Deep Dive: Cracking RareTotem’s YYR List & Winning Night City’s Worst Matchups

1. The Command Zone: Choosing Your Legend

• River Ward: Detective on the Hunt: The Combat-Trickster / Value Engine. River excels at discounting your 2 mana gear by 1 helps your hit your curve closer with some strong units, you can use it as a combat trick to quickly +2 or even +3 at quick speed. And also gives value when your equipped units die. 
  
  
• Viktor Vektor: Sit Down and Relax: The Sustainability Pivot. Viktor is your stabilizer. When playing matches where you need to use your gears actively, selling them for eddies aswell leaves your hand pretty dead. Vik helps you spring back when you need it, getting you some cards in hand or helping you fish for 2 drop gears you need like adrenaline converter.
  
  
• Adam Smasher: Ender of Legends: The Wall-Breaker. Smasher brings sheer raw power and psychological dread. Running Smasher as your active Legend forces opponents to hold back key removal or play sub-optimally out of fear that you’ll drop an unstoppable meat-grinder onto the field to steal their Gig dice. Also acts as a great late-game play so matter the situation!
  
  

2. Card Breakdown: Choices, Synergies & Exclusions

How the Deck Engine Functions

• Early Units (Bombus / Ripper): Establish early board pressure and act as cheap Cyberware carriers.

• Gear Suite (Mantis / Satori): Converts low-cost bodies into massive mid-game threats.

• Programs (Aftermath / Black Sapphire Show): Prevents card exhaustion and digs for key combo pieces.

• Board Control & Gig Threat: Anchor the board with Johnny Silverhand backed by high-value Cyberware to secure your win condition.

The Gear Engine (18 Cards)

• 3x Mantis Blades & 3x Satori: Sword of Saburo: Running 3 copies of each is non-negotiable. Satori offers massive threat potential, while Mantis Blades provide the immediate stat threshold needed to slice through blockers.
  
  
• 3x Mandibular Upgrade & 3x Zetatech Faceplate: Mandibular Upgrade is the secret star of this deck. Giving your units defensive stats or instant combat tricks allows you to convert an opponent's aggressive turn into a devastating trade. Faceplate ensures your equipped units stick on the field against damage-based removal.
  
  
• 3x Adrenaline Converter: Crucial for maintaining tempo. It allows equipped units to bypass initial turn lag or gain action priority, letting you contest Gigs immediately.
  
  
• 2x Arasaka Emergency Radioport & 1x Gorilla Arms: 2 Radioports offer tech survival against heavy Program decks, while 1 Gorilla Arms acts as a 1-of surprise bomb to break through super-heavy Taunt/Blocker units without overcommitting slots.
  
  

The Units (16 Cards)

• 3x Johnny Silverhand: Never Stop Fighting: The core anchor card. Johnny's persistent value and threat scaling force opponents to deal with him immediately, usually wasting their high-value removal before your main Gear suite hits the board.
  
  
• 3x Sketchy Ripper & 2x Secondhand Bombus: Essential early-game curve pieces. Bombus provides cheap board presence that can be equipped with Gear on turn 2 or sold for Eddies when needed. Ripper offers key early disruption that disrupts the opponent's setup turns.
  
  
  • Why run 3x 6th Street Recruits & 3x Rockn' Rockerboy? These units provide crucial early board wide-presence. Many lists run generic high-cost corporate units here, but lower-cost swarming units mean you always have a body ready to receive Cyberware upgrades.
    
    

The Programs (6 Cards)

• 3x Live with the Aftermath & 3x Bootleg Black Sapphire Show: Gear-heavy decks traditionally suffer from one major weakness: running out of cards. By running 3 copies of each, RareTotem solves this issue completely. Bootleg Black Sapphire Show keeps your hand refilled while digging for your core Gear pieces.
  
  

3. Sideboard Guide: Navigating Unfavorable Matchups

Matchup 1: Hyper-Aggro / Go-Wide Decks (Unfavorable)

• Sideboard In: 2x MaxTac Suppression Team, 2x Detonate

• The Issue: Fast aggro decks try to race your Gig count before you can get 2+ Gear pieces equipped onto a single unit.

• The Strategy: Detonate shuts down their primary attacker at instant speed, while MaxTac acts as an absolute brick wall. Instead of building one giant "Voltron" unit with all your Gear, spread your Gear out across 6th Street Recruits and other units to force bad trades on their side of the field.

Matchup 2: Hard Control / Wipe-Heavy Decks (Unfavorable)

• The Issue: Opponents who save heavy area-of-effect Programs to wipe your fully-equipped units, resulting in a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 card advantage loss for you.
  
  
• The Pivot: Bring in 1x Heywood Ripperdoc and 2x MaxTac Suppression Team.
  
  
• The Strategy: Do not overcommit all your Gear onto one body. Play Johnny Silverhand as a solo threat. When they finally use their high-cost removal to clear your equipped Unit, drop Heywood Ripperdoc to retrieve key Gear cards straight out of your discard pile and rebuild your board instantly.
  
  

Matchup 3: Tall Armor / Big-Stat Stompy (Even-to-Unfavorable)

• The Issue: Opponents dropping high-RAM, high-stat behemoths that out-stat standard Mantis Blade math.
  
  
• The Pivot: Bring in 1x Minotaur and 2x Detonate.
  
  
• The Strategy: Force them to declare attacks first. Use Detonate to remove their attached bonuses or clear their key blocker, then drop Minotaur to lock down the lane. Once their giant blocker is neutralized or removed, use your high-mobility units equipped with Adrenaline Converter to bypass them completely and steal their Gig dice directly.
  
  

Test Your Build at Wild Things Games!