Money for Running and Clicks for Free v3 (4th, BABW Leeds)

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Repartition by Cost
Repartition by Strength
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
PowerlessCube's: Hadrian's Wall Tourney Express (20ish/54)
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Chappers 508

As a long-time devotee of the cult of the Anarch, I knew my first-ever Criminal deck had to be three things: fast, aggressive and a bit weird. The design seemed to work reasonably well as it took me to 3rd in Swiss and 4th place after double elim at the Leeds BABW* qualifier in the UK, only dropping a couple of games all day.

How does the deck work? Simple:

(1) Card draw. You have lots of it. Make use of your cards and then get more and use the new ones. You should expect to cycle through the entire deck in the course of most games. This is a good thing and will scare your opponent.

(2) Money. Your Prepaid Voice Pads should mean you have a lot of it: Dirty Laundry onto a Security Testing with Desperado out is a click for nine credits. This is rather good. Generally, Ken means that if you're playing a run event every turn (and you should be) you're gaining at the very least 2 credits from that run (1 from Ken and one from Desperado). This should help you outpace many Corps economically, and you can use that money to create constant pressure.

(3) Weirdness. As well as the usual Criminal pressure on HQ, this deck is capable of putting serious pressure on R&D via Medium. This is something very few opponents will expect and puts strain on most corps' ice suites, as Corps find themselves having to spread their resources over two key central servers rather than one. Most games with this deck will be won via R&D.

This isn't a hard deck to pilot, but the key is aggression, constant pressure, and cycling through the deck to bombard the corp with challenging run events. It worked well on the day and I'm already working on a revised version.

And which song are we referencing today? - it's "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, and the pun made much more sense when this was a deck based around Comet. I regret nothing - it's so much better with Desperado.

(*Bring Another Brit to Worlds, the UK arm of the ANRPC.)

6 comments
2 Aug 2015 W4lt3r B15h0p

Looks like we have the same sense of humor and damn near identical decks. netrunnerdb.com

I like your idea of Lawyer Up for tag removal. I might experiment with that instead of Crash Space. My meta got wise on Security Testing so I dropped it in favor for Symmetrical Visage and Kati Jones. I love Comet in Ken "Express" Tenma: Disappeared Clone but I've gotten to where I can run strong without it. Desperado could be tested in the near future. Most of the time I play like a good ole fashion criminal. Early pressure. Fast. Aggressive. Face-checking. I like you what your working with it.

2 Aug 2015 Chappers

Thanks - I'm glad I'm not the only person on here with a thing for song puns!

This deck started out as a Ken-Comet deck I was planning to run at the Uroborus Cup (the 66-player side event after UK Nationals); in the end I couldn't quite make it work in time and decided to play my Nationals deck again instead (Valencia). I stuck with it though after Nationals and it's pretty much the only runner deck I've been playing since then.

I dropped Comet fairly early - it produced some fun combos and exciting turns, but Desperado is just too good:

  • (1) it contributes to you spending most of your games drowning in money;
  • (2) the 3-cred cost makes a big difference early game over 4-creds;
  • (3) there's no influence hit so you can run 3-of rather than 2;
  • (4) it synergises really well with Pre-Paid Voice Pad and all the run events you're doing - Inside Job, for instance, becomes effectively "gain 2 creds and bypass the first ice you encounter", which is insane; and
  • (5) it means that checking random face-down cards isn't a tempo hit, it's basically clicking for a credit with the added bonus of finding out what the facedown card is.

I'd be interested in what made you decide to stick with Comet - do you feel that the boost in speed from (effectively) getting 5 clicks a turn was worth the loss of credits?

The rest of the deck was focused on (1) run events; (2) masses of card draw to cycle through the deck so that you can keep playing run events; and (3) Levy so you get to do it again and/or save yourself if the Corp trashes part of your rig.

I like your deck - is there a reason you didn't include Pre-Paid Voice Pad? I'd probably consider it one of the 5 best cards in my deck, and you're running even more events than I am! I'd also add that it's funny you mentioned Lawyer Up - to my mind it's only good in this deck because of the Pre-Paid Voice Pads, as they mean that you can effectively clear your Account Siphon tags and draw three cards for two clicks and no real money. If I weren't running Pre-Paid Voice Pad I'd probably drop the Lawyer Up.

3 Aug 2015 W4lt3r B15h0p

@Chappers I've been asked a lot about why I didn't include Prepaid VoicePAD in a deck that runs so many events. In my earlier testing, the card just didn't seem to gel. For whatever reason every time I played the card I would experience a hit in tempo. The only time I've used the Prepaid VoicePAD without issue has been in Kate "Mac" McCaffrey: Digital Tinker deck. My conclusion is the card just works better in Kate. Granted my experience with it maybe an anomaly but everytime I played it w/ Ken wished I played something else.

My recursion comes from Déjà Vu in the event of a Power Shutdown which is starting to show a lot more lately hence why I play with two. If i decide to test out Desperado I'll likely slot in Levy AR Lab Access with the freed up influence.

Now Comet. Lately I've been playing quite a bit on Jinteki. Comet is a bit buggy on the site(despite the contrary). Because of this, it forced me to only use Comet when necessary. Ironically by playing it less it made me better at piloting my deck. I still love the click compression it offers so it'll take some time for me to completely ween off of it.

5 Aug 2015 Chappers

The difference with this deck, I think, is that it isn't meant to be an all-out aggressive criminal. I don't really care about a loss of early-game tempo if it means I'm richer in the mid- and late-game. I agree that Prepaid VoicePAD works better in Kate "Mac" McCaffrey: Digital Tinkerte (it's certainly cheaper!) but once installed I find I use that recurring credit pretty much every single turn, which is a fantastic return on the investment.

Déjà Vu is an interesting suggestion - I'm actually tempted to splash it in the next version as a one-off to offset the same problem with Power Shutdown, which is something I've encountered and is only going to get worse if Marcus Batty becomes more popular.

And yeah, Comet. It's just a lot of influence for an extra event a turn, and often you're not going to want to play multiple events each turn because if you do you're wasting money: if I play one run event in a turn, I don't want to play a second unless I have to because I won't trigger Ken "Express" Tenma: Disappeared Clone's ability, and if I've used my Prepaid VoicePAD credits it's a waste to play a non-run econ event. Add to that the extra credit from Desperado every run and for this deck it's very difficult to look past it.

15 Oct 2015 PowerlessCube

Hey!

I just wanted to say thanks for the deck.

I took a modified version to my first tournament, and though I didn't rank terribly High, learning to deck build and see how best the cards interact with the each other while piloting the deck was a blast.

Thanks for the inspiration!

-PC

15 Oct 2015 Chappers

Thanks - I'm glad you got something out of it! It's a fun deck to run, I miss playing it - I stopped because rig-destruction became a huge thing in the Yorkshire meta and this deck really struggles to deal with that sort of strategy.