Unorthodox Scoring Methods

Cliquil 1214

This deck has been my latest project that has reached its conclusion. It was an interesting exploration and I think it is worth sharing.

The deck started as an exploration of Unorthodox Predictions, I love that card. There are very few cards in Netrunner that have such an extreme ability that goes unnoticed. There are also very few agendas that can help stabilise your position; and Unorthodox Predictions does that.

A lot of the deck was therefore built around that. Initially it was a Glaciar style deck using either Biotech initially and then latterly RP to score an Unorthodox and then score a big tasty agenda that the runner can't get to. This was, however, difficult to set up and highly combo dependent. It also messed with RP's necessary thin agenda density (more on that story later) and Team Sponsorship felt wrong when it was only fired for a combo.

So I went to a faster deck (after some good advice) and the results were highly variable. There were times when this deck felt unstoppable - if it was given even a little momentum it was setting up what might be scoring areas, with potential dangerous ice, with Sundews/Mental Healths and everything you hate in RP spawning everywhere even after they have been trashed once. Occasionally this would be compounded by an Unorthodox Predictions leading to a nigh on unstealable Nisei that then tipped the game heavily in my favour.

These games were not the whole story however; sometimes this deck just lacked any stopping power. If the runner was able to build momentum this deck had no answers; agendas would invariably be in HQ, R&D was reasonably dense and nothing that was laid out was THAT expensive to trash. And if there was no way of scoring agendas the Team Sponsorships sat gathering dust unable to turn the game around.

All in all I'd call this an experiment that yielded interesting results. I think it might be interesting to play as, and can certainly win you some games if people are expecting conventional RP. With serious victory in mind however you might be better off looking up other rush style RPs that have not bound themselves to Unorthodox Predictions.

That being said keeping someone out with Rainbow is utterly hilarious, and Unorthodox Predictions and Rainbow are a match made in heaven.

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