"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

This is the deck I brought to the Louisville regional expecting to get blown out. Instead, this deck went 5-0 in Swiss and carried me to the top 8. If you're a Johnny or a Timmy, or if you just want to troll Faust decks and blackmail spammers, this is the deck for you.

The central card in this deck is the bizarre Surat City Grid, a Weyland upgrade that allows you to rez any card at a 2 discount whenever you rez an asset or upgrade in the same server or when you rez an ICE protecting the server Surat is in. I abuse this card by combining it with the often-overlooked Brain-Taping Warehouse and a deck full of over-priced bioroids.

So here's how the deck works: start by defending your centrals with a single ICE or two, preferably with the "install, take 2 credits" cadence that works so well for EtF. Start building a remote and defend an economy asset if you can. Whenever you get a spare piece of ICE, throw it over your remote--ideally you'll want 3 pieces so you can use your Ash(es) on R&D with full knowledge that your remote is unassailable. As soon as you have a Surat City Grid in your scoring server and at least one Brain Taping Warehouse or Tech Startup you're ready to begin. Whenever you have the credits to pull off the combo, end your turn, rez your Surat City Grid, rez all of your Brain Taping Warehouse(s), rez any asset or upgrade in your scoring server (this can be one of your Brain Tapings if the runner is aggressively trashing your naked assets), and rez one of the ICE protecting your scoring server for a discount of 6, 10, or 14 depending on how many Warehouses you've amassed. After rezzing the first piece of ICE, repeat the process for each ICE in the server at the same discount. When all the ICE in that server has been rezzed, continue the combo by rezzing one ICE over R&D. If you're particularly ambitious and have an extra Surat City Grid, you can install it on R&D and rez it before your R&D ICE, allowing you to continue the chain on a third server.

This combo seems like it would be onerous or rare, but I found it was rather easy to pull off, both in testing and in almost all of my games. (One opponent saw the writing on the wall and trashed all the Brain-Taping Warehouses early. But the tempo loss he incurred helped him to lose the game.) Like all the best combos, it still helps you if you only have a few of the pieces. Brain-Taping Warehouse will save you a few credits as soon as it's on the table. And Surat City Grid can be used to rez ICE with a small discount if the runner attacks your scoring server before the combo is ready. If all else fails, spam your extra assets and upgrades wide, gaining a credit and taxing the runner's time and money to go after your remotes.

The highlight of my day with this deck was the game where I was allowed to have all 3 Brain-Taping Warehouse. (I was taxing the runner and he didn't want to lose what little money he had when he didn't see their function anyway.) I was down 6-0 when I rezzed the 3 Warehouses, the Surat City Grid in my scoring server, a Jackson Howard to start the combo, and then proceeded to rez 2 Janus 1.0 and a Heimdall 2.0 in my scoring server and my 3rd Janus over R&D. Despite his early lead, the runner got zero accesses on any server where there was an agenda for the rest of the game. Ash kept him out of R&D and I kept HQ empty.

I frequently rezzed Janus for 5, Heimdall 2.0 for 1, tons of free Heimdall 1.0s (Actually, I think Heimdall 1.0 is garbage ice at 8, though I'm happy enough with it when it's free.) Ichi, Viktor, and Eli really don't need the combo to be worthwhile and are your early game ICE, though it's still nice to get them for free too. The only change I'd make after the tournament is to trade the Aggressive Secretary (which only got rezzed to proc the Surat combo) for a second Tech Startup, which did a TON of work for me all day, finding me Warehouses the turn before the combo or Jackson Howard when I was flooded. The deck might also want an Interns or Archived Memories, but I felt like there was the perfect amount of ICE and just barely enough money to make the deck pop off, so I doubt I'll make that change.

If you haven't tried it yet, Janus is the perfect answer to Faust. I hard rezzed one against a Dumblefork early on a remote and it cost 5 cards and 2 to break. I then proceeded to Chronos Project behind the Janus a few turns later, destroying a Levy and two Parasites in a game I ultimately won because he ran out of steam. E3 makes this deck inordinately sad, but I actually still beat two decks I saw playing E3 because my ICE was still brutally taxing in both clicks and credits. Since most of your agendas can be never-advanced out and you have so many upgrades and assets, the runner rarely, if ever, tries to run your remote once you have a few free ICE rezzed. I only bothered having Ash in my scoring server if I wanted to try scoring a Food there.

Questions, comments, trolling, and mockery are welcome.