My fault for not icing R&D. I could have dodged the Siphon (had assets on the table).
Yeah, it seems like every time I’m like “Hey, I can get away with not ICEing R&D just this once…” I get punished in the harshest way imaginable. Glad to know it’s not just me =)
Ended up second at Gamer’s Gambit, CT (23 players). Dropped an elimination game to @SimonMoon, who played extremely well, taking advantage of all of my mistakes. Eventually elim was decided by weak performance of my runner versus RP.
One more SC to go … so far I’m 4th, 5th, and 2nd 
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Forgot to mention, in the Swiss game versus @simonmoon I won via Government Takeover. Behind a Quandary.
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Mah only loss to government takeover.
I think quandary will go on recOrd as the cheapest ice that get has been scored behind
Merger seems like a possibly good card for Gagarin, since it can pretend to be an asset that’s not worth running at until it is scored
surely this didn’t happen for lack of being able to break quandary… cannot imagine any reasonable list of any faction that couldn’t find an answer in 2 or 3 turns
I think I’m going to challenge that notion, and use pop up window behind akitaro. Achievement soon to be unlocked.
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Wait for Vanilla.
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I can guarantee you he had zero ways to break Quandary. I hard locked him with Blacklist and he had nothing left (he was piloting parasite MaxX).
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For bonus points, rez the Akitaro with Breaker Bay Grid.
edit: i actually had something more to say
Took Gagarin with Mumba Temple to a small store champ yesterday - didn’t do great, but did find Mumba Temple to do lots of work. Most of the time it was trashed on sight, even if PADs and such were being left on the board - so people definitely see it as a strong threat.
Also getting a Corporate Town to stick is pretty much a negative play experience for your opponent. I felt pretty bad (and by that, I mean I was playing Weyland after all, so I felt real good.)
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That’s a good description of how I play the deck. It’s all about rezzing the right asset and getting it to stick. Versus Noise and MaxX, that asset is Blacklist. Versus Crim and good-stuff Anarch, it’s Corporate Town. Versus Shaper, depends on their exact build and board position.
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For everything else there is IT department?
But that would probably require more ICE than you are running right now.
He says completely seriously.
But how can I brag about scoring government takeover with vanilla? I may as well use paper wall.
The problem with ITD is that it’s very slow. You need a ridiculous amount of counters (10+) plus multi-sub ice to get anything done.
Corp town is also very slow due to the necessity of having either a scored agenda OR a public support.
Scoring an agenda requires either giving up a bad pub and a turn of clicking or (usually) a turn of clicking and a handful of credits.
I am not really saying its the best of the “trinity” of lock out cards, especially in a meta rife with D4v1D, but on the other hand it allows you to make any piece of ice a huge Faust tax. It fills a niche that might be worth exploring in a gagarin deck, especially as Hive and Spiderweb benefit so much from a decently charged up IT department.
I was simply inspired by the discussion of Blacklist and Corp Town as “lock out” or “control” cards. In the right match ups, Blacklist and Corp Town destroy your opponent. I feel like IT department is much the same.
It you have to just keep investing in, though. It eats turns alive, and TONS of them. Sure, Corp Town is slow, but I have yet to see a corp card slower than what IT department requires.
And IT’s click investment isn’t to be understated. It sucks.
But usually Corp Town isn’t game ruining until the third+ turn it has been in effect. Before then,most resource reliant runners will at least have some utility and likely have another copy somewhere in their deck. It is only when the asset is untouchable or out for long enough that it becomes truly oppressive.
It has a huge benefit over IT that it is also passive, rather than active.
Added to the fact that you have to have a scored agenda/public sympathy and you are getting closer to the realm of investment that is required for IT to be “worth it”.
But I just can’t help but also feel that the trinity of control assets available are simply oppressive. Especially post Museum of History. To make matters worse, it is in faction with Hive, which will allow you a degree of security for charging IT and World’s Plaza, which will let you condense your super assets into one server for protection.
Its something I plan on pursing in the background, but its probably a bust.
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So, how are people feeling about putting this in a 54-card Gagarin deck?
I played a couple of games with it at our casual meetup last night, and found it to be an interesting experience.
On the plus side, if you get one down early, you can just start shuffling Hedge funds back in for fun. And if you’re casual about it, you may be able to sneak agendas into Archives and shuffle them back in without having to sacrifice a Jacko. Which is super nice.
On the downside, it’s extra hard to get any particular card you want with any consistency - any 1-ofs in your deck may as well not be there for how likely you are to draw them. Buuuut with enough decent-to-useful assets in your deck you can pretty much create 2 to 3 remotes per turn with stuff like PADs and Mumba Temples (yes, 15 ice in a 54 card deck too 
) and you should be able to sneak out an agenda or two pretty quickly, without falling behind economically. I’m considering going up to 3x The Future Is Now - which does double duty here by helping you pull your SEA/Scorches (if you’re playing murder) or your 1-ofs (if you’re not) and turning on Archer/Corptown etc.
I went the opposite direction, dropping Team Sponsorships and Future is Now to enable a smaller agenda density at 54 cards.
Only had a few games so far, but I am really enjoying Museums in this build so far. Puts the hurt on Noise’s ability and basically means you won’t deck out. Recycling ICE, Assets and economy will keep you going for a long time.