The Current Grail Clearance (3 - 1 GNK)

skewie 259

So I was the only one of eight who ran New Angeles Sol in a tournament where only D&D IDs were allowed. My Adam failed me completely but this one did well, it only lost to a hard counter of Adam: Compulsive Hacker + Hunting Grounds.

It's by no means a Tier 1 deck, but I've tried it out a five times on Jinteki.net and won against "Standard" Gabe, Minh Max, Standard Max, Noise and Eviscerator Apex. I must say that it's been really fun to play so far!

So the main idea is to just be NBN but with the added benefit of having your agendas protected by annoying ICE and Predictive Algorithm. I've been able to install-advance NAPDs naked because of the 6-creds-to-steal combo. RSVP does well when protecting a server with Red Herrings and/or with a Predictive Algorithm online and/or an NAPD Contract. But the main type of ICE is of course the Grail suite, the economy is based on operations with Clearances to give you money while (hopefully) drawing into more of your Grail.

The deck is currently quite weak against Atman STR4 so that's something to think about when making changes to this for a general meta. Perhaps a Swordsman or two? The Grail ICE suite is of course optional but the foundation seems pretty solid.

Thanks for reading!

3 comments
26 Nov 2015 FarCryFromHuman

If 4tman is your woe, and you are playing NAS, Lag Time starts looking mighty attractive... Excalibur starts sucking but that's a small price to pay to force a runner to keep swapping an Atman between 4 and 5, and potentially just locking the damn breaker out.

26 Nov 2015 skewie

Yeah, Lag Time was in the deck previously. But I didn't think it useful during this specific tournament. The only problem I see with it otherwise is the fact that it costs 2 credits to play. That's a lot with a deck that is pretty light on econ. But perhaps swap an ICE or two for econ and it might work. Excalibur was a "meta call" to stop potential Apocalypse plays, so that could easily be cut for example.

26 Nov 2015 Phoenix

Yeah that is a lot of strength 4 ice. I think you could potentially drop the Green and Blue Level Clearances, the Predictive Algorithms, Pop Up, RSVP and Red Herrings for some combination of Archangel, Ash, Corporate Troubleshooter and Targeted Marketing. It'll help a lot against Atman and the Targeted Marketing really makes Ash sing if you name what they really need to get in or what you just bounced with Archangel. Archangel makes a nice trap in R&D as well, particularly given Atman at 4 (which is a huge weakness for you) is 7 to install. Further, by dropping RSVP you alleviate some of the weakness to Atman at 4.