Rune Soldier (Worlds Top 8)

Cerberus 4880

This is a pretty simple deck that is often very aggressive. Assets are everywhere in the meta, and therefore Whizzard is the natural choice for this deck. I've been playing Siphon Whizz for a good while now and believe that is is a top tier deck. The idea of Siphon and Whizzard combine really well, as a strong defence against Siphon / denial decks is assets and Whizzard helps to stop this defence.

I took this deck to Worlds because I thought it was a very versatile deck that could do well against most decks that you are likely to encounter. As predicted the top deck to beat was Controlling the Message and so this deck had a number of cards to help deal with it. It certainly isn't an easy match up still, but you can beat it and retain strong match ups against other decks.

Card Choices

Account Siphon - This is the key card in the deck, as denial is your main (but not only) game plan. Seeing this early is key, and this is why I've Had Worse, Inject, Street Peddler and Planned Assault are all present. Once you land one Siphon this deck has enough recursion to allow you to chain them and keep a dominant board state.

Destruction - In pure Anarch fashion this deck has a number of destruction cards, Knifed and Spooned are included to deal with the Ice you least want to deal with over and over again, these are often Tollbooth, Archangel and Resistor but many others are a pain. D4v1d is included to make the destruction of these more palatable, but is generally a great breaker in this deck. No Forked as there is very little sentry ice played that I worry about, HB glacier is a tough match anyway, and I was happy to concede a bad match up to it to make others better. Wanton Destruction is a key card in the deck, it allows you to get rid of important cards such as Psychographics, Exchange of Information and combo cards such as Accelerated Diagnostics, as well as provide a sort of multi access card if you opponent is flooded.

Economy - You'll notice that this deck runs a lot of economy for a Siphon deck, this is because I like to have game against decks that know what is coming and are able to defend appropriately. In order to do this I need to have a good economy that isn't also linked to my denial plan.

Keyhole - An obvious tool for an Eater deck, however I think it is worth mentioning that this is a key card. Most people will know you are on Siphon towards the end of a tournament, that is just the way it is. However what this means is that people protect HQ against you, sometimes excessively. This is where you can win from under protected remote servers or R&D. Keyhole won me at least 3 games at Worlds where it was allowed cheap or free runs due to ice being dedicated to HQ.

Breakers and Console - A pretty standard rig, Paperclip is great with Inject and Peddler, Yog is needed against HB due to Turing on a central that you need a better answer to than Femme. Femme mostly an answer to a problem, each game the problem is likely different, but having an answer is normally important. Turntable, makes the difference sometimes where you can trade back for Global Foods or Astros, otherwise could be Vigil, but I believe this is better.

6 comments
8 Nov 2016 shanodin

What's the story behind the name?

10 Nov 2016 Cerberus

Nothing too exciting. I name my decks with Anime references, this one is no exception. The style of the deck reminded me of this one.

29 Dec 2016 FightingWalloon

Sorry for a silly question. I assume you can Wanton Destruction even if you use Eater to make your successful run on HQ since Wanton does not access cards. Is that correct?

29 Dec 2016 Cerberus

@FightingWalloon that is correct, Account Siphon, Wanton Destruction and Keyhole all work with Eater as you don't access cards.

30 Dec 2016 Lubo_Boda

@Cerberus Street Peddler seems to be very risky choice here as number of events in the deck is quite high. Have you experienced many "misfires" or even lockdowns of key event like siphon disabling the needed recursion completely?

30 Dec 2016 Cerberus

@Lubo_Boda Street Peddler does occasionally misfire but not that often. Like most Anarchs you are fine with dumping your events as you have so much recursion. The key bit is getting to them in the first place. If you test it and don't like it then you can swap to Making An Entrance quite easily.