Ice Trafficking

InfiniteNutshell 774

Here's my Runner from the Battleground Games and Hobbies Store Championship, held on February 28, 2016. I made top seed in Swiss out of 42 players.

I love weird draw engines, so I've always been a big Geist fan. And my other recent experiments in Criminal left me frustrated with how expensive it is to use their breakers, so I decided it was time to bring this back out. And it works better than ever! This can be a tough deck to run, since you have to make every run count, but it can also seriously mess up a lot of Corps.

Programs: Crowbar, Shiv, and Spike do a lot of work, but they won't get you into servers often enough on their own, so having a backup/persistent rig is important. Inti, Passport, and Mongoose isn't a perfect backup rig, but I think it's the best balance of low install costs, low influence cost, and efficiency at breaking cheap ice. Medium is of course a major win condition. Note that as long as you have Cloud active, you have enough memory for all the programs in the deck, but if you have to burn all your Links too late in the game you might have to ditch some stuff.

Economy: Drug Dealer is critical, especially early game. Geist's ability keeps you moving once you have a critical mass of stuff on the board, but you need to throw down a bunch of pieces first. Mulligan for Drug Dealer or Hostage, and generally use Hostage to get Drug Dealer or The Helpful AI. Never install both Dealers. Getting a Link installed is important but doesn't strictly need to happen right away. Kati Jones is a backup economy engine; since all your stuff is cheap, you will be fine with drips, Siphons, and the occasional Bank Job for large chunks of the game. Drive By is your best answer to upgrades and high-trash-cost Assets, so use it aggressively. Same Old Drive By is a lot of clicks, but it's sometimes the right play. You Decoy along with Forger can let you ignore a Breaking News or the second tag on an Account Siphon, but even without it, Siphon, burn Forger, install and burn another Forger is great tag-clearing efficiency. Watch your memory if you're burning links though, and try not to end your turn without one unless you really need to.

Tricks: Levy AR Lab Access is important if the game goes long, but you won't always need it. Unless you suspect Chronos Project, you can coast for a while with an empty stack, so don't be in too much of a hurry to reset if you still have a bunch of breakers out. Levy is most of your recursion so make those breaker-uses count.

Your best friend in a lot of matchups will be Traffic Jam. This can do work against any Corp, but it's brutal against an HB with one of each 3/2 scored. You can't win at never-advance, so don't let them play that way: Traffic Jam generally means they'll have to leave advanced cards on the board. NBN has some better answers but this can still keep an Astro-train from happening. It's more situational against Weyland and Jinteki, but a surprise Jam after they single-advance their second Nisei is so, so sweet.

6 comments
7 Mar 2016 Lorgar

Well done! Geist is hard to play in tournaments but there are ways to adjust him to the meta. Did you need 2 Clone Chips? Would it make sense to cut one for a corroder?

Do you have plays to include Tech Trader? What would you take out for it?

7 Mar 2016 InfiniteNutshell

I absolutely need the Clone Chips. The deck really relies on the Cloud breakers, and Clone Chip can give you back the right type if you don't have another copy, or it can just give you a strength boost for a different breaker. Plus you get a card draw!

Corroder wouldn't help me really: Inti takes care of most cheap barriers just fine, and I have Spike for big stuff. If I had spare influence, the breaker I'd import is actually ZU.13 Key Master. Passport not working on remotes is a real weakness.

I'm certainly going to test out Tech Trader, and I think I'll start by replacing 2x Bank Job and 1x Kati. I'm not sure whether those are the right slots to put it in, but I'll get a feel for it once I get some games in with it.

7 Mar 2016 Lorgar

In this case just play Cerberus "Rex" H2. Levy brings them back into play. I tested them in Geist with good results.

7 Mar 2016 DarlingSensei

Peacock might be okay. It's better than Zu vs. popular things like turing and TB. How would you describe the tempo of this deck? Criminal tends to lend itself to aggro/rush strategies but this looks more mid-range or even control. How does it play for you?

7 Mar 2016 InfiniteNutshell

Oh yeah I'd definitely call it control. I'm not sure what mid-range means in this context.

8 Mar 2016 ANRguybrush

thought about security chips?