Psiper 1.0 (5-0 8th overall at Reading 54 person SC)

rotage 2934

This is the deck that I took to the 54 person Reading Store Championship and came 6th in Swiss and 8th overall with the only lose coming in the cut

The deck came about as I noticed a lot of players were becoming a bit too complacent with face checking HB ice with the assumption that the worst case is a Fairchild 3.0 or an Architect, I figured that Brainstorm would be a far more "fun" facecheck ice for them. Brainstorm should only be rezzed if it is going to fire, the 9 rez is too expensive to justify at the moment otherwise.

I then further developed the deck to include program trashing as another option using Marcus Batty to help to trash programs as there is not a lot of Rumor Mill being played. Ark Lockdown is there to remove the programs from the game

The deck only had 3 games of testing so it is very far from the finished article, my immediate changes would be to switch the Adonis Campaigns for Lateral Growths and look at switching some of the ice about, would be nice to have a Cobra as an additional Batty target

Round 1 - Chris Dyer - My heart sank when I heard I had to play the World Champ in my first round, I have yet to beat him so I knew it would be tough. He installed Wyldside and eventually installed a Chronotype, he then ran into a Brainstorm with 7 cards in hand and no breakers and died at the end of the turn

Round 2 - Laurie Poulter - Having split with Chris I hoped for an easier opponent, I got paired with 2015 Greek National Champion Laurie so sadly it would not be easier. Laurie mulliganed into a bad hand as Andy and was unable to play 4 cards so had to discard some cards including paperclip, my turn2 was to Ark Lockdown the paper clip (I later found out his only fracter) I managed to get a barrier onto HQ to deny siphon and started to score out, I got to matchpoint with Laurie having stolen some agendas too from R&D and I attempted to score a GFI behind a Barrier which he he Femmed but it was on the last click and I managed to win the PSI game with Batty to end the run and score out next turn

Round 3 - Sean Binnie - Sean is a fellow Readox player but we have yet play before, again another tough opponent, he was playing Sunny so I knew if the game went long I'd probably lose, I managed to rush out 2 3/2s while he was building his rig, however while this was going he was able to trash a few Battys from R&D and have a Councilman installed ready to derez my Battys and a Polop too. The game hinged around a Aggressive Secretary which I installed and advanced once baiting it as a 3/2 (as he had The Source installed) he didn't run it so I advanced it twice more to try to bait as a GFI which would win me the game, he ran it and I was able to destroy 2 of his 3 breakers, forcing him to rely on Nexus to get through most of my ice, I was then able to get enough ice on the remote to ensure he couldn't get in and win the game

Round 4 - Andy Lovell - Andy is a strong player from London who I had also not played, he had Dumbleforks. He had being running HQ quite a bit so I put a Brainstorm on there with a Batty in case I could hit him with it, he did run it and neither of us was aware that if he boosted strength with Faust before encounter then Batty would have no subs to fire on, he therefore broke the subs and we played a PSI game to see if he would live or not, he didn't live

Round 5 - Dave (Swiftie) Etherington - Dave is another Readox player but one is most local to me so we have played a lot and our games and again a tough opponent. He was on a Temujin Whizz deck with Vamp and Magnum so I had to be fast, I rushed out to 5 points very quickly and managed to get a few next ice rezzed which was making it expensive to break with Paperclip and Black Orchestra. After he stole an agenda from the remote I managed to put another agenda in there without any upgrades in the hope he would assume it was an asset, he did assume this and I was able to score out and win the game

Cut - Alex White - This was my only lose of the day, Alex was aware of Brainstorm so was cautious early which allowed me to score an early agenda but then he managed to keep destroying my ice while taking agendas, I did manage to trash the Faust from his hand with Ichi and Batty and then Ark Lockdown two of his Faust's sadly he had a third one in hand and was able to steal the last agenda before I could try to trash his last Faust

Any questions/feedback welcome

11 comments
8 Jan 2017 Brightsides

Our games were a lot of fun :D

I luckily saw the brainstorm off the top of R&D with Globalsec security clearance allowing me to avoid your surprise there, I could sense you were going for program trashes with all the Batty's but I feel my main mistake was bringing Sunny to the competition...

The aggressive sec was a nice touch too, but you did seem to be not as comfortably up on money as you would like, with all the Adoniseseses being trashed repeatedly.

So I'd agree on the Lateral growth switch myself, but hey what do I know, I wasn't at Worlds :P

8 Jan 2017 rotage

@brightsides thanks I enjoyed our games too although that Argus game was a bit too stressful for me, I might go back to Dyper for an easier life :)

Yeah econ is definitely an issue here and is something I will be addressing to get more usable econ in here, the Adonis is too difficult to use particularly without Breakerbay Grid

Well I felt at times yesterday was tougher than worlds as the concentration of good players there was extremely high

9 Jan 2017 yeoda

wow, what a list of opponents. Well done fellow $1.

9 Jan 2017 Swiftie

I did not have magnum in my deck.

9 Jan 2017 rotage

@yeoda Thanks, yeah was a tough but fun day @swiftie Duly noted

9 Jan 2017 emilyspine

This deck is all over jnet, well done rotage on taking over the meta once again!

10 Jan 2017 rojazu

this deck terrifies me as a criminal player...!

Great build, but when my first thought when examining the list was you lack a bit on econ: I count 81 credits worth of ICE and assuming you get 8 off Adonis, 3 off your AAL & 4 off your HF only 42 credits of econ + say 15 ETF credits= 57.

These are quite low for the ratios of ICE cost/econ that I look for in a glacier build. I know you said you leave brainstorm unrezzed unless you will get a fire but even with that in consideration have you found econ troubles when facing siphon, strike or ice destruction tactics?

10 Jan 2017 rotage

@rojazu Thanks for the feedback. I agree economy is too light in this deck for the ice package and I have been working on a version to add additional economy to the deck and to add some cheaper ice to the build as well

I found your calculations very interesting, how do you factor in cards such as pop up window and pad campaign into evaluating the economy of a deck?

10 Jan 2017 rojazu

I usually give 3 to each, but they are harder to evaluate as they depend on board state / opponent.

13 Jan 2017 formerteen

this looks great, will definitely be trying it soon. was there any problem with ice destruction and the NEXT suite? do you think it'll be worse now that Sifr is out? i love the shell of this but am definitely scared of how easily NEXT dies to parasite.

13 Jan 2017 rotage

@formerteenthanks, well SIFR is a concern but Ark Lockdown can be used on the parasites if needed, can look at more magnets, architects depending on how things shake out. After this weekend I will do testing vs SIFR and then can work out the best way forward