will be used or 7 cards with Faust meaning it’s lot more resilient Curtain Wall.

4 Likes
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Ah you’re definitely right, completely missed that interaction! Vs cutlery it’s suddenly a lot stronger, and in general vs D4 since it forces them to use up at least 1 token. Seems like a clear change of +1 Orion -1 CW.
Thanks guys!

10

Enigma is better than Datapike, because costing $3 means that on the first turn you can install Orion/CW, Oversight, and then install Enigma in front of it and be able to rez.

This basically makes your Oversighted ICE impossible to kill, whereas otherwise you can easily get blown out by a early D4V1D or even Lady.

6 Likes
11

I think hard rezzed Orion is a lot stronger versus cutlery, but way weaker when Oversighting, because any cutlery card can kill it. So if you are hoping to get big money from Oversighting, then it might be a bit of a toss-up. I’d be interested in hearing what @bblum has to say about this.

ETA: oh yeah, Oversighted ICE don’t need to be Cutleried. Duh. :blush:

12

Well cutlery vs oversight is irrelevant since they kill the ice by breaking it anyways :smiley:

Switching to Enigma seems really good–1 cred can often make the difference early game in many places–and helps plug the orion weakness a bit with Kiv’s line (which I hadn’t thought of!).

3 Likes
13

Like @coffeeyay said, Cutlery is unimportant for Oversight AI.

You do need to respect the threat that arbitrary Cutlery poses to your Orion – generally by playing some other ice to protect it (Hive, Spiderweb, Booth, Assassin), so that they have to guess right about two things (location of Orion, sub-type of bodyguard ice), rather than just one thing (that’s Orion, imma Knifed it!), or just being okay with the consequences of not rezzing it.

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Eh, it seems less likely they’d have D4 in their starting hand than you’d have a 3-card combo. Enigma is better overall, but datapike forces another card from Faust.

I’ve wanted to try Tyrant with Dedication Ceremony in a deck like this. If you can get 10+ counters on it protecting HQ, you can keep Faust out. However, a 7-cost ice that does nothing when you rez it is pretty laughable.

15

Well, there is an edge case in which it matters - an oversighted Orion protects everything behind it from all cutlery, where Curtain Wall would only protect other barriers. But somehow I don’t think that will ever be your motivation for overnighting Orion. :wink:

1 Like
16

That’s, like, a million turns. Even if you can Dedicate it once, it’s roughly 22 credits to get this rolling (7 for Tyrant, 1 for Dedication [3 counters], and 14 for the other 7 advancements to bring it up to 10 [calculated at 2 credits an advancement; 1 for the credits you spent, 1 for the credits you didn’t get from clicking for a credit]). Dedicated twice, it’s still 17 credits. That’s a LOT of investment to lock down 1 server, especially since it’s going to take several turns of nothing but advancing in which you’re not doing anything on R&D.

Anyhow, you don’t seem super serious about the idea, given your last sentence, but it’s still a super bad idea to make Tyrant a thing in basically any deck (other than maybe Tennin? Maybe?).

17

By the time you get your fourth counter on Tyrant (Dedication or no), it will have a Parasite happily ticking away.

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18

You need about 15 credits (which is Restructure range) and I’m guessing about 3 turns after you rez Tyrant to lock the runner out of HQ. If you go down to 6 agendas and are holding/Fast Track some agendas in hand, you’re probably okay with some light protection on R&D. You’re not building a remote, so you can devote most of your resources into protecting HQ. A CVS in Archives should be enough.

I mean, this probably doesn’t work because it’s Tyrant. It’s just a thought experiment.

(put a sub boosted architect in front of your servers to protect your barriers from cutlery)

19

Was messing around with this earlier, and came across something fun. I was having trouble finding the Off the Grid, but wanted to score an Atlas. Instead, I threw it and a Caprice down behind a Hive. The runner ran on it, got through Hive, and lost the Psi game, then opted not to go back (they were on Faust, and 5 cards is all they could do). I picked up Caprice with Blue Sun, and scored the Atlas. Next turn I picked up the Hive, and both it and Caprice went on HQ. Kinda fun ^^ It really made use of the power of Blue Sun; no other ID can do this shit.

Edit: I also shuffled around the ICE package, and ended up dropping one, going down to 16 total. It’s a little risky for the early game, but I wanted to see how it felt. So far it feels okay, but I haven’t tested it much. It helps to only really give a shit about centrals, not really needing remote ICE. Anyhow, the reason I dropped to 16 is because I wanted to see how a Fast Track felt in the deck. It can get you your first Atlas, which is nice, but i can also bring the Takeover to HQ, where it’s fairly safe beneath the protection of Caprice and a shit-ton of ICE. I’ve used it one time so far, so I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes yet.

The ICE I’m on is

Barrier (6)

Code Gate (3)

Sentry (5)

Multi (2)

  • 2x Orion (Order and Chaos)

After testing, I’m 100% on board with @bblum’s assessment about the 2x Orion. It feels pretty nice. Also, with the OTG combo, you can drop an OTG, throw Orion in front of it, and then OAI in relative safety. You need to be fairly set up to do this, but usually OAI plays in the mid-late game are riskier (especially with the all-subtype Orion), and this takes a good deal of that risk away. I kinda wanted 3 Code Gates for the gear check, as well as giving 1 more early game ice for a turn one OAI to hide behind. I prefer Hive over Spiderweb, and I like a single Meru in BS as well (also nice because we really care about HQ safety, and it’s a str4 for 2), so I switched that up as well.

20

I played a game of this and it’s not too shabby. It has the same things going on as mushin-grid, i.e., more speedy rushing power but less consistency and more dependence on draw sequence (compared to bootcamp). All told I think mushin-grid has a slight edge on this because of GFI, but caprice definitely has her own upsides. Caprice+Crisium+OTG is so watertight that once you assemble it you don’t even need to bounce your OTG between scores; you just need to worry about losing on RD.

I replaced govt takeover with 3 oaktowns because I think rushing oaktown (the normal way) is good no matter what weyland build you are playing, and I think you also need to play 2 copies of dedication. I cut the 3rd restructure and 2 of the 4 recursion operations to make those deck slots. I also added a CVS in place of the 17th ice but that seems optional.

I’m still gonna play bootcamp for SCs, of course, but I do love me some combo every so often. Nice work.

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