House of Leaves

umbralAeronaut 804

This RP build is designed to be extremely threatening to the Runner and exploit scoring windows to maximum effect. Nisei Mk.2 and House of Knives combine to provide a snowball effect that allows this deck to carry momentum into the late game. Subliminal Messaging can be an economic all-star in RP, and the effect is only magnified by the addition of Enhanced Login Protocols and House of Knives (both of which often cause to Runner to hesitate and space their runs across multiple turns). Medical Research Fundraiser was found to be much more desirable in this build then Celebrity Gift for several reasons: 1.) Information is too valuable, giving away the contents of your hand ruins the use of cards such as Mushin No Shin and your ICE 2.) Clicks are too valuable and perhaps most surprising of all 3.) the Runner's money is a lot less valuable against this build then you'd think. Mental Health Clinic likewise fell by the wayside when it was found that the drawback of increased runner hand size was a detriment to the click compression and brain damage aspects of this deck and money was never a problem anyway.

This realization is also a big part of the fact that Nisei Mk. 2 gets the nod over NAPD Contract. In this RP build CLICKS, CARDS, and INFORMATION are to be the runner's downfall. Even against a fully developed late-game rig and endless cash resources this deck has beaten Big Rig Shaper by scoring out agendas the old-fashioned way. How is this possible? Simply by controlling the flow of information and providing too intimidating a front to penetrate, an effect that will occur by a combination of scored Nisei/HoKs, multiple remote servers with facedown cards (Ronins waiting for a critical mistake, most of them), ELP in play, and Bioroids and a host of other taxing ICE clogging up the centrals. If the runner only knew which scoring server to go they could win, but the trip through centrals costs them an entire turn as well as most of the cards in their hand... with Nisei Mk. 2 as the emergency reset button to ensure they cannot win even by making the right choice.

Most often by feeding the Runner Fetal AI's and aggressively scoring out House of Knives with the standard remote server shell-game in the early phase you can slow their attack long enough to close the central servers off. Once this is done, with an Agenda (Nisei Mk. 2 most often) that you are ready to try to score, is the right time to play Enhanced Login Protocols. Be ready though because the Runner will often immediately attempt to burn their multi-access events in the hope of snagging an agenda from HQ or R&D to shut down ELP. Punish them with your ICE and make sure the agenda you want to score is not in hand but hidden among your remotes... they almost certainly won't attempt to find it. Use Mushin No Shin to power out Agendas early on or, if you have nothing else you want to score, Ronins. A Ronin is a terrible thing to die to but runners seem find ways to do it out of frustration once they see this deck begin to take off.

This deck wants to move quickly and get ahead because it loves momentum, it's important to remember that to the runner the most intimidating card in this deck bar none is any face-down one. It could be Project Junebug, Snare, anything but what you actually have (that's why I don't bother with those cards, they do their work on the Runner's psyche just sitting in the binder).

'Enter the House if you must, but beware the Minotaur.'

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