Slow Advance 1.5

Waltzard 403

Slow advance continues its gradual tour through Weyland identities, but I may have finally found its permanent home.

The deck's core conceit, the notion that ambushes are the way for the corp to survive in the end game, remains intact. Blue Sun gives me:

  1. Mostly immunity to Parasite ice destruction via sucking the ice up and spitting it back.
  2. Oversight AI as 10+ creds from an event, providing a useful shot of creds.

Overall game plan: Try to rush out an early agenda behind an Oversight AI'd big ice that the runner isn't ready to break yet. As they bring their rig online use traps and big ice to try and open a scoring window. Aggsec is extremely helpful in this regard.

Agendas: I had to go up from 7 to 8 agendas when I dropped Vanity Projects. I wanted the influence back, and the 5/3's have useful abilities. The one pointers are generally cheap and easy to score via the typical install and leave sitting then advance next turn plan. I almost always get one at some point, as does the runner, so the game is who gets either 2 5/3 or the Gov takeover.

The Priority Requisitions are typically economy cards, used like Oversight to rez something and let me suck it up. Eden fragments just saves a cred here or there. Obviously Gov takeover doesn't typically get its ability to fire, I either win by scoring it or lose by getting it stolen. Weirdly, it isn't much harder than a Priority Req to score. If you get to 5 and keep going the runner usually assumes a Back Channels play.

Economy: My economy rests on my operations. The Hedge Funds and Restructures give small money, the Back Channels and Oversight AI's give big money. Pri Req can occasionally contribute a big money boost.

Ice: 9 pieces of small ice (Enigma, Spiderweb, Quicksand). 7 pieces of Big Ice. Goal is, in general, to build R&D, HQ and 1 remote. Vs. Crims its also moderately important to ice Archives, but not super deep (legwork, etc, can't use the sneak door).

Ambushes: Junebug gives you the occasional murder win. No one sees it coming out of Weyland. Housekeeping makes it better. Aggsec gives you a scoring window. Particularly sweet when there's a Scheherazade situation, but trashing 2-3 programs is almost always good for a round or 2. Occasionally its the win entirely, if they used or lost their recursion earlier. Shattered Remains is mostly a Back Channels situation, but every clone chip you blow up is 1 less recursion.

Silver Bullets: Housekeeping turns off runner currents, and if it sticks around can easily kill 4-6 runner cards. Its particularly great vs. runners who install in both turns. Vault for Siphon. All crims and about half of anarchs siphon, so I thought it was worth slotting 1. Took it over Crisium because it takes another click for the runner to go after the vault, whereas they can just trash the Crisium on the run that would have been the siphon. Corporate Town: This just saves some games. A Corporate town rezzed early behind some monstrous AI'd ice can turn off the runner's resources. Runners rely on resources pretty much utterly to overcome the ice vs. run disparity.

Ultimately, this is a pretty typical Blue Sun deck - murder + traps. I think losing the meat damage and taking ambushes is basically a wash in terms of actual effectiveness, but since folks are used to flatline threat from Blue Sun and not looking for ambushes I like the switch.

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