Haarpsichord PsychoBeale (1st @ Enchanted Grounds Summer)

CrimsonWraith 3643

Won a 14-player GNK with this list, went 3-1 with it over the course of the tournament. Not too much to discuss here, if you're familiar with the archetype, this is the same old Midseason/Psychographics line of thought. If you're not familiar, the game plan is to stockpile tons of money, drop an agenda out as bait (score it if they don't take it), get off a Midseason (preferably landing 13+ tags), and Psychographics out a Project Beale for the win.

I discovered in testing that Film Critic just murders the deck (both Midseason and Haarpsichord's ability), and I eventually bumped the number of Snatch and Grabs in the deck up to 3. I killed two Film Critics (one with an agenda hosted on it), a Kati Jones, and a Professional Contacts across four rounds of play, totally worth playing all three SnG.

Film Critic aside, the other games I found I was losing in testing were the games where I just could not draw into the missing combo piece, usually a Project Beale. I had Daily Business Show for filtering the deck a bit and digging for the missing cards, but at a competitive level, DBS was being trashed instantly. Instead, I opted to go with 2x Fast Track.

Ah yes, the agenda suite... No AstroScript. I'm not sure the best agenda in the game really has a place in this deck. We want agendas that create positive credit swings for us, to better ensure we get Midseason off successfully, so we've got 3x Explode-a-palooza and 3x NAPD Contract. Once Midseason has fired, we do not want to score an agenda for anything less than 3 points. If we landed 5-7 tags, we're looking at two 3-4 point Beales, or a 4-point Beale and a Market Research. If we landed 13+ tags, we're obviously looking for the full 7-point Beale. Cyberdex Virus Suite is there to clear out Clot. Psycho'ing out an AstroScript is a vastly under-used tactic in tagstorm decks, but it does not seem as viable to me in a deck like this that is all-in on scoring 1-2 agendas. It's certainly worth testing, but the deck seemed to click better for me without AstroScript.

Probably obvious, but should be pointed out, the ice is absolutely not designed to stop the Runner. We want them to spend money and resources getting into our servers, and we want to profit off our runs so we can land a Midseason when they inevitably find an agenda. Haarpsichord somewhat protects us from multi-access like Medium digs and what not, and ensure we don't just lose on an agenda flood. If I could make one change, I would try to shoehorn more ice with end the run subroutines in there. Information Overload has typically proved devastating when installed and rezzed after getting a Midseason off, but it can just not matter if you don't have Wraparound or Datapike on the board, some more ETR ice would give it more teeth.

3 comments
6 Sep 2015 ANRguybrush

I played psychobeale out of NEH and making news for quite a while and with the uprise of Film critic, I finally decided to ditch it all together.

This archetype is strong, but not really favored against in the moment. The Kate matchup just makes me want to kill myself.

If the runner can make more money than you, the whole thing becomes pointless, that's I played with biotics or sansan as a second win option.

Maybe I'll try it again with your spin on psychobeale.

Haarpsichord is pretty good to slow the game down after the midseason. Not losing immediatly to 5 point medium digs is a huge advantage.

6 Sep 2015 CrimsonWraith

I have played several tagstorm variations before across Making News, TWIY, and NEH, where I traditionally include Biotic Labor or SanSan City Grid. Also, those decks run AstroScript and much more tagging ice, so I can Psycho out Astros and I have fast advance as a viable backup option.

I think this is the first time I have been so completely all-in on the PsychoBeale play, and I am pretty sure it is absolutely the wrong call with the current meta in most of the Netrunner scene. But, it was clicking for me in testing, so I went with it.

I tremendously benefited from Snatch and Grab never being played locally and taking several folks completely off-guard.

9 Sep 2015 fateswanderer

Congratulations on the win! And great to see a deck that decides against Astroscript!