The Blue Sun Supermodernism Deck Thread

Decklists
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So, I figured it would be interesting to discuss ways of playing Blue Sun that aren’t Vegan, but aren’t degenerate kill decks (looking at you, Goverment Takeover!). Haven’t seen much discussion of it on here, despite its prominent placings at UK Nats (4th and 10th), and at several UK regionals (2nd in Manchester, 5th in Edinburgh). Yup, I’m talking about Blue Sun Scorch N’ Score!

The primary win condition of the deck si to win by scoring out. You use Blue Sun’s ability to make money from Oversight, as well as, more importantly, repositioning your ice to servers that need protecting (e.g. shifting lotus field against anarchs). The kill threat is there because it keeps the runner honest, and because it’s one of the best gearchecks in netrunner; why take the risk of insta-losing the game when you’re 3 points ahead? Just let the corp score their damn Fracking.

My observations are:

  1. It’s not forgiving. I’ve seen people take it and crash and burn horrifically with it. You absolutely need to know what the fuck you are doing with the damn deck, and, more importantly, what your opponent is trying to do with their damn deck, or you can get horrifically punished and brutally exploit that, e.g. by stacking barriers on your scoring server against Prepaid kate, or taxing her recursion, or by abusing the hell out of lotus field against Anarch before they have a Net Ready Eyes out. It’s about taking calculated risks - sometimes they will not pay off. Other times, you’ve just set up a beautiful Midseasons trap.
  2. Taxing the Runner is the name of the game. You need ice that is annoying and obnoxious to facecheck, and particularly ice that drains creds. Datapike, tollbooth and Caduceus all do this, but you also need ice that taxes the runner’s recursion, e.g. lots of multi-subroutine barriers to fuck up Kate.
  3. This deck scores, and it scores quickly. This deck particularly likes pushing non-overadvanced Atlases. The easiest and best way to make the runner make a mistake is to force them into runs by pushing agendas aggressively. Hostiles are amazing as late game scores when the runner has pretty much all icebreaker and can get in to your scoring server
  4. No Traps. Traps are for sissies, and you really don’t have space for them (16/17 ice is already quite low, and I’m trying to find ways of going up to 18ish without compromising hate cards. It’s about the closest to honest-man Netrunner as you get. When I install-advance-advance something, it almost certainly is an agenda (Seamus’s deck, on the other hand… might not be)
  5. You run relatively low on ice (16/17 ice, due to . Parasite is therefore a bit of a problem, and you have to be careful not to lose things to it for no good reason.
  6. Against Cautious runners, you can probably outmoney them for long enough in the early game to get your money engine (Frackings etc.)/Scorch threat up

Sample Lists are here:

I’ll give a quick breakdown of my Nats list (10th place)

  • Agenda Spread:
    3 Hostiles. Hostiles are gold. They give you money early on, and late game, they’re amazing at closing out the game.
    3 Atlases. Find your scorches. Find your agendas. Find your narrow hate cards. Score as Blank 3/2s and make the runner paranoid! Amazing all the time, everytime!
    3 Geothermal Frackings, The instant 7 cred boost is amazing for getting a Midseasons lead on your opponent. I have, in the past, bounced a curtain wall, fracked twice, and then landed a huge midseasons on an opponent who thought he was safe because he had a 20 cred lead on me after coming in and stealing a Hostile takeover.
    1 Corporate War. Was good. Now likely to be an Oaktown Renovation Instead.
    1 The Cleaners. It’s a good card. Turning the scorch back on is nice, but it’s hard to score, and losing it is horrible.

Assets
1 Adonis Campaign. A slightly iffier card in this deck (because you’re trying to go quickly). Probably better as a tollbooth
1 Executive Bootcamp. Search for Jacksons, and, more importantly, search for lizzies. Also narrow Val hate.
3 Jackson Howard. Do I really have to explain why the hell he’s in here?
2 Elizabeth Mills. The Bad Pub from the Hostiles will kill you in the long run, and she removes it for you. She also allows you to frack for money, which is hilarious, and she can also serve as a psuedo-atlas in a scoring server. She also fucks up noise. Noise doesn’t like running, and he’s never going to use the bad pub you’re going to give him by you blowing up his Aesop.

Upgrade
1 Crisium Grid: Account Siphon hate. You want to lightly defend HQ (Ice goes mostly on the remote and R&D), so you really don’t want nasty nasty things like Siphon and Wanton hitting.

Operations
3 Hedge Fund.
3 Restructure. Self Explanatory
3 Oversight AI. This + Curtain Wall is stupid
3 Scorched Earth. The kill is probably what makes the deck. The threat of the kill stops the runner from just running everywhere early on and applaying pressure. This puts a stop to that.
1 SEA Soruce. Gets you the Tag you need.
1 Midseason Replacements. This is clutch. Midseasons is an absolutely incredible card, It allows you to set up for a triple-scorch, and means you don’t need the whole kill combo + cred lead at once when you fire it off. It also, in the meantime, fucks up the runner’s economy bad, especially if they try to clear those tags to stop a firey death.

Barriers

1x Changeling ← Prepaid Kate hate, from before when everyone was running Suckers. Less good now that NRE is a thing and suckers are back in fashion.
3x Curtain Wall ← Oversight targets + PPKate and Anarch hate. This thing costs 11 to break thourgh every time with a corroder, taxes 2 lady counters, and burns through a whole david if it’s in front. Second one is less good against crim and Anarch, but taxes even more lady counters
1x Ice Wall ← cheap gearcheck. Good for scoring things behind.
1x Meru Mati ← Cheap gearcheck. Good for hiding stuff in HQ behind.

Code Gate

2x Datapike ← Punishing Facecheck.
2x Lotus Field •• ← Anti-Yog funtimes. Also good against people who aren’t running Cycy. You can bounce these around to annoy peopel running CyCy. Not as good now that NRE is a thing.
1x Tollbooth •• ← Best ice in the game. Would love to run more of em’, but don’t have the inf

Sentry

1x Archer ← Everyone forgets this little puppy exists. You definitely don’t feel bad saccing hostiles to this to wreck a runner’s rig. I’ve even sacced an Atlas to this once, when the runner thought he was safe, because, hey, who on earth sacs atlases to fuel Archer?
2x Caduceus ← Punishing faceheck, especially for MaxX
1x Grim ← It’s still very good, and hard for PPK to deal with repeatedly. Lizzy takes care of the downside
1x Taurus ← Like Grim, but also fucks up Plascrete.

7 Likes
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I’m a strictly Vegan Blue Sun player myself (ALL THE TRASHING, currently) so this might be a bit off base, but you say yourself that the cleaners getting stolen is horrible, so why not go -1 Cleaners -1 Corp War -1 Hostile +3 Oaktown?

You absolutely positively definitely want 3 Oaktown even if you don’t want to swap out the Hostile/Cleaners, so in that case you should dump 2 Fracking and the Corp War for them. It’s a crazy strong agenda and the best card Weyland have been given in a long long time (better than the entire deluxe by no small distance!) The fact that you get the money while scoring it rather than after easily allows turn 3-4 scores when the runner is nowhere near prepared and it seems even stronger in a taxing kill deck where you can taunt runners with a faceup agenda they know they can’t steal without a fiery death.

is 2 Liz mills really necessary? you already have a Bootcamp to find her, and an extra slot for a 2nd Crisium, Power Shutdown or another ice would seem like a pretty big deal. Power Shutdown would always be my choice but I’m a sucker for program trashing, a 2nd Changeling might be better because it still forces the Sucker/NRE install which is one more gear check, and getting those suckers can be a pain against BS.

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Love Supermodernism, love this writeup!

Seeing as Hive is probably the best possible rush ice in the game, why not include three of those?

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If you are intent on a supermodernism style, have you tried it in Titan? I gaurantee it will be faster and it’s easier to have biotic as a closer. What is it about Blue Sun that makes the deck better / changes matchups? Or is it just the parasite resistance?

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I’ve tried Supermodernism in Titan and it’s horrible. In theory it’s faster, but you need the big taxing Ice pieces nowadays to slow down the runner enough, which Titan is 90% of the time too poor to rez.

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Needs more Posted Bounty. I played variants of Timmy’s Lanri deck from last year’s Worlds until this year’s Regionals season, before I eventually converted to full on vegan Boot Camp. My last Scorch build was somewhat of a hybrid between the two, you can see the last iteration here.

While the early game with my Blue Sun build often played similar to Supermodernism - where rushing out an over-advanced Atlas is your top priority, as opposed to Boot Camp’s tendency to turtle and set up for the long game - it really was built completely differently and I’m not sure even the build and playstyle you’re talking about here really match up with Supermodernism. I think a pure Supermodernism build is going to be much more inclined to go for over-advanced Atlases and something like Oaktown Renovation, Underway Renovation, or Posted Bounty to get the Runner to hit a remote server and force the Midseason vulnerability. Also, Hive is one of the most efficient pieces of ice in the early game, I think it’s crazy to not include it in a rush deck - particularly Blue Sun which mitigates Hive’s weakness in the late game.

The Hostile/Geothermal builds (classic Supermodernism includes) are absolutely hosed if the game gets past the early game, because Runners can run your servers for free once they get set up, courtesy of your Bad Publicity. Supermodernism’s way around this relied on resetting the game state via Archer and Grim. It didn’t matter how much free money you had if you didn’t have a full breaker suite. The fact that Runners these days have D4v1d, Sharpshooter, or Faerie as auto-includes in their respective factions means you can’t reliably wipe the Runner’s rig any more. I got so tired of seeing my destroyers as wasted deck slots that I cut them entirely. Without a way of forcing a reset to the early game, that means either you need a method to remove your Bad Publicity in-game (thus wasting the efficiency of the cards granting it in the first place) or you just need to cut the cards that give you Bad Publicity.

Of course, you follow this line of thought long enough, and you end up like me… playing Boot Camp Glacier instead of a scorch build. It does seem like the Edinburgh player was following my line of thought though, with the bad pub cards cut and no destroyers.

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Hive is really bad for rush. Scoring your first agenda is usually pretty trivial, it’s the last one that’s hard, and the quicker you’re scoring the quicker Hive is losing value.

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Fantastic thread! Some of the best corp times I had was with Blue Sun pre-I’ve Had Worse. So much murder. I actually sleeved this up last night, to give some new green cards a shot–looking forward to playing this at weekly Netrunner tonight, will report back.

Blue Sun: Powering the Future (Up and Over)

Agenda (11)
2x Hostile Takeover (Core Set)
1x NAPD Contract (Double Time)
3x Oaktown Renovation (Chrome City)
1x Posted Bounty (Core Set)
3x Project Atlas (What Lies Ahead)
1x The Cleaners (Second Thoughts)

Asset (5)
1x Contract Killer (The Underway)
1x Elizabeth Mills (Second Thoughts)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves)

Upgrade (2)
1x Ash 2X3ZB9CY (What Lies Ahead)
1x Crisium Grid (First Contact)

Operation (14)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
1x Midseason Replacements (Future Proof)
3x Oversight AI (A Study in Static)
2x Restructure (Second Thoughts)
3x Scorched Earth (Core Set)
1x SEA Source (Core Set)
1x Subliminal Messaging (Fear and Loathing)

Barrier (7)
3x Curtain Wall (True Colors)
2x Hive (Double Time)
2x Spiderweb (The Underway)

Code Gate (3)
1x Checkpoint (Order and Chaos)
2x Tollbooth (Core Set)

Sentry (7)
1x Archer (Core Set)
3x Caduceus (What Lies Ahead)
2x Errand Boy (The Source)
1x Taurus i[/i]
15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

1 Like
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I’ve tried it a bunch of times as Titan too, without much success (though I’m a pretty terrible Weyland players). Basically, I feel like Blue Sun can go nearly broke stopping the runner taking an agenda (rezzing a Tollbooth on a remote, for instance) and still be able to threaten a SEA/SE/SE kill by picking it up next turn. All of their money (just about) stays in the game, and that really lets them bully the runner.

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Yep. Blue Sun is pretty much only good Weyland ID. I recently tried a Core Weyland rushy scorch build and was reminded of all the old problems, and why Blue Sun is (sadly) leagues beyond any other green ID.

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Yes, I’ve played Seamus a bunch of times (finally managed to squeak out a win on the day at Nationals), he’s killed me many a time with a double advanced posted bounty into double scorch (on one memorable occasion, I think, a never advanced posted bounty into a triple scorched, denying me a GNK win).

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You could be right, I found the Titan deck I built one fo the hardest to play I’d ever tried. I just worry that with cards like david and muertos, blue suns economy is only getting less reliable.

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I won a couple games in double-elim during Store Championship season this year (when I didn’t have 2-3 copies of Scorch in hand yet) by slow rolling a Posted Bounty and letting it sit on four counters. Runners tend to convince themselves its a failed trap and leave it alone. Because why would anyone over-advance a Posted Bounty? :smile:

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Muertos gang is really good against Blue Sun’s #1 wish of turn 1 or 2 OAI/Curtain Wall, I discovered playing it one game. The card itself is awkward though, and might not see much play. Plus you have pretty good game vs Criminal to begin with. David is the bigger worry still.

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While this is definitely true, it’s still the best early game ICE Blue Sun has. I mean, Changeling or Ice Wall lose their value a lot quicker in this Atman4/Lady/Corroder/NRE meta nowadays. At least with Hive you get to recoup some money still. Spiderweb seems like a good compromise between the two also.

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The thing I hate about Spiderweb is that against people with Datasuckers, it dies very fast to Parasite, which is already a problem that Datapike has. I absolutely love the fact that it taxes 2 Lady counters, though. It’s not a bad card, but due to the Parasite weakness, it’s a fairly hard include these days.

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Oh right, forgot I had this laying around. For the visual learners out there (I know, I’m one), this is the ideal no-win scenario you’re trying to pose to the runner with Blue Sun, Posted Bounty, Midseason, and Scorch:

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I like the idea of “overloading” Parasites with targets. Errand Boy and Spiderweb would be involved here, as well as splashed Pups or Pop-ups. This is an idea for a suboptimal (non blue sun) ID though.

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I’ve been thinking about trying supermodernism out again since oaktown came out. That agenda is amazing and I just wish there was a good deck where 3x of it could find a home (since it’s not bootcamp glacier). Comparing blue sun to butcher shop I think it falls quite a bit short, especially on its kate matchup, but it’s maybe only 1 or 2 good support cards away from being good. Some thoughts:

Midseason is necessary, both because SEA source is way easier to play around (it needs 6 extra creds to play the scorches on the same turn) and because people should already have plascretes in a butcher shop heavy meta. Probably slot 1x or 2x traffic accident as well. I can see playing SEA source alongside it “just in case” but it’s pretty marginal and I’d rather have another tollbooth.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone actually use the bonus from the cleaners. The more I look at it the more that ability looks really incongruous on a 5/3. High risk or even GoCo is the clear better choice to me. (I very nearly lost a game against 6-agenda argus in rochester because I let a GoCo get scored and couldn’t win the credit race even with 3 voicepads.)

To beat kate, the deck needs a way to punish her for not coming into the remote. It’s impossible to break her late-game remote lock, but she can only set that up efficiently and quickly if she makes a few tough calls in the early game by letting the first 1 or 2 agendas get scored. Posted bounty, for example, but you can’t really play more than 2 of those (not to mention how much worse it is than breaking news) so there needs to be another similar threat.

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I played GRNDL Supermodernism at the Chicago regional.

1-5 against Anarchs and a Leela. It had a pretty good time against Kate in testing, but I never saw her in the tourney.

Tread carefully. I think Astrobiotics is just strictly better for punishing slow runners.

1 Like