Nasir, Cyber Vandal 2.1

Jashay 715

Nasir Meidan, ICE wrecker. I really need more practice, but this deck seems to have some legs to it. Even though I keep making idiotic piloting errors, I'm still hitting some good decks far harder than I thought I could.

The idea here is to use PW, Clone Chip and SMC as credit sinks so you don't waste your money, and Datasucker and Parasite to trash ICE. Wyrm is there to strip down the last couple of points of STR.

Economically it's an odd deck, relying on Order of Sol, Personal Workshop, and recurring credits, with ways of making use of Nasir's sudden credit fluxes. This means you can cheerfully run against almost anything unrezzed, as his ability deals with it (particularly if you have an SMC or Clone Chip out), but you will absolutely suck against traces and will be unable to trash things. I have added in Kati and Armitage; despite his delightful mechanic, there are times you just need more money. I've also added in Ghost Runner for the same reason. There were two of these, but something needed to be dropped to get the second LARLA back in, and they were the only thing that seemed even a bit expendable. But they are awesome... I'm having second thoughts, but I need more time to test it out.

The breaker suite has had some tweaks. Atman is there to help with things like Lotus Field, Ichi, Eli, etc. Hopefully the new economy cards will allow me to search it out at 4. I am, however, apparently pants at choosing the right moment to play it.

Inti and Zu.13 have become Lady and Cyber Cypher. The logic here is that Inti basically only exists for Wraparound, and Lady can fulfil that role whilst also being able to get through annoying ICE like Eli 1.0 for one credit. Also, whilst still difficult, it's nice to actually have a chance in hell of getting through an OAI'd Curtain Wall (7 credits) which all Blue Sun decks must apparently run by law. Zu.13 was only in there for the sake of completeness; I had a Mimic and an Inti, might as well put a decoder in too. It's helpful with annoying code gates like Quandary, which aren't worth the time to trash. I have changed it for Cyber-Cypher because I will often find myself concentrating on only one server (typically R&D), and it can break any code gate there trivially.

Paricia is there because this deck is pants at trashing things, and it helps far more than I expected it to. LARLA is there to keep the destruction rolling. I've put the second one back in because I found that my game stalled after I had killed 5 bits of ICE and had not new way to get the Parasites out of my heap. Scrubbed was a new addition to the last iteration, and it is frankly amazing here. Everything costs 4 less to trash with the Wyrm - Parasite combo, which puts a lot of common ICE into the range where you can trash them with the credits from rez. Tollbooth, Ichi, Eli... seriously, everything except Archer and all the fiddly code gates becomes killable instantly. Fantastic. I really wish I could find a way to put another one in.

FUTURE STUFF:

I'm not 100% sold on Cyber Cypher here, as there will be times I need the flexibility. I've really missed the third R&D interface, so I'm agonising over whether or not to drop the last ghost runner for it.

Most of what this deck need is for me to practice! I lost to an NEH deck narrowly earlier; the entire loss can be ascribed to me being an idiot. He rezzed over 50 credits worth of ICE* in the game, all because I got so focussed on killing his ICE that I didn't realise I should just have grabbed Paricia and torn his economy to bits. Even then I only lost by 1; in the early game this deck is pretty hard to keep out.

*(Flare, Tollbooth, two Ichis, Taurus, two Rototurrets, three Elis and a Wraparound. I destroyed all bar the Flare, but it took far too long to do so)

0 comments