The Trooper

bayushidavid 50

So this is a Dead Coats build i.e. ETF Glacier but with Punitive Counterstrike as a flatline threat. I'm quite proud of the title (if you don't get it, this might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTaD9cd8hvw). The deck's been doing pretty well up to now, from a limited sample side.

To win, the runner has to hit three out of seven agendas through some of the most taxing ICE in the game. Six of those agendas set them up for a double Counterstrike kill, so the normal tactic against Glacier of maximising early accesses can backfire horribly. If they guess you are playing Counterstrike, they are likely to run less aggressively early on - when you are at your most vulnerable - giving you time to set up.

Rez early and often to tax them from the the word go. Try to get Adonis or Eve going behind a cheap ICE. The flatline threat lets you push your first agenda a bit more aggressively than in an ordinary glacier build. If you get Vitruvius go all out to double over advance it since it lets a single Counterstrike do nine damage. Later on you have Ash to score agendas behind and Memories to recur it. You also have Domestic Sleepers to bait runs or close the game out and Archer to open an enormous scoring window if they hit it (even the fear of it, with a Sleepers on the table, can be enough to get an agenda through).

1 comments
12 Aug 2014 DrunkenGineer

I don't like Vitruvius in this deck - scoring it means you're still two 3-pointers away from winning (unless you also plan on scoring both Sleepers and not paying to rez Archer), and the runner stealing it doesn't give you enough bang for your Punitive buck. Though you could do much worse, you have no fast advance or Fast Track either, so it isn't faster than Sleepers if you need to close out a game at 6 points. It has a powerful ability, especially in a deck meant to IAA, but its benefits are really marginal here.