Virus All The Things

RustySpork 1

4 comments
20 Mar 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Looks pretty nasty. I like the Wyrm, Parasite, Datasucker play, it's the classic ice removal suite.

It seems like you are only running one core set, is this intentional? Virus decks fare very well with 3x Grimoire.

You have a ton of card draw when Earthrise Hotel and Wyldside are both out. You might consider chucking the Wyldsides since you probably won't need them and anything past the first is a dead draw.

3x Darwin is probably overkill, since it's a virus. You can tutor it from your stack with Djinn and from your heap with Déjà Vu so the extra copies probably won't help you get set up that much faster and again are dead draws (except for the mill effect of course).

I'd strongly consider going up to 3x Djinn, it's your answer to having the right virus at the right time, and helps massively with .

e3 Feedback Implants and Levy AR Lab Access seem really useful here, good call with those.

You have ways to pressure all three central servers, between Hemorrhage, Keyhole, Medium and Hades Shard. You might try and slot in an Archives Interface, it's a really stong counter to Jackson Howard (which basically every corp runs) as well as traps that trigger from archves, and you want to run archives anyway.

Lastly, I don't know if you've looked at Order & Chaos, but there's a ton of tools for virus decks there. It's the Anarch deluxe expansion after all.

21 Mar 2015 RustySpork

Thanks for the suggestions!

I made this deck for a friend who I'm trying to get into Netrunner. I only have a single core set (though a friend gave me another copy of Aesop's, and I have a couple of Plascrete promos.) I'm on the waiting list at my FLGS for my copy of Order & Chaos, and I also don't own What Lies Ahead, Cyber Exodus, or Mala Tempora. I'm really more of a Shaper player, but he wanted an Anarch deck, so I put together the best one I could with the cards I have.

I never really thought about the Darwin/Djinn combo! I might drop a copy of Darwin and throw in a Corroder or something. I do still want to keep at least 2 copies, though, as the Core Set only has 2 copies of Djinn, and getting one of those two cards early on is a big help.

The idea with using Earthrise AND Wyldside is to draw through most of your deck quickly, installing what you need and trashing what you don't, then Levy and start playing with a more sane amount of draw. I had great success using a similar strategy with a Kit deck I used awhile back, and thought it would translate well to Noise.

I'm thinking of dropping Aesop's (and maybe Cache as well) to clear influence for Clone Chip. Any suggestions for other economy cards that would work well in this deck?

23 Mar 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Aesop's, Cache and Wyldside are a pretty classic Noise combo. You can't uninstall Wyldside without Aesop's, so it's useful to have Aesop's in any Wyldside deck for that reason alone, plus you get the money back. Basically with both cards out, Wyldside becomes a modal ability you activate for a and a 3 deposit. With Cache, Aesop and Noise you are getting 5 and a mill for a , a 1 deposit, and 1 temporary . Pretty difficult to beat that value.

In short, this is a great economic engine for Noise, even though 2/3rds of the cards for it are out of faction. It's also a great introduction to deeper card interactions for a new player. This choice suits the deck, and in general, between Cache recursion and Kati, I think your econ is solid. You might try to get Sure Gamble back into the deck if you feel you need more burst, or Daily Casts if you find you don't have enough clicks over a game.

With Levy and Déjà Vu you don't really need Clone Chip, and its interactions are tricky for a new player. While CC offers a lot of utility, and a final version of this deck may feature it, Noise doesn't often care about just-in-time play and this deck really doesn't (you are using only AI breakers, so CC would pretty much only be used to recur Parasite, something that Déjà Vu does better unless you NEED IT NOW in the middle of a run). If anything, SMC would probably be more useful than CC in most instances.

Sadly the single core set issue is really pronounced in any deck that runs Grimoire or Desperado, as those cards tend to be cornerstone in any deck that wants to use them. Even one extra core set gives you the possibility to play 3 Djinn, which as we've discussed is mad good here. Djinn is probably one of the best cards in the game the second you are looking at running viruses (infinite -- and cheap -- tutoring of any virus, and a place to host them).

Again, I want to promote Order and Chaos, it really has a lot of tools that blow this archetype wide open.

23 Mar 2015 FarCryFromHuman

Another trick I forgot to mention that I find a lot of fun with Noise is Mass Install. That card hardly ever sees play, but milling 3 cards in the same click you install three programs is not only insane click compression, but is tantamount to psychological terrorism on a corp player. I once Mass Installed two Caches and a Chakana with a Grimoire out, dumped the Caches, clicked a VBG twice to trigger the Chakana, then ran archives for 3 points. I didn't get Aesop's Pawnshop out til later, and that was definitely a fringe scenario, but damn was it satisfying. Probably the best turn I have ever had with this archetype.