Record

This deck has gone 7/8 in the last two store championships I went to in the Greater Seattle Area. It carried Noise to 1st place in the Store Championship at Uncle's Games in Redmond (8 people), and with just one more Leela win in the SC at Card Kingdom would have made the top 8 cut (12th out of 26).

The worst thing that can happen to this deck is losing more than one agenda on R&D turn 1; that's the only way this deck has lost so far. I've been testing it for about a month on Jinteki.net to really good results. Even seeming problem match-ups like Edward Kim have not really posed much problem. This deck is rul rul fast. All the tournament wins were in 15 minutes or less.

Basic Strategy

This deck is all-in on tag-storm meat damage. Because Near-Earth Hub: Broadcast Center is totally balanced and not at all ridiculous, there's enough influence for all three Scorched Earth, all three Traffic Accident, and still 2 influence left-over for whatever else. Why not more Scorched Earths and Traffic Accidents? That's what Reclamation Order is for. I've won exactly one game with points during testing online. All meat-space wins have been flatlines.

It's hard to say what a "good" starting hand is with this deck. There are a lot of ways to make almost anything work. Generally, you don't want more than two agendas, and ideally one of them is NAPD Contract or Breaking News. Other than that, it's nice to see one of the nine assets for turn 1 install and draw, some kind of money, and any one piece of ice to protect the problem server for whatever the match up is. Turn one almost always goes: install a new server to draw, play a money operation/click for a bit, install ice over HQ or R&D. Very frequently you can sneak out a turn 2 Melange Mining Corp. for a huge economic advantage because people will expect it to be the naked Jackson Howard or Marked Accounts (or some card like PAD Campaign that's not even in the deck).

Getting the Kill

The rest of the game is just a matter of agenda management and getting money. Use Jacksons to control exactly where your agendas are and to draw into your important operations. Once you have Midseason Replacements, you just need to make sure you can get the Runner to steal something. Leaving an NAPD in Archives until they want it, installing one naked in a remote server and slow-rolling it, or keeping a Project Beale in hand are all great ways to make this happen. Leaving R&D just porous enough against the right Runner works well too (use Pop-up Window and Data Raven for this).

The most ideal situation responsible for a significant number of wins with this deck is having Midseason and meat damage in hand then playing install-advance-advance on Breaking News. 90% of the time it doesn't even need to be protected by ice, although Data Raven definitely works really well here. This is the ultimate lose-lose situation for the Runner. If they run and steal Breaking News you get to Midseason them for the kill, and if they leave it on the table you get to score it for the kill. Conveniently, two tags is how many you need for Traffic Accident.

Once you've landed the Midseason, the game just becomes a race; can the Runner steal enough agendas to win before you put them through the meat grinder? Probably not. An unprotected Runner can be killed with 2x Scorched Earth, 1 each of Scorched Earth and Traffic Accident, or 3x Traffic Accident, so getting any one of those combinations is pretty easy. You also have SO MUCH meat damage. Don't be afraid to play Scorched Earth or Traffic Accident just for value. It will slow the Runner down, and you can always get them back with Jackson and Reclamation Order (it makes the Runner really sad when your turn is Sweeps Week and Reclamation Order for two or three Scorched Earths).

Counterplay

The two big matchups I always worry about in deck building are Account Siphon and Keyhole, especially since Eater became a thing. This deck is naturally resistant to Account Siphon- there's enough economy in here to just power through however many Siphons the Runner wants to play, Data Raven on HQ makes Siphon a much more dangerous play, and the main win-con punishes tags. This deck also has a good amount of natural Eater hate. Wraparound taxes Eater really heavily until Corroder hits the table, Universal Connectivity Fee will knock out the Runner's funds, there's plenty of recursion, and Information Overload just outright counters Eater. Once you've landed the Midseason, Information Overload has too many subs for the Runner to deal with and they just start losing their rig until they can't run anymore.

I know what some of you are thinking. What about meat damage protection? Don't Plascrete Carapace and I've Had Worse just turn the deck off? And the answer is a solid nope. For one, this deck moves so fast that most Runners don't have time to get any protection up and running unless they play Plascrete on turn 1 just in case. Even against Runners who do eventually get some protection online, this deck has ALL THE MEAT DAMAGE. Just burn through their Plascretes and then Reclamation Order the Scorched Earths. Or play all three Scorched Earths in one turn. Traffic Accident is a great finisher here as well; burn through the Plascretes with the big damage, then clean up next turn with Traffic Accident. If you suspect I've Had Worse, shoot with Traffic Accident first to have less chance of hitting the I've Had Worse, then kill with Scorched Earth.

Future Considerations

I've thought about switching to NBN: Making News, but those last two influence points are really crucial and the 2 don't really help much until it the game winning play, so they would be sort of wasted. There's also something to be said about the Runner needing to plan for any kind of NEH match up. If the Runner plays really fast to try and race out the Astrotrain, then that only helps you kill them faster.

There are three problem card slots that I don't know what to do with.

- Reclamation Order feels really important for recurring all the meat damage.... but it's hardly ever necessary. This deck plays so fast that you usually don't need to go get the Scorched Earths back. It has won me exactly one game (in testing), and been hand clog most of the rest of the time.

- Universal Connectivity Fee. I seriously don't know what to do with the last two slots of this deck. I've tried Dracō, Psychographics, and Tollbooth, but none of them ever did anything for the deck. UCF is the latest audition, but it has yet to put in much work either.

tl;dr

This deck is a really fun, fast, low-energy way to play for the kill. Pair with a slow or thought-intensive Runner; you will usually have 3/4 of the round left to play the other side.