Sun Gankers 1.0

Xandorius 1506

PRAISE THE SUN!

Sun

This deck has some surprisingly flexibility with a decent kill plan, clean scoring plan, and surprises for the runner! Across 25 games I've had a fairly even split between scoring out and Punitive kills, with a few spicy Ganked! kills too!

WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA? LET'S GANK SOME RUNNERS:

We're going to use big scary ICE with Ganked! to cause the runner no ends of grief! How does it work? Well early turns we can hopefully land an Oversight AI or Building Blocks on a Chiyashi or Orion. This allows us to use the Blue Sun: Powering the Future bounce to make money and get an early econ lead to support that big juicy ICE.

Then we start making an expensive server, but with a splash of Ganked! which can really mess with a runner's math or plan for success.

HOW MANY WAYS CAN YOU GANK?

Ganked! is very flexible if you have punishing ICE on the board, which Blue Sun excels at. You can use it in the remote to help protect assets/agendas, you can hold it in hand to surprise the runner in HQ, or when they dig in R&D they might just stumble across it. It's also an upgrade! Go ahead and install it in the root of a server if you like. So many ways to gank the runner.

GET CREATIVE IN YOUR GANKING

Here's some examples of seeing Ganked! in action:

  1. In the first couple turns I put down a Chiyashi unrezzed, with a Ganked! and an Oaktown Renovation in the server. The runner plays an Inside Job thinkin' they're all fancy. Rez the Chiyashi, they steal the agenda, and die to the Ganked!.

  2. They run HQ turn one and hit a Mausolus. It fires, they continue, hit the Ganked! and end the turn two cards down and two tags deep.

  3. Runner is on Engolo and plays The Maker's Eye on a single Trebuchet on R&D. They hit a Ganked! on the first access and can't use the Engolo effect a second time so the Trebuchet fires, trashes the Engolo, and prevents steals for the remainder of the accesses.

  4. Runner sees two facedown cards in the server. They access the Ganked! first which triggers Orion. It fires and ends the run, saving the Project Atlas in the server.

WHAT'S THE REST OF THE DECK DO?

Honestly, the rest of the list is your typical Blue Sun stuff. Run Punitive Counterstrike because bouncing big ICE can often give you that sudden econ burst to land those traces. Audacity let's you fast advance the gamepoint Project Atlas. Consulting Visit is a handy flex card to summon Oversight AI or Punitive. Early game face-checkers hitting Hortum or Mausolus give you a credit when the fire, then you can bounce them back. That's almost like clicking for a credit!

WHAT'S THE BIGGEST DOWNSIDE? HIPPOS ARE HARD TO GANK

I think Hippo gives you the most grief because it can really put a dent in your econ plan of cheating out big ICE and bouncing them for money. 419: Amoral Scammer can be a little challenging because you need to play your ICE well to not give too much away, along with not giving away the gank plan.

Finally, if you get your pieces in the wrong order your plan can go really poorly. A hand of big ICE with no ways to cheat it out, or the cheat cards with no big ICE, all that kind of thing. You're definitely vulnerable early when you might be installing big ICE without having the cash to rez it. Finally if you're against a runner like Ele "Smoke" Scovak: Cynosure of the Net who can get past big ICE for very cheap once she's set up, then you really need to focus on rushing because eventually the scary ICE doesn't do enough.

Feel free to make a suggestion or tell me how the deck runs for you! I've found it to overall be pretty smooth!

5 comments
9 Dec 2020 Diogene

@Xandorius While I have yet to try this deck, you've mentionned getting the wrong card in hand. It might be that, if you want to push the use of Blue Sun ID, you could get rid of NGO in favor of more Consulting Visit and Oversight AI. This would increase the chance of getting those big econ card in your hand. It is my current understanding that you will get more econ out of Oversight AI and Building Block than anything else.

This is theory crafting, I'll tell you more after some trials.

But Ganked! is such a powerful card. I'll try to use it more.

Thanks for sharing your deck. Cheers!

9 Dec 2020 Xandorius

@Diogene Hmm, that's a good consideration but I don't think I'd want to cut all the NGO Front. The reason being is that it's a powerful tool for bluffing an agenda. Installing and advancing it once makes it look a lot like a Project Atlas that you're trying to get a counter on.

10 Dec 2020 Saan

I could see 2 NGO and 1 Preemptive in favor of 3 Oversight and 2 Consulting. The Preemptives are good to get back Ganked, but I'm not sure how often you'd actually really need to. I say this not having played the deck, however.

11 Dec 2020 Xandorius

@Saan I definitely think there's merit to that! When starting with a corp deck I tend to keep two Preemptive to get a sense of what I'd want to recur etc and then usually drop down to 1.

After playing a bunch more I agree that getting an early big ICE bounce is key, so your change is worth trying out.

11 Dec 2020 Diogene

@Xandorius and @Saan, I agree with this change. I tried the deck and Oversight never came in hand (in one of the games). I think this change will make the deck stronger.