Cerebral Trauma (40 cards)

i like the shell corporation using the failed traps for cover

I would add another 4 cards as it reduces the risk of them find an agenda.

My (relatively tiny) meta has a lot of Drive Bys and people playing Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist, so I occasionally rez the traps before the runner has a chance to access them to stop them from getting bounced or trashed @hutch9514.

I am playing with a 44 card version as well @Stratix. It has +1 NEXT Gold, +1 Plan B, +1 Adonis Campaign, and an extra fourth slot. The idea was to dilute the agendas as much as possible as you suggest. Perhaps it's just my imagination, but the compact 40 card deck seems to let me draw the needed cards more reliably.

I've also considered swapping one of the Project Vitruvius for two Self-Destruct Chips in the 44 card deck. You can score them straight from your hand after getting out a Mandatory Upgrades, and if the runner grabs one, you can still hurt them thanks to Media Blitz.

I like the deck, feel it lacks econ though, so I'm just running it with Sure Gamble and Adonis to fill up the extra four cards.

The deck can feel credit-lite sometimes @C6H6. Many times I need to make cash the hard way by grinding it out with clicks. If you can get two, or even three Shell Corporations going at a time though, you should be able to pull in cash pretty fast.

Let me know how the extra econ plays for you though. As I said, my meta here is tiny, and I'd love to hear how the deck does in other metas and what tweaks people make to adapt. :)

Plan B as a way to defend your upgrades...... GENIUS!!

I really love this whole idea.

My biggest issue with it here is that you're running so many 5/3's, which cannot be fast advanced with Mandatory Upgrades, and will almost never be legal targets for a Plan B. I understand the issue of agenda density, but it seems like you're completely undermining your most reliable win condition in order to correct for it.

There are only two 5/3 agendas in the deck, @Bigguyforyou518, but I can certainly see your point. The last time I played this deck, it was one of those bad shuffle days and I lost because the runner snagged some big agendas off early R&D accesses.

Hades Fragment is probably the agenda that I would replace. It's an OK effect, but Utopia Fragment helps keep your other agendas safe, whether you score it or use Media Blitz to copy it after it gets stolen.

You could drop both the 5/3 agendas and replace them with three Accelerated Beta Tests. I always have terrible luck firing those off, but they are scorable Frome your hand once a Mandatory Upgradess is in play. You'd have to drop another card somewhere, maybe the Excalibur, to keep the deck at forty cards. Or go up to 44 cards by adding in three Hedge Funds as @Stratix suggested.

Next ICE is ok in Xanatos Gambit packages like this, but with Dumblefork running rampant I had to switch mine over to beefier bioroids and get cute with Ryon Knight behind Hourglass and such.

The first version of the deck I tried used bioroid ice and two Project Wotans instead of the Hades Fragmentand Utopia Fragment, @GrantZilla1979. I felt I wasn't able to rez the costlier bioroids often enough though, and switch over to cheaper NEXT ice instead. A 44-card version with another Adonis Campaign and three Hedge Funds might be better with bioroids though.