I’ve being playing Weyland almost exclusively for a year and made this deck which has been going alright. Here’s how The Board does it.

ICE

You know, the basics. Gear checks that can end the run. And there’s actually some good Weyland ICE that you can challenge the runner with. A well placed Wendigo is a gearcheck. Wormhole, Archer, Curtain Wall, Orion, Hive, Spiderweb, Red Tape, Meru Mati. Yeah, every Weyland barrier is at least fine.

Protective Upgrades

There are two protective upgrades in Weyland:

I’m pretty sure that the intended outcome of playing this is that you either make it too expensive to get through your HQ + remote ICE for the runner to score or (more likely) force them to spend so much that they come within range of The Kill Trace (see below). Crisium Grid forces a double run on HQ and requires the runner to spend on trashing the upgrade (punishing).

You know what makes me really happy? Breaker Bay + Off The Grid. Yeah. OTG isn’t a region. Do the happy dance.

I think the idea here is that you advance your ICE up to something respectable and then you use the Twins to get DOUBLE VALUE out of all of those clicks and credits you sank. Also, no-one plays The Twins so runners will never see it coming and screw up their run maths.

The big play with this, though, is the Ol’ Double Archer. Normally, if you see a Faerie or a Dagger, it’s time to money up and pray for a flatline/more sentries/Power Shutdown. With The Twins, you can hit them with the Archer twice from hidden information and without paying to rez the Archer or sacrifice another agenda, which is pretty sweet. I’ve never played a Weyland deck without HB recursion operations or Interns either, so there’s that too.

Criminals deal with Archer really well, through Faerie and Mongoose and Switchblade but landing those trash subroutines can break a Criminal player. Shapers can pull shenanigans too, with Clone Chip, SMC, Sharpshooter and the usual stealth nonsense but Shapers can flatline so easily that it’s fine.

When it comes to Weyland’s protective upgrade options, they just don’t have it in their slice of the faction pie. There aren’t many low-influence out of faction protection options that serve them very well, either. Those that do are the ones that tax the runner for scoring (Red Herrings), rather than taxing the corporation for protecting (Corporate Troubleshooter, Ash). And that’s because (we finally made it!)…

Everyone Dies And The Rich Die Last

If you can tax the runner enough, you can kill them. All you need is enough money to land The Kill Trace:

SEA Source/MidseasonReplacements and a couple of Scorched Earths

Punitive Counterstrikes

There are other ways of sticking tags (Posted Bounty, Ghost Branch, Snare!, ICE, False Lead) and other ways of dishing out out murder (Dedicated Response Team decks go alright, Checkpoint, Private Security Force), but the operations based method is least prone to disruption.

It’s also scary as hell.

Reveal a couple of pieces of the kill from your hand and you might be able to safely score under the mere threat of flatlining the runner. This is Weyland’s best protective upgrade. The cards in your hand that say “if you steal my agenda and end your turn too poor, you might lose next turn”.

Your flatline and scoring threats dovetail, and can be prioritised to the benefit of each other as the game continues.

Obviously, there can be issues getting the flatline or getting the trace off:

a Plascrete Carapace requires either hardware destruction or (IMO more reliable) Scorch recursion

a Film Critic requires tagging and trashing, Contract Killer, Snatch and Grab, multiple agenda installs or… Salem’s Hospitality?! Yeah, The Critic’s tough and nukes your best Kill Trace – Midseason Replacements. I hate bloggers.

Anti-flatline counterplay might be better discussed in another post. The point is, build right, and the threat can be more difficult for runners to neuter.

The Rush

Rushing out early agendas can be important because a runner with their rig setup can probably get into your scoring remote. Getting those early scores means relying on a mix of gear check ICE in the scoring remote and/or a scary early credit lead.

We could go into depth about rush but c’mon, almost everyone can rush. It’s just that Weyland can do it with the threat of an early flatline. And if they get to 5-6 points, they’re forcing runs on unrezzed remote installs with the constant threat of The Kill Trace.

Being A Tricksy Rabbit

There are also other ways to give the runner a hard time. Housekeeping forces the runner to have a smaller hand if they need to install from hand before making a run on your remote. Elizabeth Mills, Contract Killer and Corporate Town let you do some savage things to the other side of the board. Dedication Ceremony + Reversed Accounts can make a big enough credit swing to put you ahead for a while.

Summary

Exploit the credit differential and do everything in your power to make good on the threat of Blowing The Runner’s Mind. And maybe do some new stuff, because no-one will know how to deal with it.