NEITHER! My goofy Argus control deck rarely has more than 4-5 ice on the board. It doesn’t glacier up so much as it just sits there like a spider waiting for tasty runners to trap themselves in its web. This is generally as fast or as slow as the runner themselves, although I can score out fast enough to beat big dig nonsense.
I cut to one in my Argus, and it still puts in serious work. At first I worried it would be a dead card against crim/shaper, but I’ve started popping it much more aggressively when I see a broke runner has a full hand. First turn Hedge Fund into Invasion of Privacy play against Andy is hilarious, fun, and sometimes actually devastating (this is even better if you can Sweeps Week into IoP!). Depending on your econ, it can also act as a fourth Scorch in hand against stupid Utopia Shard.
I’ve always been of the school of thought that if you pack enough barriers, Clone Chips can’t always be used to get SMCs back. Thinking here from an oldschool Weyland player standpoint, but a Hive alone is 3 Lady counters, so a barrier + a destroyer remote with a few things dropped behind it will burn out a deck with weak recursion like Blitz Kate pretty quick.
the issue with weyland rush is scoring the last agenda or two, and hive doesn’t help there. a 3/1 that trashed a program upon scoring might be kinda cool (but probably still crap cause ya know 3/1)
So after playing some games at my LGS over the past few days, Valley Grid seems absolutely amazing in any kind of glacier deck running Ash/Caprice/Nisei Mk2 shenanigans. All you need is a 3 deep scoring remote with all ETR ICE and they get one chance to get in, which is either rough (Caprice/Ash), or downright impossible if you have a scored Nisei. The only really guaranteed counterplay is handsize increasers, but I have yet to really see anyone running those…maybe once Chrome City hits?
I feel as runners keep getting better at just managing to get through all the ICE on a server, effects like Caprice and Valley Grid become more and more important, as they present a problem that the runner cannot solve purely by a stack of credits and a full rig.
my favorite deck ive seen recently is the HB streetcar deck sasha friedman played to win the team covenant store championship.
lots of interesting things going on, tech answers for virus digs, clot and denial decks, weird fluctuating strength IQs, random archers and Fast advance all backed by the powerful ID ability of ETF.
in a weird way i think now is the perfect time to play fast advance lol. you make the runner show you clot and not let them get the benefit of clot without having to make the influence/ card slot cuts to include it. a lot of runners from what ive seen dont have it yet the corps are all glacier in reaction to it.
