Crimson Whizzard (1st Place '13 DCG GNK)

This. This is a good anarch build. Except 1 thing, don't you have MU problems not having Djinn for those viruses?

I have debated putting it in there. I'm normally fine as long as I have Grimoire installed. My ideal rig is each of the three breakers with a single Datasucker, leaving me 2x MU to play around with if Grimoire's out. Imps and Parasites are rarely on the table for long taking up MU. I typically install Imp prior to running R&D/HQ on consecutive turns. I typically install Parasites and then run on that ice and kill it with Datasucker viruses on the same turn. Medium and Nerve Agent are normally late-game plays to attack whichever server I think will yield the most agendas.

Maybe change 1 data leak and 1 quality time for 2 Djinns ? 3 data leak is too much i think and you've got already 3 diesel.

I've been playing Whizzard pretty much exclusively in the last 6 months and your list resembles mine from about 2 months ago.

Here's a couple questions for ya:

• Do you feel Joshua + DLR pull their weight?
• Do you feel you have enough economy for Vamp to work, especially in the post-Second Thoughts environment, where transaction-based economy is extremely common with corps?
• Do you get your rig together fast enough? How often do you find yourself Hail-Mary Dieseling for a breaker you need?
• No Djinn: Memory issues? Consistency issues? I found Djinn extremely helpful for the tutoring, especially if you're running less than 2 Mediums
• Have you considered Surge? If so, what made you decide against it?
• Why 2 Grimoires and 3 Carapaces and not the other way around?

Thanks for the questions! I said it at the top, but I'll repeat it here.. I am absolutely not a regular Anarch player (40 plays all-time w/Anarchs, compared to 105 w/Criminals and 89 w/Shapers), so I welcome and am quite grateful for all advice, recommendations, and discussion on this deck. My go-to Runner is Gabe, but after playing the same Gabe deck for the past couple months in local tournaments and Worlds, I was ready to try something new. Whizzard was my solution, and I decided to approach Whizzard with the aggressive Criminal playstyle that I'm familiar with, and that's where I was going with this list.

I've been playing variations of this list for about a month now. When I pulled up the list and debated some changes prior to the tournament last week, the Joshua B. and Data Leak Reversal suite was the first thing I considered swapping out to make room for other goodies; if for no other reason that it takes up a solid six card slots. First off, I play this as a tag-me deck, so I fully expect Josh and DLR to be trashed as soon as they hit the table, and I generally use it as a credit denial strategy rather than a milling strategy. With that being the case, the more copies I have to throw on the table, the better off I am. And of course, if a Corp chooses not to spend their clicks and credits trashing them, I can go after them with a full-blown mill. I won my first game Saturday by milling half of my opponent's deck and pulling 9 agenda points out of Archives. For the credit denial side of things, we can look at the game against my wife (who I played in the final match on Saturday) as an example. I used Vamp to bring her to 0 credits and installed Josh while I already had a tag. She knew if she didn't spend her whole turn to draw 2 credits and trash it, that my next turn would be to run a central server, install DLR, and mill three cards off R&D. So she basically skipped a turn to get rid of Josh... leaving her with 0 credits and no rezzed ice on R&D. So instead of milling, I got to install Medium and run R&D three times while she was unable to rez ice or pay for Snares. I love the Josh & DLR combo because it excels at putting the corp into lose-lose positions like that when they have little to no credits. So, yes, I do feel like they pull their weight, but you have to be smart about when and how to use them.

Economy probably remains my largest concern with this deck... I'm used to playing Gabe and Desperado where I have a built-in economy just by running and not needing to dedicate several card slots to economy cards. That's where this deck has been pretty hit-or-miss... if Corps don't protect HQ, I'll have plenty of economy from the Siphons to be able to follow-up with Vamps and keep them poor. If they guard HQ heavily, I normally have enough economy from the Liberated Accounts and Sure Gambles to go after R&D.

I often don't have to bother setting up my rig at all, I run aggressively w/o programs as long as I can. Ideally, by the time I'm locked out of servers by ETR ice, I'll have picked up the breakers I need to continue pressuring the Corp.

I have considered Surge, they'd be particularly powerful for the turns that I drop Medium and/or Nerve Agent and then run a few times. If I ever dropped the Josh & DLR suite, Surge and Djinn would be candidates to throw into those spots, but right now I think the DLR suite is too vital to my playstyle to get rid of.

I went through a streak over two months with my tag-me Gabe deck where I was 21-4. Three of my four losses in that period were to dedicated tag-n-bag decks, usually due to an unlucky draw and not finding any Carapaces. Because playing against tag-n-bag has proven to be a weak point for me in competitive play, I auto-include 3x Carapaces in any tag-me deck to cover my weakness as best as possible. That said, I normally run 3 Desperadoes and 3 Carapaces in my Criminal decks (even going up to 46 cards to do so), so going up to 3 Grimoires was certainly a consideration for this deck. In the end, I decided that I don't need the MU in the early-game and the extra virus counter is nice but not necessary, so I just stuck with 2 Grimoires.

Hmmm. Kinda skimmed over the economy question. As operation economy becomes more common, I think Whizzard decks will become less viable; if for no other reason than you're practically playing with a blank identity card. Using Vamp against corps with no asset-based economy is difficult. One of my 3 losses with this deck, I was annihilated in the ongoing ANR Geeks double-elimination tourney by an NBN deck entirely based on transaction operation economy... it was quite painful.

Peekay5k, is there anything in particular you've done to keep your Whizzard deck relevant with the shift from asset-based to operation-based economies for Corps?

It's funny that your main runner faction is Crim, because incidentally, I think you're not building Whiz crim enough to be at his peak efficiency :D It might be just my bias from playing my particular version so much, but you tend to go for the flashy, slower moves (Vamp, DLR) instead of the brutal and efficient stuff (nerve agent/medium + demo run) that can close out a game much faster.

You can improve your economy tons by simply playing 3x Armitage. I wouldn't have believed it, but that was the one change I made that pushed my deck to excellence and got rid of that unreliability that people keep complaining about in Anarch decks (and Whiz decks in particular).

Actually, I couldn't agree less on the Whizzard being a blank ID bit. If anything, I feel Whiz has actually gotten better with the rise of JH-fueled economies, simply because your ability says "trash that sucker for free". Since everyone plays him (and usually it's, like, 3 copies or something), you'll get at least some mileage out of your ID. Also, since everyone lives in this fantasy world where they have soo much money, people seem to play more SanSans. Being able to trash those from hand/deck and while unrezzed seriously skews the economic balance. Detonating Adonises for free is just a nice bonus for me these days, honestly.

Vamp isn't hard to make work just against Transactions, it's not that great in general unless you're making a dedicated Vamp deck, which both Shaper and Criminal are way better at. Personally, I'd much rather spend my money on repeated RnD runs and recycling Parasites rather than burning corp cash. I think killing the ice they rez is actually better than stopping them from rezzing it, because it's a more permanent solution (and usually costs you less money).

The single best change you can make to be more successful vs. transaction economies is play Demolition Run. That card is seriously underrated.

Hell, I've written so much at this point that I might as well publish my own decklist, so here: http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/1003/swiss-army-whizzard Feel free to check it out and give me feedback.

Thanks for the full rundown! Given your experience with Anarch compared to mine, I'm inclined to agree with your suggestions over some of my first blush inclusions here. I'll definitely be playing around with some of your recommendations and seeing how I like the changes. =)