Kiriko is such a broken hero. If you can’t get value out of her, you just need to get good. Everyone knows low elo (below pro) struggles with getting value out of some heroes in the game, but that doesn’t make those heroes bad, it makes you bad at the game. If you’re not winning with Kiriko, it’s a skill issue. TP and Suzu are hard carry abilities that win games as long as you turn on your monitor and have hands.

I just genuinely don’t understand all the frustration. Kiriko has been meta for as long as the earth has been formed (approximately 4.5 billion years). It’s okay if she has a season where she’s finally balanced so you neanderthals have to get good at the game instead of being carried by a broken hero into elo’s you don’t belong in.

It’s like the blizzard dev team finally rubbed their last 2 braincells together and actually balanced Kiriko. Hopefully they keep it up and we see some Genji nerfs and Ana buffs in the mid season.

I've only recently jumped on the sim and lost my notes for my paper games, but I've been working on a way to make the Relic work since receiving my boxes during the middle of last week. This is where I'm at so far on getting something working that I think is competitively viable (potentially).

Our matchup into BBG is incredibly strong, with only 1 loss so far between paper and sim; though I honestly haven't been seeing much of it in the sim so I'm guessing as the meta develops and people deck-build it's being shut down pretty hard by other decks as well! In my experience, YYx in general seems to have a good matchup into BBx.

Now, we can get into card decisions, flex slots, testing, etc!

Staples

There's a lot of ways to build this deck and the game is so new I'm hesitant to call anything a "staple", but these are cards that I've never once considered cutting. I can't find any reason, any replaceable effect, or they're so strong individually there's just nothing to outclass them yet.

River Ward: As a legend in yellow, I think he is an absolute house and premium option nearly regardless the deck list. Essentially acting as a form of card selection AND ramp for your gear is already pretty great, but he also can act as a combat trick to eat a blocker disrupting rival attacks by simply leaving him readied (regardless of what's actually in your hand). Not only all of that, but for our deck specifically, he is an excellent source of self-mill and selectively filling your trash. He makes your draws better, cheats costs on gear, can do that on a rival's attack to surprise them or deter attacks into units (bluff), and fills your trash. S-tier legend for this deck, irreplaceable.

Muamar Reyes: As long as BBG is a major part of the meta, there is no better way to disrupt them than a zetatech faceplate attached to your muamar reyes. He's better than running a red fixer because he can adjust the gig up OR down, meaning you can always play with even/odd to further your own game-plan and adjust Hanako's gigs exactly as you need to always keep them off value pairs. Attaching a zetatech faceplate allowing him to do it twice and potentially draw a card is even better. Plus, if he's the last legend you have left to flip, his on call to prevent a unit from losing a fight can single-handedly determine the outcome of a game. Otherwise, he flips and draws a card, which is "fine". All in all, I don't think the yellow legend slot is up for debate in this deck unless BBG (or really Hanako decks in general) falls off hard.

Sketchy Ripper: Absolutely cracked unit. His attack trigger is fantastic letting you find the gear you need, and a prime target to put a Relic on T2. A Sketchy Ripper with a relic on it has exactly 1 interaction window and it is the opponents following turn. Beyond that, it becomes a nightmare for your opponent to deal with either losing tempo on double casting a pyramid song (we're keeping every blue deck off a min d4 gig as a rule), using a towerfall, or eventually biting the bullet and spending a unit into it or using defeat removal, in which case we get something even better from the yard. 9/10 times, this guy sticks around until we decide to blow him up ourselves, generating insane value.

The Heist: Probably the best card in the deck. 2 cost, trash 4, maybe we get a gear from it and maybe we get to equip it for free. Doesn't really matter, the key here is just trashing 4 for 2 and not being forced to grab units with it. With our high top end threat density, we often see a hit off of it or at least know we're working towards it.

Safety Override/Live With The Aftermath: preem removal. if we have no units, live with the aftermath just says "a rival chooses and defeats a unit". Pretty sweet. Also, this is how we blow up our own relic bearing little guys for insane blow out plays.

Johnny Silverhand: Cracked unit. We're trying to go full aggro, Johnny is single-handedly what allows that. Probably one of the best units in the game. The always wins against corpos is surprisingly relevant, but even without it, being able to chip away at their units for essentially "free" is gnarly. He's basically an Adam Smasher that gets to Go Solo every turn. Gross. Easy to pump to 10, all around maybe our best unit.

Jackie Welles - Ride or Die Choom: Another contender for our best unit. Not super often, but not super rare to get him to 20+ power stealing three gig dice in a single combat. Less utility than Johnny, more oomph.

Alt Cunningham - Mother of Daemons: probably controversial, unless you've played her. Regardless of if you just run her out naturally or hit her off the relic, she is our best source of draw and that discard to protect a gig is no joke. It's a bit luck bound, but wins games. So does her draw. Has been the only card that would win me games I've won. All around, probably our weakest reanimation target but as of now until more sets come out nothing competes for her slot.

The Gear: All of the gear listed is playsets and all of it is mandatory. You could flex in more gear, but I'd never cut any of it. All of it should be self-explanatory, it's best in slot gear in the colors.

Flex Slots

That means the rest of the cards are flex slots! That includes Adam Smasher. I've tested with V Streetkid as a simple "on call mill 3" and while that was good, I was finding I just wanted some oomph from the legend zone. That led to me cutting a safety override and 2x Gorilla Arms to slot in 3 Bootleg Black Sapphire Show's and Adam Smasher. I've only played a few games with this change and while win rate hasn't been effected, it feels a bit better and there's been games that Adam Smasher wins on his own. Prior to V Streetkid, the list with the most testing had the gorilla arms and safety override back in, no black sapphire, and Johnny Silverhand the legend instead. He also won games, he often gave our unit Johnny 10 power on his own so we didn't need to gear him up, and let our Johnny unit act as a pseudo one sided wipe (removing 2 units is close enough to a wipe in most games).

Prior to the bombus, I was running japantown jonin. I liked their flexibility while still wearing the relic effectively. That said, leaning into the relic plan I can imagine a blocker with a relic on it and a bomb in the yard heavily deters attacks. It also incentivizes bottom deck removal, which I've said before is fine on tempo for us. I think it'll perform better, but that random +2 from dropping a jonin we could then sac to live with the aftermath to defeat one of their units will be a line that is missed and in mind every time I have a bombus in hand.

Maxtac Suppression Team is quickly working it's way onto the staple list. I can't see myself ever cutting this card, especially because what it replaced was the 5 cost Viktor Vektor unit that discounts your first cyberware by 3 each turn. The problem is, River's ability counts towards playing your first cyberware so sequencing is important and a slight slip can cost you a game, but also since cutting gorilla arms all he discounts is the relic which isn't good enough. Maxtac Suppression Team has actively won games on it's own vs Viktor's "assisting the win" and sometimes "win-more" feeling.

V Roamer of the Badlands is a total flex slot and basically just a card waiting for something better to be printed. Sure, it draws. Sure, it increases gigs we steal to push it's draw further. It absolutely needs to be replaced by another source of draw on a unit. That's sort of why she's hard stuck in the list for now, but one of the very first cards I'm looking to cut for something better (either a low cost draw engine or high cost but higher stats). She's also prime to be replaced by something that enables our self mill a bit better, since self mill is kind of like drawing in this deck.

Record and Gameplan

A lot of people call The Relic a "trap". I do think that's accurate, but you have to decide in deck building if it's a trap you're falling for, or a trap you're setting for your rival.

The Relic in it's current state is not a combo card. Sure, there is T1 Ripper->T2 Relic->T3 Heist+Aftermath or Heist+Safety Override (if you can attack a higher power unit) and while that line does occur naturally somewhat frequently (probably 15-20% of games) it's NOT something you are building around doing every game every time, even with a mulligan. Mulligan for it, but if you miss, you need a plan.

What the relic DOES do is make your units incredibly sticky. Do they really want to swing and defeat your Johnny with a relic on it when there's another Johnny in the yard? Remember: cards that get reanimated on your rival's turn from being defeated in combat DO NOT HAVE LAG when it comes back to your turn. Even doubly so if you have it on a ripper or bombus or jonin and a Johnny, Jackie, or Alt in the yard. Heck, even a V or suppression team can be good enough to be a major deterrent. The thing is, as long as the unit you can reanimate is 5 cost, you're not down in tempo. You essentially made your little 0 power dork able to steal a gig by playing your better unit on a delay. Yes, they can bottom deck it. HECK YEAH! Please, spend a turn bottom decking my little dorky dude instead of developing your board and taking my gigs. I love that for me. Why? Because once we're playing haymakers from hand T3+, starting T4 all of our units with 1 single gear on them are stealing 2 gigs. Each. This creates an attrition war in the late game our rival just can't keep up with. Especially with a guaranteed Smasher coming, or with a Johnny on the field. If they do wipe our dork, and get ahead early, ALSO HECK YEAH! That means our adrenaline converter is online. That means T4 we can play johnny, spend River, and have an adrenaline 10 power johnny. That's defeating a unit and taking 2 gigs, and we're following that up with a likely 11 power smasher next turn. Ouch. That's them losing 3 units (1 of any power, 2 under 10 or corpos of any power), and 6 gigs in a spread of 2 turns. Talk about back breaking. This deck is very proactive but not overly linear. There are plenty of opportunities for skill expression in lines taken, but we are looking to be the one demanding answers, not the one presenting them.

For my sim games, records are as follows (I'm almost always going 2nd for some reason as well):

YYR Relic -- Johnny/River/Muamar

Loss - misplay

Win - YYB dumdum/Kerry/V

Win - GGR Arasaka yorinobu/saburo/Hanako

Win - RRG Johnny/Adam Smasher/Hanako

YYR Relic -- V/River/muamar

Loss - YYG Relic River/Kerry/Hanako

Loss - Y(Y/B)B Rogue/?/Sasha

YYR Relic -- -Gorilla Armsx2 -safety overridex1 +Bootlegx3 Adam/River/Muamar

WIN - BBG Alt/Jackie/Hanako - going 2nd

WIN - YYY Relic Smasher Reanimator (don't remember)

WIN - YYY Relic Smasher Reanimator (Rogue/River/?)

loss - BBG Alt/Jackie/Hanako going 2nd again (early concede, should've played it out)

WIN - YYB Jackie/Kerry/River

YYR Relic -- -Viktor Vektor x2 +Maxtac Suppression Team x2

Loss - I don't remember, yellow gear, going 2nd

WIN - YYR Rogue/River/Royce going 2nd

WIN - GGR Goro(blocker go solo)/Saburo/Yorinobu going first

I don't recall exact paper stats but the vast majority of the games were against BBG with a 100% win rate (could be pilot error or flex slot picks/exact build variation, but regardless). This deck feels great into BBG, and most of the other YYx gear decks being played. My one loss into BBG was avoidable, I got eager with the concede and I likely would've won if I played it out. I forgot my Alt would draw cards off equipped legends being spent lol. I might upload some of the game replays to YouTube, and do a video Deck Tech there. Only a possibility, I'm not super active on YouTube due to work always being crazy, and brewing/testing taking up plenty of time. Next on my list to at least get first impressions and iterations like this is BBRaindances, it was actually the very first deck I built out of my first 2 boxes opened and I saw a YouTuber cover the same deck recently so I'm excited to see what my take on it has to offer. Tested that a lot in paper too, it's okay into BBG and is a BLAST to play.

Happy to discuss possible changes in cards, if I'm wrong on any staple picks, and just discuss the game in general! Love brewing, testing, theorycrafting, and most of all playing! Best of luck out there chooms!

Edit: in discussing lines and play, I mentioned playing an Adam Smasher the turn AFTER playing a johnny with adrenaline converter. I'm assuming you played a bootleg black sapphire show at some point, as we aggressively mulligan and look for this card to be able to play at least one copy of it to get smasher out before it's even possible for the game to be over. That said, if you didn't smasher would come out the following turn, not the turn immediately after a Johnny+converter