Urban Brotech Redux

Who wants to learn math?

I’ve tested who knows how many corps in the months following Worlds and none of them impressed me. Except then I noticed my old Brotech meme deck was still putting up strong win percentages (85%). Why rock the boat?

The beauty of this deck's core strategy, which it took me a long time to appreciate myself, is that your three win conditions (incremental damage/decking the opponent, scoring out, and burst damage/Urban Renewal) are all symbiotic. If your opponent goes bankrupt trashing Urban Renewals, they create scoring windows for you to get Houses of Knives; hitting traps also mills your opponent, making it easier to score Obokatas to win; House of Knives makes Obokata harder to steal and also sets your opponent up to hit a Snare! and then die to The Brewery; and so on.

The hard part is knowing what role to play and when to make aggressive moves. When I posted the original list on NRDB, I saw so many people playing it online who would just numbly keep jamming Urban Renewals without giving any thought to whether I was giving them scoring windows, whether that was the time to raise the stakes, or how they intended to win at all beyond 4 + 2 = 6. This is not a “fingers crossed they hit a Snare!” deck (though it happily accepts the margin that comes with having that plan available). It’s a sneaky attrition deck based around putting the opponent on the back foot, and exploiting their imbalance for all you can.

Changes:

• Film Critic and Kati Jones justify two pieces of connection hate. Conveniently, the loss of Indexing makes Miraju much less useful, leaving room for Sadaka. But I was never satisfied with just Sadaka, hence one VI. (While Boot Camp’s shuffling trap is less frequently employed without Indexing, it still has its place and the card still does enough to justify its slot, at least in my eyes.)
• DNA Tracker is a better piece of ice than Anansi... except when everyone is playing Engolo or Amina. And there's something to be said for all the cards against which Anansi is much better (Inside Job, Femme Fatale, and Logic Bomb come to mind).
• For a while I played 3x IPO 0x Celebrity Gift but was still unhappy with the money, even though this is a deck that doesn't tire of clicking for credits. A single Mwanza was a surprisingly good add, as it gives money, the risks are negligible, and often it looks like a Hokusai and it loses the “don’t run me” flashing light. If the runner trashes it it feels like you hit them with Account Siphon. Almost always belongs on HQ, not least because that's where Snares go to retire.
• No Rashidas because this isn’t a rush deck. Drawing more cards usually doesn’t help. That’s not a change, but I’m sure someone will wonder.

Why is the deck called Urban Brotech? Because the word “biotech” looks vaguely like “brotech” and it’s a naturally funny phrase.