This is a deck concept I’ve had for a while, but when I first thought of it, there wasn’t really the card volume to pull it off well.  The big idea behind this deck is that it’s a glacier deck with all of the ICE being Code Gates.  In theory, this makes as much as two thirds of the Runner’s Icebreaker draws dead draws because Killers and Fracters are not going to do him or her any good.

I was a little nervous about doing this with Code Gates because they seem a bit conditional, but there was enough unconditional “End the Runs” and a few others that it seemed like it should work.  Also, with Machicolation, it has some teeth to punish the Runner with something other than wasted clicks.

For agendas, I chose Underway Renovation to provide a bit of removal – there is a bit of a race going on in this deck to see who can get to the Decoders first.  Underway Renovation also provides a “bait agenda” for things like Hunter Seeker or Will-o’-The-Wisp.  Armored Servers helps support my glacier by making it harder to break through if they do get a decoder or if they take it on with their AI breakers.  Utopia Fragment is the stretch for this deck, but if I can score that, it makes Underway even more terrifying for the Runner.

Kala Ghoda again helps me do spot removal before the Runner draws it, and Capital Investors is to help my economy (this deck seemed to be a bit hungrier for credits than the last few).  I also included one upgrade in this deck – Will-o-Wisp; my goal here is to get rid of the runners Decoders, so if they happen to have one when they run on Wil-o-Wisp, it gives me the chance to get rid of it.  Finally, I’ve included Jackson Howard to do a bit of recursion, maybe get those Khala Ghodas or other spot removal should I need it.

The operations in this deck basically fall into two categories – economy and removal.  You’ve probably seen this economy package in enough other decks that there’s nothing surprising here.  For removal, I went with Hunter Seeker and Salem’s Hospitality (pulling in the Alliance to avoid the influence cost).  Hunter Seeker is mostly to pair with my bait agenda, but Salem’s Hospitality synergizes with itself, but also Kala Ghoda – I’ve got a decent chance of knowing what’s in the Runner’s hand if I can keep those on the table.

Finally, of course, there’s all the Code Gates.  A lot of these punish the runner in terms of clicks or credit swings, but that’s Code Gates for you.  I found that my Runner smartly didn’t always break all the subroutines on these (and had a tendency to run on the last click), which made it not as costly as I feel like it should have been.  Still, there are enough End The Runs on these Code Gates that it still slowed the Runner considerably and made for some tight games.

I named this deck Astudillo Defense Systems because it’s a glacier deck, and I wanted to name it after a real-life Glacier.  Astudillo Glacier is a glacier in Antarctica, and one of its tributaries is the Ice Gate Glacier.  So, just as the Astudillo Glacier was built from the flow of Ice Gate Glacier, my deck was built up from Code Gates – it seemed a fitting name.