As promised, here is my current fave corp deck built around code gates. This deck is very versatile, and is particularly nice against LFC decks, anything using BartMoss, and runners who try to use Precision Bribery (it only needs two subforts to play well...) The deck consists of the following: Ice- 8 x Misleading Access Menus 10 x Ball and Chain 3 x Mazer 2 x Haunting Inquisition Rock is Strong Minotaur Code Corpse Upgrades- Chester Mix 3 x Antiquated Interface Routines 2 x Crystal Palace Station Grid Nodes- Virus Test Site (or other advancable ambush node) 4 x Encoder, Inc. BBS Whispering Campaign Operations- 3 x Off-Site Backup 3 x Accounts Receivable New Blood Agenda- AI Chief Financial Officer 4 x Encryption Breakthroughs 3 x Tycho Extensions How to play this deck: When you start off the odds favor you pulling two or three pieces of ice, if your starting hand is all ice and operations (or upgrades like Crystal Palace which are expensive to trash) you create two subforts and put a piece of ice on R&D. If you draw an agenda you ice HQ and leave R&D. The objective during the initial turns should be to build one strong fort (with Minotaur or Haunting Inquisition at the inside) and a second subfort which has reasonable protection. If Precision Bribery is not played by the runner then you can create a third subfort (this fort can be weaker than the others and consist mostly of Misleading Access Menus.) The fun begins when you draw your first Encoder, Inc. and place it in the second subfort. This card is the key to this deck. The one bit reduction in rez cost is nice, but the key attribute of Encoders is the "add one end the run subroutine to each code gate." With a single Encoder in play Misleading Access Menus gains you three bits and stops runners better than Sleeper. The card which really wins with Encoders is Ball and Chain. This card in now better than a Mazer (Strength 5 with and end the run) and has the annoying "pay two bits when encountering ice" routine which eventually will always need to be broken as the forts get bigger and bigger. With two Encoders in play (the second Encoder goes into subfort #3) the Ball and Chain rezzes for free and has two end the run subroutines. Once a single Encoders is in play the runner is also usually obligated to break the "pay two bits when encountering a piece of ice for the remainder of the run" routine because after raising the icebreaker strength enough to get past the end of run routines it will at least cost as much to pay that subroutine penalty as to break the routine (the only exception is when Ball and Chain is the inside piece of ice, but this usually only happens at the beginning of the game or during the midgame until the New Blood is played and the Ball and Chain ice is rearranged to the outside of the forts.) The big ice (Minotaur, Code Corpse, Rock, and Haunting Inquisition) are to keep the runner honest. There is no getting around installing a full set of breakers against this deck. Chester Mix makes building the big fort cost less, and the Antiquated Interface Routines are a nice way to boost the strength of the ice (as well as pushing Mazer and Ball and Chain above the second breakpoint for Skeleton Passkeys.) The Crystal Palace Station Grid gets installed on the big fort. Now each of those "end the run" routines which Encoders is adding on to all of the code gates cost an additional bit, and if the runner is trying to get through using icebreakers which have a zero break cost they will start feeling the "death by a thousand paper cuts" which this deck is designed to inflict. The New Blood is to rearrange your ice once you have the Minotaur installed somewhere. With New Blood you can rearrange the main subfort so that Minotaur is at the bottom (and with a Crystal Palace and AIR upgrade that Minotaur becomes a real bitch to get past...) The Off-Site Backups are to recover the Encoder, Inc. which get trashed by the runner once they catch on to what is happening. With a zero rez cost on Encoder you can simply think of Off-Site as Encoder-to-be which can't be trashed out of HQ or R&D and which can be used to pick up another trashed card if you happen to need it :) [With this deck I will sometimes store a few agenda in Archives and pull them back when I want them, the runner is usually too distracted by preparing for the big forts to make a run on Archives and it reduces the need to protect HQ.] The agenda is fairly simple. The Encryption Breakthrough makes each code gate one stronger, and if you score after four or five turns you will end up getting ten or twelve bits from it because almost all of the ice are code gates. The strength boost from Encryption Breakthroughs is also a big win against certain runner icebreakers. The AI CFO is used to recycle operations and also to prevent you from getting decked. This deck is purposely slow, there are no fast advancement cards in it because as the corp you can advance agenda over several turns and unless the runner has twenty or thirty bits available (moving up to thirty or fourty bits by the end of the game) there is no way they can get in to the main subfort. I learned the hard way in a tournement that a single AI CFO is not enough; if the runner gets lucky and manages to score the AI CFO then you need to hope that your agenda are not clustered at the bottom of the deck or else you will not have enough time to advance and score them. The Tychos are there to fill out the mix. At one time I actually used Political Overthrows instead of the Tychos (and managed to score them on two occasions against good players who knew that a PO was being advanced in the main fort) but if the runner gets lucky early and manages to score a PO out of HQ or R&D before you rez an Encoder then a certain amount of panic can set in which distracts you. This deck plays somewhat unconventionally. It builds slowly and incrementally, but if the runner does not run you hard at the start of the game then they are going to be facing forts which are impervious to even a run powered by three Loan From Chiba. With this deck the corp is at an advantage to slow the game down during the early turns, do not spook the runner by advancing an agenda in a fort (although you could advance the Virus Test Site to deter the runner from running forts.) The incremental build of this deck is ususally enough to keep ahead of the runner, and the deck is flexible enough that if you face a runner with a particular strategy (e.g HQ or R&D attacks) it is quite simple to build up the appropriate forts in the same manner as the main subfort. There are no advertisements for On The Fast Track or Subliminal Corruption and only one piece of Black ice, so a bad publicity runner is also out of luck. The strength of the large (and cheap to rez!) forts which this deck builds should not be underestimated. By midgame a main subfort of a Minotaur inside, four Ball and Chain, and a Misleading Access Menu with a Crystal Palace Substation and Antiquated Interface Routines installed is very, very difficult for the runner to penetrate. Assuming that a single Encryption Breakthrough has been scored and the runner has a single Encoders, Inc. rezzed, here is the cost for getting through the ice for various icebreakers: Code Gate costs- Krash: 10 for MAM, 92 for 4 Ball and Chain BartMoss: 6 for MAM, 40 for 4 Ball and Chain Codecracker: 4 for MAM, 36 for 4 Ball and Chain Skeleton Passkeys: 5 for MAM, 32 for 4 Ball and Chain Raffles: 3 for MAM, 32 for 4 Ball and Chain Cyphermaster: 4 for MAM, 24 for 4 Ball and Chain Wizards Book: 4 for MAM, 48 for 4 Ball and Chain Dupre: [varies, but assuming the best that it was used on the MAM several times to boost it to strength seven for a total cost of 42 over six runs] 3 for MAM, 16 for 4 Ball and Chain Tinweasel: can't be passed using Tinweasel Minotaur cost- Krash: 25 BartMoss: 15 Looney Goon: 15 Wild Card: 20 Shaka: 16 Raptor: 19 Black Dahlia: 15 Redecorator: 14 Big Frackin' Gun: 6 (although one more code gate pushes this to 12) Not bad for a fort which only costs a total of seven to rez. With Chester Mix and the bits for the Encryption Breakthrough this fort also only costs twelve bits for installing the ice and install/rez on the upgrades. Even the ideal combo of Cyphermaster and BFG for this particular arrangement costs the runner 34 bits...and one more MAM on the fort bumps the ideal cost up to 44 bits; the additional MAM ups the total install cost to seventeen and drops the total rez cost to four bits :) [A second Encoders and you rez all ice for free and the cost to get in goes up by at least eight bits.] Once you get experienced with how this deck plays you will find it a useful addition to your collection of decks. The defensive nature of this deck makes it a good choice for tournement play where you are not sure what you are going to be facing and do not want to get hosed by a runner deck which happens to have the right combination of cards or otherwise exploits a weakness in your deck. Because most people do not play with multiple code gate breakers in a tournement deck you can also consider changing the Virus Test Site to an Experimental AI; if you trash the runners code gate breaker and they can't get it back the game is over... jim aka "McCodeGate"