Meat Boutique - Budapest 2015 Regionals Winner

Back in the day (the second cycle day, when I was more active), I constantly played Midseason decks. The economic interaction they created between the corp and the runner made playing them my favorite. I also preferred decks that combined the fast advancement, psychographics and the kill threat, usually with 2 Scorched Earth, and then using the remaining 7 influence on ice.

In fact, I always prefered corp decks that did multiple things, had a lot of 1 and 2-ofs, so they would be difficult to read, and difficult to have a specific plan for when you sit at the table. When NEH came out, I made a deck not terribly different from this one, using Psychic Fields and EMPs instead of Traffic Accidents, and was pretty successful, but that's where I slowly spirited away from the game.

Fast forward to one month ago, and friends convincing me to go to the Hungarian Regionals with them, I did some research on all the good corp decks, and was surprised at the variety and balance the game had reached. I immediately wanted to check if midseason decks were still good or if the strong runner economy finally overwhelmed them. I was pleasantly surprised with the Butcher Shop deck ( the original author being JakoDrako I believe ). The main reason for success of this deck was that runners started playing with barely any plascretes, relying purely on their economy. I didn't like some of the cards in there off the bat which didn't work most of the time, such as Universal Connectivity Fee, and Information overload felt like a 1-of card to me ( although 2 were probably fine as well). Some of these decks also played TGBTs, but none of them had Sansans, which surprised me. I always feel that Midseasoning people who take your agendas was something these decks were already very good at, what really makes them hard to play against are options for when they do not. This is why I prefer having Sansans in these sort of decks, and want to have closed accounts instead of the UCF. Not only can you start scoring Astros if you are not winning the economy war, but you can also Close their accounts with Breaking News, or if you have both an Astro token and a Sansan, you can flatline a runner with Breaking News from your hand, even one that has access to Clot.

There are a lot of wild, agressive plays you can make with the deck, and most of them rely on Breaking News. Data Raven on remote, Install+Advance Breaking News behind it can be pretty hard to solve. If the runner isn't much richer than you, they will probably get Midseasoned for taking it, and if they don't, they could get flatlined.

Since Data Raven doesn't generate an immediate tax when it is rezzed, it is not a good idea to put it on your centrals, especially early - that's what pop ups, pups and Gutenberg are for. If you are playing against Keyhole, then of course, you should put it on RND, or against Criminals, you should definitely put the first one you draw on HQ; otherwise, use it for powerful remote plays, generally with agendas or Sansan behind them.

I thought about throwing in one Psychographics in here for those runners that were really well armored, but it mostly didn't do any work in my testing. This is the sort of deck where runner will be able to access most of your cards after they decide they want to ignore tags, and sneaking in a Baele probably isn't going to work.

Cortex Lock is that great just because it isn't expected in these sorts of decks, and has done fantastic work throughout the tournament, definitely making more of a difference than a Reclamation order Would have in my eyes. Net Ready eyes will weaken it, as Shapers can once again do a lot with a Mimic.

Flare didn't do any work, and I'm not sure if it's better than a second Information overload, but I just like the surprise factor of another way to get rid of pesky Plascretes.

edit: Almost forgot. It went 4-1 in the Swiss, losing to Showing Off MaXx, mostly thanks to me not drawing into agendas (I believe I dug 2/3 of my deck and found and scored 6 points) before he OTKed me. 2-0 in Elims. Most matches lasted 3 or 4 turns, although luck favored me in some of those.

edit2: Didn't notice there was a "derived from" category. Fixed that.