HUGE - Hercules's Unyielding Grit Emerges

Love big numbers? Well this deck is for you:

Basic premise

Weyland glacier deck showcasing the most taxing ice subtype in this meta - barriers. Score a Superior Cyberwalls early to make all your servers impossibly taxing, and score out with the help of your upgrades (or more often, just via sheer brute force).

Barriers are brutal

Morning Star is a phenomenal answer to the Eli-Markus-Waldemar nonsense going on next door at Haas-Bioroid, but here at Weyland with our advanceable ICE and Cyberwalls, it gets completely shut down. That aside, the most popular fracters in the game are Corroder/Battering Ram/Lady.

• Spiderweb costs 3/4/0 + 2 Lady counters.
• Fire Wall costs 4/4/2 + 1 Lady counter.
• Hadrian's Wall costs 7/6/4 + 1 Lady counter.
• Curtain Wall... don't even bother with fracters

Stacking any two of these makes the server too taxing to run every turn. Scoring a single Cyberwalls increases the credit cost by 2 per ice for the rest of the game. Only Lady breaches servers without suffering severe economic damage, but there's only so much recursion available. In very late game situations, you can potentially build a remote that requires 5 Lady tokens to breach.

Your usual non-fracter solutions are invalidated by Blue Sun:

• Parasite needs to be accompanied by enough STR lowering effects to destroy the ice on the same turn, otherwise you're bouncing the ice and trashing the Parasite in the process.
• Femme Fatale works for one turn... then you bounce the ice and the Femme can no longer use its bypass effect.

This leaves only a few real threats to your barriers, such as D4v1d, Grappling Hook, Knifed and Emergency Shutdown.

General tips

• In the first few turns, try to get away with as little ice on centrals as possible.
  • Usually, single ice on R&D is sufficient.
• Exception for run-based builds, Criminal in particular: consider slowplaying to strangle their run-based economy:
  • Defend your centrals.
  • Don't draw.
  • Keep at least 1 unrezzed ice on HQ, using Blue Sun's ability as necessary. Otherwise, it is very easy for the Runner to land Siphons with certainty.
  • If you have spare clicks, click for creds. Keeping a buffer of 30+ creds is justifiable if you anticipate Siphons and Shutdowns headed your way.
  • Or even advance your ice. Derez strategies are surprisingly ineffective against advanced Fire Walls.
  • Against Datasucker - Parasite decks, purge if they threaten enough Datasucker counters to kill your ice.
• Toss your early Curtain Walls on centrals. You may not be able to rez them in the first couple turns, but the Runner does not know this!
• Once you establish a remote, jam a facedown card in every single turn.
  • The whole idea is to fork the Runner into a lose-lose situation: either they waste resources checking your remote, or chance letting you score your agendas.
  • Even if the Runner guesses correctly and doesn't run your asset/upgrade bait, you can repeat the process easily as Blue Sun. At the start of your turn, rez your asset/upgrade, bounce it back into hand, and install a new card in the remote.
    • Doing this with Adonis Campaign is equivalent to clicking for 3 credits, and is a good way to earn money.
• If you're low on credits, use Blue Sun to bounce your ice.
  • This could give enough credits to play your expensive economy operations to get back up to speed.
• Scoring a single Cyberwalls is usually sufficient to win.
  • You don't want to score two. The second copy doesn't contribute to winning on agenda points, unless you follow up by scoring Global Food Initiative or the third copy of Cyberwalls (you filthy sadist).
• If you have two copies of Cyberwalls in your hand (Fast Track counts as a copy), jam one in your remote. If the Runner goes broke steals it, jam the other one. In this situation where the Runner steals one and you score one, you're usually coming out ahead because of the passive boost to your ice.

Oversight AI tips

• Seek opportunities to create forks.
  • Example: Play Oversight on a central Curtain Wall, and jam Cyberwalls into your remote on the same turn. The Runner likely can only challenge only one of them.
• Sometimes it is better to leave your oversighted Curtain Walls on the table, rather than cashing it in for 14 creds.
  • As long as the Runner doesn't have an efficient way to destroy it, you're coming out ahead regardless.

Amazon Industrial Zone tips

AIZ is an incredible economy card. Already 3 credits per turn is fairly strong for an economy card. AIZ takes it to the next level: it's 3 credits per ice. A typical way to establish your remote is to install AIZ + 2 ice protecting it on the same turn. You're now ahead 5 credits - that's pretty sweet!

Other benefits:

• It synergises with Cyberwalls. The more rezzed barriers you have, the more money you gain from scoring Cyberwalls.
• It thwarts credit/rez denial plans. You get to rez ice on your own terms!

Downsides of AIZ and how to mitigate them:

• You can no longer take advantage of penalising aggressive runners who faceplant into painful subroutines. This deck doesn't lose much in this regard, because the barriers don't have painful subroutines to begin with!
• AIZ players typically focus too much on icing a single server with AIZ (usually the remote) and lose off other servers. Blue Sun mitigates this problem by allowing you to bounce your AIZ to defend other servers.

Tips:

• It may seem tempting to bounce and reinstall the same ice on an AIZ server as a way to earn credits. There's a better line of play: leave your rezzed ice there, choosing to bounce the AIZ instead. Now you can begin construction on other servers and still gain an economic advantage.
• Be aware that AIZ and SanSan City Grid are both regions, so they cannot coexist in the same server.
• Don't wait for AIZ to show up to begin building a remote. Some games the runner finds and trashes it. Other games it simply doesn't show up. Play with the hand you're dealt.

Flex slots

• Defensive upgrades: SanSan and Ash could be swapped out to regain 5 influence and 2 card slots. I think it is good to have cards that assist with scoring, that can be jammed into the remote server.
• Caduceus: could swap 1-2 copies out for a sentry that actually requires the Runner to find an icebreaker. The code gates and sentries in this deck serve as gearchecks - taxing is primarily handled by the barriers.