#AlwaysBeRunning Top Adam at Worlds 2022

is44ru 271

Directives to install

Always Be Running (YES, that one!)
Find the Truth
Neutralize All Threats

Deckbuilding

After my great experience with Breakerless Adam in CoS, it felt so great that it seemed competitive enough for standard.
That decklist and writeup will be released soon™️.

There was 3 important stuff to address in my previous Boat Adam Deck:

-Finding and installing Boat was really difficult
-The list needed a way to deal with HHN
-It also needed ways to deal with Drago

I didn't really liked Boat nor Boomerang in the previous list, so I cut them all.
I added tons of money with 3x Bravado instead.
3x No Free Lunch and 2x Pinhole to try to deal with Drago.

Tread Lightly was a very good include, it really does what you need with Adam early game which is get accesses and the corp chooses to loose tempo by DoFing themselves or try to make Adam lose tempo by forcing the ABR use.

During the night before the event, I woke at 5AM with fear of Kill decks, I added Brain Chip. I wasn't able to sleep and at 6AM I slotted in a Top Hat to help if you have an open RnD or if every server has 1 ice. The plan is to run, see an agenda, access the second card, then come back with Mad Dash.

At 7AM, I had the feeling I needed more ways to get in the servers, and I swapped RNG Key for Mayfly.

Deckslots

Money and Draw (Mostly Self Explanatory)

Bravado - Great with empty unrezzed remote or value HQ runs
Dirty Laundry - See Bravado
Overclock - mostly for assets, trace ice and Bellonas
Sure Gamble - 💰
Daily Casts - I don't like losing the tempo, but I don't have other options here to get money, the deck can win without spending credits, this can help you in 3-4 turns, playing it might not make sense when you draw it if you need to still be aggressive in the next 2 turns.
Jailbreak - Yes, this draw matters
DreamNet - You make a successful run most turns, it's nice early, and kinda dead after turn 4
Earthrise Hotel - it's perfect, you use something you don't need (money) for something you want to have clicklessly

Tech Cards

Carpe Diem - Hottest tech card in the deck, it bypass ABR problem for the turns when you absolutely don't want to run. Keep them for those turns, don't play them for value.
Pinhole Threading - Deal with Drago, and Anoetic (keep Overclocks for Manegarm)
Tread Lightly - Perfect card for a 2-3 ice remote server that you never checked. Even denying them 3 credits is worth it.
Brain Chip - Useless, it was a bad idea
No Free Lunch - Nice in a deck that doesn't really rely in money, you're often very poor and it gets you back in the game, it also has nice Tollbooth/Mestnichestvo/Turnpike tech as you can pop two of them after the ice is passed to steal Bellona.

Breaker Suite

Always Be Running - Best aggressive breaker ever
Gbahali- Does the job and helps with Drafters
Mayfly - Requires money but not influence, and enables SDS steals
Your Face - Taking 1-2 damage/ice is acceptable
Traces - Sometimes you get Bravado money, that's a great use of it
Logic Bomb - This card is perfection, you lost your first 3 clicks to ABR and access 2-3 from HQ, see the top, and go get it with mad dash RnD Logic Bomb what is stopping you

Win Conditions

Top Hat - I'm not convinced yet, I think it helped me score an agenda once, but it doesn't do enough for the inf cost and deck slot.
Extras of Always Be Running - It's your main breaker, if they trash it with best defense or tags, you need to find it back quickly.
Extra Find the Truth. It's you main WinCon, you need an extra.
Jailbreak - You mulligan for this card unless you have Mad Dash
Mad Dash - That's how you win the game

Gameplan

Clear the hand from agendas, then RnD lock with Find the Truth
You have to prevent them the first score, it's really important.
Once you have 4 points and they have none, they will have to stop playing they game and play yours, that how you win.
They will ice up ever central with 2x ice and use most of their econ to stop your successful runs.
At that point all you have to do is make them spend their credits rezzing the second Archives ice while you know every card that's on top of RnD.
Usually you are rewarded with a win they can't stop.
The longer it takes for the winning agenda to come makes you vulnerable to them being able to prepare a decent scoring server, so you're luck-reliant at that point, which is why it's very important that you score every agenda that comes out of RnD.
This problem is why I included Top Hat, but it's sadly not enough.

That's the plan if the corp have a good/decent hand.
If the corp have a bad mulligan (2-3 agendas), they lose very quickly, which was a good enough incentive to make me play the deck.

Weaknesses

Tags in general
Ice with two annoying subroutines (like Drafter/Gatekeeper)
Border Control
Defensive Upgrades
This deck is weak to so many relevant threat, I find it amazing it can do so well.

Mulligan

You need either Jailbreak or Mad Dash in your starting hand.
Your first click is always a run on HQ as you need the agendas that might be there.
Blind Mad Dash HQ is acceptable if you can read people's face after they had a bad Mulligan or against Sports, even if you whiff, it raises the pressure on the corp side and sets the tone of the game.

Tournament

I went 4-2 during the day, there was 2 wins by agenda flooding, (of course the HQ ice is irrelevant, the two other were close battles.
In the 2 losses there was a game where there was no agendas for like 10 turns, and a loss because of a well placed NEXT Activation Command that prevented me to Stargate and run the remote.

Future

This decks requires a lot of tuning, I feel like 3x Mayfly should be a good start, having Career Fairs would help a lot.

PS: Message to Andrej

If you're playing this, I think it would be better to make a few changes before as you see fit.
The only slots that can't move are: Carpe Diem, Mad Dash, Jailbreak, Logic Bomb, Dirty Laundry, Earthrise Hotel and 3x Mayfly.
The slots that I think are correct are: Sure Gamble, Overclock, Backup Directives, Tread Lightly.

#AlwaysBeRunning

Thanks for NSG for keeping the game alive and organizing Worlds!
Thanks for my opponents and the players that came!

6 comments
12 Oct 2022 Diogene

Amazing write-up. I hope Andrej play this deck. I have a slightly different take on the deck haha!

Merci pour la creation de ce deck completement fou! J'ai eu bien du plaisir avec. Cheers!

12 Oct 2022 sebastiank

Awesome deck! In a deck as aggressive with central accesses as this one, could playing Obelus be worthwhile? Turning it into tagme seems like... a challenge, but even just drawing 2 after running hq with neutralize all threats is high value

12 Oct 2022 is44ru

I would love Obelus, the changes could be:
-1 Bravado ●●●
-1 Top Hat ●
-1 DreamNet
-1 Pinhole ●
-1 Tread Lightly ●
+2 Obelus ●●●●● ●
+2 Mayfly
+1 Daily Casts

14 Oct 2022 Diogene

Instead of Obelus, you could get good value out of Aniccam for extra draw.

19 Oct 2022 5N00P1

Congrats on the good performance and playing ABR!
Lucky we IDed in the last round, don't want to play Sports against this Adam!
Playing almost breaker less Adam and then the 1st recommendation is to include 3x Mayfly is a bit funny....

19 Oct 2022 is44ru

Thanks @5N00P1, you did well too :D

You're right, including 3x Mayfly is against the deck's spirit, but I think this is needed to close games when the corp don't draw enough agendas early.