Influence is tight with Batty.Does Roto replace Blacklist?
I’m still durdling around with a rush/destroyer deck running batty/grim/archer/shutdown, and that deck likes both blacklist and howard.
Been doing some of my own testing, and I honestly feel that all 3 D&D neutrals have helped boost Blue Sun immensely. Let’s go over:
-Assassin is an influence-free, massively spiky naked facecheck ice, something that Weyland has historically struggled with without having to resort to things like Tollbooth. If the 3 net sub actually gets to fire, that’s a massive setback to the runner, and might prematurely pop some of the IHW they might have been camping. Sure they can just pay through the trace, but that’s still just breaking even with 1 link (the less said about that one game I had with Sunny, the better). All the better to Scorch them with, right?
-GFI. I wasn’t very convinced about this card until I started playing with it, but now I’m about 80% sold. Now you get to play with a 5/3 that doesn’t practically lose you the game when they steal it! No more do you get stuck in a position where you score, like, Atlas/Oaktown/Hostile with another agenda in the remote… but with an unrezzed Archer over it, and they’ve stolen that last Hostile. Yeah, it costs influence, but that’s why you play…
-Launch Campaign sweet Jackson this card is so good. It’s been so long since anyone played Blue Sun at my LGS, so when I go ‘end turn rez, net gain 1’, they get this slightly puzzled look on their face, which quickly turns into dawning realization at the next turn’s ‘take money and bounce, net 3?’. It’s influence-free! It’s spammable! It’s expendable! It’s Hedge Funds 4-6! With buyback! THIS CARD IS BLOODY BANANAS GUYS.
2 Likes
Yes but campaign doesn’t belong in a modernism/rush build. Assassin is surely worth consideration
Having a lot of fun with this build. It seems more flexible than other modernism builds I’ve tried and maintains tempo well. Idea for the deck came from being disappointed with Snare in older builds since it’s expensive to trigger, never seems to slow the runner down enough, and is dead in Archives. I replaced Snare with News Team since it’s a ridiculous card and functions similarly. You can bluff them as an Atlas in the scoring remote to bait a run, and they’re still active if you install over them or if Power Shutdown dumps them into Archives. News Team also lets you run 3 pointers and make the runner score 4 times to win since most runners opt to take -1 points.
No bad pub since it relies on Hunter to tax on centrals. Little Engine is for rushing behind, and you can pull it back once the runner can get through reliably. If you don’t find Little Engine early, hopefully you’re making money or scoring through Oversighted Orions. Assassin is really good against Siphon on HQ.
I don’t use Blue Sun’s ability much since you want to keep tempo. I mostly use it to reposition ice, stay out of credit holes, score Corporate War, etc.
Hollywood Renovations and Orions are kinda janky, but I’ve been happy with them. Hollywood functions similar to Oaktown, so you can score without losing tempo. Hilarious plays include scoring behind an advancing Orion or Changeling. At worst, you make Ice Walls on centrals more taxing. Sometimes it’s even worth it to sacrifice a Hollywood to gain 6 credits on Orion + tax the runner to get through it. High Risk Investment + Curtain Wall might be the safer choice, but I think Hollywood is better for rush.
This deck really wants to score 3 agendas to win. Not sure Orion is taxing enough to get to 4 scores, and it’s pretty bad against Lady and stealth. Orion + Little Engine might be good enough to keep Anarchs out of remotes, but I need to test this more.
Blue Sun: Powering the Future (Up and Over)
Agenda (9)
1x Corporate War (Future Proof)
2x Hollywood Renovation (Old Hollywood)
3x Oaktown Renovation (Chrome City)
3x Project Atlas (What Lies Ahead)
Asset (6)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) [color=#FF8C00]•••[/color]
3x News Team (Data and Destiny) [color=#FF8C00]••••• •[/color]
Upgrade (1)
1x Crisium Grid (First Contact)
Operation (17)
1x Fast Track (Honor and Profit)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
3x Oversight AI (A Study in Static)
3x Power Shutdown (Mala Tempora)
3x Restructure (Second Thoughts)
3x Scorched Earth (Core Set)
1x SEA Source (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]••[/color]
Barrier (4)
1x Changeling (Up and Over)
3x Ice Wall (Core Set)
Code Gate (3)
1x Enigma (Core Set)
2x Little Engine (Chrome City) [color=#FF8C00]••••[/color]
Sentry (6)
2x Assassin (Data and Destiny)
3x Hunter (Core Set)
1x Taurus i[/i]
Multi (3)
3x Orion (Order and Chaos)
15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Was meaning to post my deck for some time now, as I think it’s really good and going against what people expect.
It’s basically money, ice and agendas, as that’s what you need to score out quickly. The scorch package is 1x snare and SEA and 3x scorch. Old tech, but still works wonders. Either runners slow down to install plascrete or try to get a lot of money, or they risk loosing their house to an unfortunate accident. Biotic is there to close out the game by fast advancing an atlas when you’re a 5 points. Oaktown preserves your tempo, GFI is great, hostile is good as you want a short game so don’t care to much about bad pub.
No Jackson as agenda flood rarely happens when you have a deck with plenty of money and ice. Just start scoring behind (preferably) a 2 ice remote. Avoid clicking for a cred, better draw a card and ditch what you don’t need. This also means you’re more likely to draw into an OAI - curtain combo before the runner has an answer (D4V1D) to it. Even that exchange is ok, as you don’t need so much money.
When things go rough, the runner has some lucky steals, you couldn’t find your agendas quick enough, your remote is unsafe, you can go into glacier mode by putting a curtain wall over r&d while trying to draw into what you need (likely some fast advance agendas or biotic labour). Victory is harder now, but you still have fighting chance. And nothing feels better than having the runner plow through a tower of ice only to land on a snare.
Agenda Agenda (10)
2x Global Food Initiative ••
2x Hostile Takeover
3x Oaktown Renovation
3x Project Atlas
Asset Asset (1)
1x Snare! ••
Upgrade Upgrade (1)
1x Crisium Grid
Operation Operation (17)
1x Biotic Labor ••••
2x Blue Level Clearance ••••
3x Hedge Fund
3x Oversight AI
2x Restructure
3x Scorched Earth
1x SEA Source ••
2x Subliminal Messaging
Barrier Barrier (8)
3x Curtain Wall
1x Meru Mati
3x Spiderweb
1x Wall of Static
Code Gate Code Gate (5)
1x Datapike
2x Enigma
2x Wendigo
Sentry Sentry (5)
1x Assassin
3x Caduceus
1x Rototurret •
Other Other (2)
2x Chimera
Saying flood rarely happens is just bizarre, in 10-agenda decks it does happen a reasonable amount, and if you’re advising drawing cards instead of getting money, that’s just encouraging agendas to pool in your hand.
How’s your Noise match up? If they’re playing IHW I can see this list really struggling.
5 Likes
I define flood as having many agendas while lacking the means (ice / money) to score them. As my deck has plenty of ice and money, flood happens less.
I tried Jackson at first, when I draw him he’s either not needed or I just wished he was an ice. Drawing agendas too late is worse for this deck than drawing them too early.
Also hostile is scored easily, so it’s really only 8 agendas that could pile up.
You don’t want to slow down, so better to draw, the odds of getting ice and money are way better than the odds of drawing more agendas. First turn is either hedge / ice / ice (ideally) or draw / ice / something else (worst case). The ice goes where it’s needed most, depending on which ice it is, opposing faction, amount of agendas in hand, etc.
you can have all the money in the world but it wont save you from d4v1d, faust and legwork. Jackson is the most important corp card and in 99.9% of decks as a 3-of for a reason
3 Likes
There are, rather unfortunately a number of reasons why this deck is quite weak. Many of them come from the fundamental fact that weyland is quite weak right now, but some come from bad deckbuilding decisions.
Firstly, Jackson. 3 copies of him must be in any corp deck. It is mandatory. There is literally no questioning it. I know it’s sad, but it is true. Firstly, you will flood sometimes, even with low density (and I would argue that this deck isn’t really that low density anyway, it’s just a little below average). Secondly, noise is a big thing right now. As are anarchs in general. Noise mills will devastate this deck and you will simply lose as you have 0 recursion. Other anarchs are running fun cutlery or apocalypse decks. Same issue, you will simply explode and never be able to recover without any recursion.
Secondly, foodcoats is the only glacier style deck to have gained any real traction recently. Why? Because ash and caprice are great. This deck has neither of them. Given that you have no traps the second you advance anything the runner will simply go into your remote and take it.
Thirdly, Biotic will only really help you score out atlas from hand… normally you want atlas over advanced for the counters. The biotic is an odd and not that useful choice here, and only lets you fast advance 3 agendas.
Fourthly, with only 1 SEA source and 1 snare alongside 0 recursion you have at MAX 2 attempts to kill them before your kill plans isn’t viable. If plascrete comes out, you are done. If they have IHW in hand that is far FAR worse. You spend money and get 0 benefit.
Fifthly, the econ is super weak. If they get an early david and can stop OAI curtain you have only 5 econ cards in the entire deck… this is nowhere near enough. This problem us compounded by the lack of jackson to recycle OAIs and curtains.
Finally, the ICE isn’t really that taxing or that punishing to facecheck. Everyone is running David these days, and it eats curtain alive.
Sorry to come across quite negatively, but these are the problems I see with this deck. Right now Big W is in a bit of a crappy place, and this build exemplifies many of the current issues.
3 Likes
Honestly, no. Jackson is very good at making a rush deck lose slower. You need your agendas. Shuffling them back in can work in a glacier deck vs a runner who’s not prepared enough for the long game.
He’s kind of ok for the drawing effect, in theory. In practise, early game I ice up and get money, then I start scoring while bolstering my defence as needed. Would be hard to find the time to install him, and click him twice to break even tempo wise, without needing the remote again to score an agenda.
He’d be most useful to recuperate Noise-milled agendas. However Noise just tends to be a tad too slow and would need to be really lucky to mill enough agendas. Likewise Keyhole takes too long to setup, and I do have a crisium to defend vs funny stuff.
If things go well, I can score out by turn 7-8. In less perfect games and vs account syphon runners, things tend to be a bit grindier, and scoring out takes a few more turns.
Legwork is one of the more useless cards against this deck. D4V1D is one of the best, faust is dangerous but most of my ice requires at least 2 cards from him (even 3 for spiderweb). Often a scoring remote is curtain wall + 2 other ice. Good luck getting through each turn. Sure, you can have a D4V1D and the right breakers, but will you have another D4V1D the turn after? And there after?
Jackson is also the best card to find you agendas to score. He’s the best Corp card in the game, by such a huge margin its obscene.
1 Like
Ok, so I’m just going to point this out. You are wrong about Jackson. Entirely wrong. He is almost certainly the best corp card in the entire game. He is in literally EVERY deck that has won anything since he was released - go look at recent tournament results, he will be in every single deck regardless of faction or gameplan. You can either attempt to argue against this or you can sit down and have a real think about why this is the case so that you can become a better player.
If you are just going to insist that he shouldn’t be there then there isn’t much anything on this forum can say which will help you. There is a reason why some things are accepted wisdom, and I hope in time you can see why we are all arguing that he should be included!
3 Likes
I think you should count again some things.
Econ: 2 hostile (easy to score), 3 oaktown (helping while scoring), 3 hedge, 2 restructure, 2 blue level, 2 subliminal, 3 OAI (unreliable but works more often than not). Also Blue Sun gives parasite resistance and the ability to bounce ice (helping with the 10 cred requirement for restructure).
Ice that hurts to facecheck: 1 datapike, 2 enigma, 5 sentries. That’s a pretty normal suite in my eyes.
It’s not a glacier deck, but a rush deck. So I don’t really see the comparison with foodcoats
The biotic is there to win the game when I’m stuck at 5 points. When I’m able to get an early atlas token, I can find 1 missing element, 2 tokens is luxury
Snare has won me games, as runners get careles. Especially the Faust wielders . 1 SEA 3 scorch is really enough to keep the runner honest. Finding an anwer is for the runner a bigger tempo hit than including those cards is for me. When I have an atlas token, the runner has to respect the kill option.
I’ve been playing supermodernims without Jackson for a year now, Minotower’s points definitely have merit. A well built rush deck does not need Jackson to function as you rarely need to shuffle anything back in. Jackson isn’t the best card in the game for finding Agendas, fast track and atlas do a much better job in my experience. You can definitely play this archetype without it, although with Noise coming back into the meta in a big way it may be worth considering on that merit alone.
That said I would recommend a few changes to the list as it is right now:
-1 Wendigo, +1 Enigma. Drawing 2 Wendigos in a single game is pretty bad, Enigma is one of the best ICE in the deck.
-2 Blue Level Clearance: I don’t think your influence is best used improving your Econ. There’s room for another restructure here.
Use the influence for some amount of the following:
Jackson: If you’re worried about Noise
Wraparound: Good agains Faust decks
More snares: Helps protect centrals against deep dig, also good against Faust
2 Likes
As a dude who played a very similar style deck for around a year, I can tell you with certainty that Jackson makes the deck more consistent than no Jackson. Yeah, you don’t usually want to shuffle agendas in, but when you need to, you can, and there are certainly times you need to. If I have 2 Oaktown in hand and an Atlas and I’m not managing to make a server that’s worth a shit, a good runner is going to ferret them out in HQ once they see I haven’t been scoring anything for a few turns. Jackson saves that issue. Mind you, I’m still keeping at least 1 agenda, but Jackson’s going to find me better ICE to score behind, and he’s going to let me throw at least 1 agenda back while doing so. If I don’t have agendas in hand, Jackson can go out and find me more quickly. The key is using him correctly for the deck he’s in. He’s not just a tool for tossing agendas in the bin. I avoided him for a long time for similar reasons, and finally I bit the bullet and threw in a single copy for testing. Once I got him a couple times, I began to want to draw him more often, because he helped my game plan. 10 games later, I was on 3. Heck, I sometimes even just used him to recur econ. The dude’s a champ.
I’d honestly suggest going -1 Blue Level -1 Roto -1 Chimera (or Wendigo) +3 Jackson. Over 2 clicks, Blue Level gets you 3 credits and 2 cards, and over 2 clicks Jackson gets you 2 cards (installation included), so you’re really only losing out on 3 credits total (since you have no way to recur them at the moment), which shouldn’t be an issue for Blue Sun. I’d say ditch Roto because it has been ages since I’ve actually had a Roto install that I felt was worth it. Shapers just SMC for Mimic or Parasite, Criminals blow their Faerie til they find Mimic, and Anarch is the literal source of both Parasite and Mimic. Besides, you’re on 20 ICE, which is super high for a rush deck. I’d say ditch Chimera or Wendigo just because you’re high on ICE and they’re the worst you have in your list. (Chimera because Anarch is everywhere and it’ll just die, and Wendigo because it is only good outside of something else).
1 Like
I’m not denying Jackson is a good card, I’m just saying that I tried him and found him lacking here. Tournament winners are either glacier decks or fast advance, and he’s obviously pretty good here.
Also, when looking at runner decks these days, it’s either a big rig with some cloth shenanigans, or some kind of ‘different’ deck, looking to abuse a card or combo (wyldside pancakes etc.)
By starting to score early (round 2-3), agendas get cleared out of hq and don’t pile up.
My first agenda gets through very often, as the runner often just isn’t ready to bust a 2 ice remote, doesn’t wants to set himself back too much or prefers to work on his own gameplan.
Second agenda goes in right behind the first if the window still seems open. If the runner lets me have, he’s going to be in bad shape. Alternatively, I install another ice, get some money, OAI a curtain, 1 turn delay at most.
From here on it’s just drawing cards, installing agendas, let the runner break himself on the remote.
If I haven’t won after a few more turns (I should be at least on 4-5 points), and I can’t risk another agenda in the remote, I try for the biotic plan, get a curtain wall on r&d and hope the cards come out in the right order. Sure, a Jackson would be great now, it just so happens that I’m rarely in this situation as more often than not, I get my atlas token or just draw biotic and atlas naturally and score out.
I still don’t see your answer to a decent Noise match up - most of the ICE is nothing to Faust or Parasite (+Grimoire and/or Datasucker tokens), with D4v1d to back up against Curtain Wall. A lot of the ICE is gear-check, but against AI breakers like Faust that really isn’t an issue.
“Snare has won me games, as runners get careles” - I don’t think relying on careless runners is a good basis for deck build decisions. 
Anything milled or Imp’d or discarded you’re never getting back. If it’s not agendas it’ll be your ICE or your economy.
Secondly, I also agree with others that Jackson is excellent draw, and generally just ace. I’ve seen one guy have some success with a no-Jackson GRNDL, but even he eventually admitted that Jackson was a must.
Obviously us jawing backwards and forwards isn’t going to convince anyone of anything, but I’d try out your build versus some Noise players and check back on the results. A hearty Account Siphon spam or DDoS Keyhole will also be a challenge.
Valencia decks are also popular right now. What’s the answer to Blackmail? I think this is where the Ash/Caprice Foodcoats question comes from. If Faust / ICE destruction / Blackmail can easily assault your scoring remote (and normally quite quickly), what’s your answer to that?
As per other posters, I don’t want to sound like I’m just being negative, but based on personal experience (and playing a lot of Noise/Valencia) myself, I can see weaknesses here from the perspective of someone who would run against this deck.
3 Likes
The issue I think we’re all tip-toeing around is this:
Which is more likely:
A) a relatively unknown poster is making assertions that are sub-optimal, because they are still improving at the game - OR
B) that this player knows something that no one else does?
For us to believe the second, it’s a lot easier if @Minotower starts getting some great results - maybe in the ongoing Stimhack Leagues, for example.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
5 Likes
my wife asked me if I could teach her netrunner recently, and I asked her what would kind of deck she would like me to build for her to start with - slow, fast, trappy shell game etc, murder - she replied it doesn’t matter as long as ‘jesus’ is in there.
5 Likes
At this point there isn’t much more I can say. If you aren’t going to be convinced that’s your choice. I will say this though. Groober and Evilgaz have been pitching in on this. Evilgaz is a national champion and Groober (edit: AND GAZ OF COURSE :P) reached the top16 of worlds last year. They know their stuff - they are without doubt some of the best players in the entire world… and they disagree with you.
I agree with Groober, if you start winning lots of games vs good players (no, jinteki.net games do not count) they you will have the evidence to back up your claims. As it stands what we have here seems to be a very mediocre list (at best). We have given plenty of constructive advice, it’s your call if you want to take it.