I know what your reaction is going to be when you see the list. Something along the lines of “what is this garbage, and how does it ever beat X?” I’ve gotten plenty of that already. But trust me when I say this is a real deck - probably too weird for Tier 1, but definitely worthy of Tier 2.
Introducing…
Milquetoast
Cerebral Imaging: Infinite Frontiers
Agenda (8)
1x Domestic Sleepers
1x Hades Fragment
3x Priority Requisition
3x Project Wotan
Asset (3)
3x Jackson Howard •••
Upgrade (1)
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite
Operation (28)
1x Accelerated Diagnostics
3x Archived Memories
3x Biotic Labor
3x Blue Level Clearance
3x Green Level Clearance
3x Hedge Fund
3x Punitive Counterstrike ••••• •
1x Reclamation Order
3x Restructure
1x Snatch and Grab
1x Subliminal Messaging
3x Targeted Marketing •••
ICE (9)
2x Chimera
3x Eli 1.0
1x IQ
3x Merlin •••
15 influence spent (max 15) •••••••••••••••
21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Order and Chaos
Like most Cerebral Imaging decks, the strategy is simple: gain credits, draw cards, keep the runner from disrupting you. But unlike many of the Power Shutdown decks, drawing cards and making credits is the way you win - whether by getting a dominating credit advantage that lets you Punitive Counterstrike the runner out of the game, or by getting enough credits to triple Biotic Labor out two 5/3 agendas, topped off by your Domestic Sleepers. (For the low, low price of 37 credits!)
Thus, unlike many traditional CI combo decks, you have to run very few “useless” cards like Shipments, Scorched Earths, Accelerated Diagnostics, and even Power Shutdown itself. Your deep concentration of money cards makes you much stronger against typical disruption, like Account Siphon. Your win condition is influence-cheap, letting you add in lots of extra tricks and safety nets. Furthermore, you can run a very austere agenda package that forces your opponent to take almost half the agendas in your deck to win. This puts your opponent in a bind, as the more they spend time checking your central servers, the less time they spend building up the infrastructure necessary to make a sufficiently massive play later on. In practice, few decks have shown the economic aptitude to match your unceasing consumption of cards and credits.
Card Choices:
Agendas
1x Hades Fragment
3x Priority Requisition
3x Project Wotan
1x Domestic Sleepers
Getting the mediocre part out of the way first. HB as a faction has many advantages, but they have really lackluster 5/3 agendas. Since Utopia Fragment and Eden Fragment are worthless when you aren’t building a scoring server, this is what we get. To be fair, none of these agendas is worthless - Hades Fragment is great insurance against Noise, among others; Priority Requisition occasionally gives you a free gigantic IQ; and Project Wotan lets Eli eat up tons of Lady counters. But you’re playing them for the points.
Only one Domestic Sleepers, meanwhile, because space is tight, you’re only going to score one anyway, and you want to minimize the odds that the Runner will steal it and see a fresh card in R&D. You could maybe play extra with Archers in the deck, but… nah, don’t do that.
Win Conditions
3x Punitive Counterstrike
3x Biotic Labor
1x Accelerated Diagnostics
Yes, yes, the deck plays Diagnostics. But it’s only 1 copy, and no Power Shutdowns, so I still get to keep my dignity. Instead, you draw up your entire deck with Jackson Howard and use it in conjunction with Jackson to play three Biotics to get 8 clicks in one turn - enough to FA a 5/3, plus play the Jackson, plus play a Cyberdex for Clot security.
Credits & Cards
3x Hedge Fund
3x Restructure
3x Green Level Clearance
3x Blue Level Clearance
1x Subliminal Messaging
3x Jackson Howard
HB may not have a Celebrity Gift-level economy card, but what the Clearances lack in flashiness they make up for with workhorse efficiency. Since this deck is far less reliant on Jackson Howard for anything other than drawing cards, I’m often willing to let the runner trash him, which just makes Punitive Counterstrike that much easier later on, and I can always get him back anyway.
Rebuys
3x Archived Memories
1x Reclamation Order
Plus Jackson, of course. Archived Memories is the secret MVP of the deck. Its most obvious use is as a second Punitive Counterstrike, but it’s also great at providing extra copies of Reclamation Order, Jackson Howard, Snatch and Grab, Cyberdex Virus Suite, or even just a Restructure. Reclamation Order is almost always used to buy back three economy cards, though it can go grab a set of Biotic Labors in a pinch.
Disruption
3x Targeted Marketing
1x Snatch and Grab
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite
I wrote a long review of Targeted Marketing on NRDB, but the short version is - don’t think of TM as a money-maker; think of it as a tempo-maker. More often, you want to pick a card such that your opponent will hold off playing something important, thereby buying you enough time to get out of range of a really painful Account Siphon, Legwork, or the like. Oftentimes, I just pick a key money card, rather than something more overtly threatening, on the theory that it’ll slow them down more. Snatch and Grab is obviously for Kati and Aesop’s, and Cyberdex Virus suite is obviously for Clot (though it also sometimes does double-duty against Datasuckers and/or Mediums).
ICE
3x Eli
3x Merlin
1x IQ
2x Chimera
This is where you really can customize to suit your taste the most. For example, if you feel naked without at least 12 ice, you could definitely cut the Targeted Marketings for more. But I’ve found this to be a nice mix in the current metagame. Usually in the early game, what you want is less a particular piece of ice (though Eli is always welcome) than the threat of ice itself, to keep the runner from freely deploying cards like Account Siphon.
Other than Eli, all the other ice in this setup plays a specific role later in the game. Chimera is a pain for Criminals, who often don’t want to have to set up a full package and seem to be eschewing Parasite fairly frequently these days. Merlin (in addition to giving value to extra copies clogging HQ) is often more than Anarchs can handle unseen, and though rarely lethal is great at taking out I’ve Had Worse. And IQ is brutally expensive to break (imagine a 20 strength Code Gate!), and Shapers seem to frequently be missing its key vulnerabilities (D4v1d, Femme Fatale, and Inside Job). But if, say, you can’t handle an ice package without Caduceus, well, go nuts.
To summarize matchups briefly: the deck has shown itself to easily beat decks with slow or unreliable economies, especially Anarchs (though the Headlock matchup is only somewhat favored, since Lamprey can even the odds); Criminals can often be beaten if you ferociously protect against Account Siphons (or at least make them unprofitable for the Runner, or cover them with Targeted Marketing); Shaper decks that don’t run Magnum Opus are easy, while MOpus decks can sometimes keep pace enough to require you to diversify your approach; and PPVP Kate is even-to-somewhat-unfavorable (depending on relative skill), since they have both the fastest runner economy and a large concentration of multi-access cards that can take your agendas in those critical first few turns if you get unlucky. It’s because of PPVP Kate that I wouldn’t put this deck in Tier 1, naturally, but believe me, I’ve had really excellent results against the rest of the field.
To quote another thread: Try it out, tell me what you think. Just be warned that it really isn’t fun to play against.