I was thinking about trying Slee in Jinteki; maybe a slightly icier-than-usual IG (to drive up the trash cost) with HI to discourage the trash. You have ice with subs that the runner doesn’t always bother breaking (Pup, Aiki’s psi game, Swordsman’s trash if they have no AI), but it seems like it would be a slow build. You do have cards like bio-ethics and neural EMP to help round out the kill, and it splits your damage between two types to make it harder for the runner to defend against.
That said, my limited experience with Slee has been that, if a runner is paying attention, her true value is not in firing, but in forcing the runner to address her. They either have to break weak/dead subs on high-strength ice (e.g. Data Ward, Ichi with no programs installed), pay through multi-sub ETR ice they’d normally just bounce off of (e.g. Hive), or break through one or two ice to trash her (potentially opening a socring window in the very same server she was hiding in).
I haven’t gotten Slee to fire against good runners at all yet, however she has had great value a couple times in keeping the runner from just farming Turning Wheel counters against Hives and Tour Guides. She also does represent a threat that the runner usually needs to deal with sooner or later, which I appreciate as well.
I believe Slee will fire in the Jinteki plot, using Susanoo and Excalibur in combination with RP and Caprice. Maybe a few Nisei Mk 2s and Komainu as well as with Tour Guide. Hell even Ashigaru is in faction.
I’m not seeing it happen often, especially not with Susanoo or Excalibur. Sure, the runner’s probably not breaking either of those immediately, but when you Rez Slee and put one counter on it, the runner isn’t going to make more runs all willy nilly without dealing with it. At this point you might think "good, now I can use the runner being passive as a way to start scoring, except now you need to protect 2 remotes as well centrals.
Komainu is kinda funny, but if the runner is running against Jinteki without something that makes them safe vs sentries, you’re probably winning that game anyhow.
I tried Excalibur. While it did get me counters, I rarely got me the fifth counter. Most of my Weyland ICE was 3 subs. Ashigaru was something I kept forgetting to try over DNA Tracker, though.
Took down a 15 player SC with Blue Sun today. Only loss was in winners finals when Geist got the best hand he could. Blue Sun feels really strong in the current meta.
Tis The Season (1st Place Eternal Games SC)
Blue Sun: Powering the Future
Agenda (9)
1x Corporate Sales Team
2x Global Food Initiative ●●
3x Oaktown Renovation
3x Project Atlas
Asset (3)
3x Jackson Howard ●●●
Upgrade (1)
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite
Operation (20)
3x BOOM!
1x Best Defence
3x Consulting Visit
3x Hedge Fund
1x Midseason Replacements ●●●●
3x Oversight AI
3x Restructure
2x Scarcity of Resources
1x Snatch and Grab
Mostly it’s kill, but against some people you score out. People who know your plan won’t run against agendas a lot of the time unless they’re desperate, which can lead to score outs. Some decks (like Nexus) have weak early games but a late game that the deck struggles to beat, so you need to score out against them, or at least force them to not get set up so you can land the kill.
Yea, I ran into a couple high link / NACH / Film Critic types and those were losses. Not experienced with the deck either, so I am sure my play was far from optimal.
NACH is irrelevant against this deck. Midseasons is the only thing that tags and if they want to pay 2 to avoid a tag as compared to 1, that’s up to them. Otherwise you just have to apply fast pressure.
S&G is for Film Critic and Kati. Best Defence hits Security Testing, SMC, NRE, Street Peddler, SOT and more when they’re on 0 tags, and once they’re tagged it hits Plascrete, Obelus, or whatever else you need it to kill to win you the game.
Edit: Ah, I missed that I hadn’t updated it yet. It’s -1 Scorched and +1 Best Defence over what I had posted
Curfew helps most against IHW and Hopper for Scorch decks. For BOOM!, it doesn’t do much - can’t help kill through one plascrete, and double boom still kills through 2 plascretes.
It’s a really funny influence-free way to finish the kill in Brainstorm Blue Sun.
I feel like corp currents, especially from Weyland have to be used more reactively to turn off runner currents right now. It may be useful just by being 0 cost in that regard.