Nasir's Deal with the Devil

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Repartition by Cost
Repartition by Strength
Derived from
No Sleep Natman (Atman Nasir primer / guide)
Inspiration for
Wrap party with the Devil & friends
I'd Give my Soul to Explore the Net
The Devil Plays Paper Football
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thesm17 161

What is Nasir's biggest weakness?

Not having enough credits to break ice.

That begs the question:

What if, in some crazy world, there were a way to break ice that didn't require credits?

...

Hello, Faust.

Nasir, our beloved Cyber Explorer extraordinaire, has visited a very dark place in his search for unlimited knowledge and access to corporate servers. He has made a contract with an entity so evil that Weyland looks like a school girl in comparison. Nasir has made a deal with the Devil.

Access to servers in exchange for his flesh.

Basic idea: Nasir's deal with the Devil lets him trade his meat (cards) to buff and break ice. And we are going to need a lot of meat to keep Satan satisfied.

This deck has one primary way of fueling Faust's need to feed, and that is Beach Party/Adjusted Chronotype/Game Day. By having an enormous hand, Faust can keep on breaking subs like there's no tomorrow (and for all we know, there might not be). Extra devil's food - cards - are cheap to come by with 1 Game Day and 0 Diesel. 2 Levy's reset your deck to keep the breaking going. (Thematically, giving you new life that the Devil has sucked away?)

Comments: This deck has many elements found in No Sleep Natman, including using Personal Workshop to install things on the fly. I believe the core of that classic Nasir still lives in this deck. But Faust changes everything.

Nasir's strategy of using Replicator and Personal Workshop has excellent synergy with this deck. Besides the primary draw enginge, being able to use Replicator mid-run to gain new cards in hand after PW installs is a very powerful ability for breaking unexpectedly tough ice. If the corp rezzes something, spend your credits to install that clone chip off of PW and replicate a new one into your hand to feed the beast. MUST FEED.

Faust is supported by The Personal Touch and Net-Ready Eyes. This 4 or 5 strength demon-of-an-AI breaker is indeed hard to counter, and the strength boost from this hardware lets you spend your hard-grown meat to break subs instead of having to boost him. And The Personal Touch works great with Personal Workshop.

Some notable interactions:

  • Mimic. There's no way around it. The very worst card against this deck is Komainu. I believe that dog is a repo-man for Satan himself. Either you toss a card to break a subroutine, or you toss a card because of the subroutine. Lose-lose situation. Mimic is here almost solely to defend against Komainu (and Swordsman). I'm considering replacing this with Pipeline to put the influence somewhere else since Mimic is such a one-trick pony in this deck. Or Grappling Hook?

  • 2 Levy AR Lab Access: Between these 2 cards and SOT, you shouldn't find yourself unable to recur your deck. A must-include when you're using cards to break every piece of ice.

  • Game Day: One of the problems with playing with Game Day is when your hand gets cluttered with things that you don't want. This double event which promised so many cards is restricted by all the SMC in hand that you can't do anything with. Solution? Make some runs and feed it all to Faust! Not only will you likely get some creds for Nasir, but you'll also access something and burn through unused cards in hand. That second replicator? Feed it to Satan!

All Nasir needed to come into power was a deal with the Devil. May God have mercy on his soul.

15 comments
7 Jul 2015 clockworkmonk

Neat, though Net-Ready Eyes is unique, so you can only have one installed, capping you at 4 strength Faust. And what are you getting out of Parasite? wouldn't Datasucker help you more overall?

7 Jul 2015 thesm17

@clockworkmonk: Usually I end up with 2 The Personal Touch to get to 5 str. It's great hitting a Tollbooth, gaining 8 creds on rez (spending 3 for the tax) and breaking it with 1 card. Net gain of 5.

As far as Parasite, it isn't primarily used to lower the strength of ice (though that is nice). It's used to kill thing that are too annoying to keep dealing with. Notable examples are Grail ice, NEXT, Komainu, Pop-up Window, Pup, and the list goes on. Pup is one of the worst offenders.

7 Jul 2015 Jackson Howard

@clockworkmonk Parasite also prevents 0-strength ice from trashing Nasir's credit pool since SMC or clone chip can be used to trash a pop-up window on approach

8 Jul 2015 Friff14

I also think you should try cutting two of Faust. You only need one when you've got three SMCs in the deck. Faust begs for e3 Feedback Implants, which will help a lot against Komainu. Maybe one of those and two datasuckers could fill that influence void.

8 Jul 2015 Dydra

Nassir biggest problem isn't not having money. It is keeping them.

What I mean is that Seasource-Scorch-Scorch and u die. Or Midseason-Scorch-Scorch-Scorch .... whatever combination you wish.

As far as I see this deck, yeah, you'll be able to run with 0 money, w/e ... does this save you from the Midseason/Seasource with a Psycho/Scorch follow up?

8 Jul 2015 thesm17

@Friff14: You make a really good point. While at first I objected to removing 2 Fausts because the 5 to get Faust out with SMC is more than I like to have to spend, it is really nice to spend influence somewhere else. The e3 Feedback Implants have been a huge boon in playtesting along with a Datasucker. Great suggestions.

I've also added in a ZU.13 Key Master and Pipeline, removing the Mimic, to deal with Swordsman and Turing. It was too devastating getting locked out of a server, but the usage is so minimal that I don't want to waste the influence on Mimic.

I swapped one Astrolabe for a Net Celebrity, because having extra during runs are awesome with Personal Workshop. I also have swapped a Clone Chip for a Frame Job, also to have credits to use mid-run. I haven't really gotten to use it yet, but I don't miss the 1 Clone Chip with the Levy recursion.

@Dydra: Nasir will always have a problem in the tag game. After reading your comment, I tried thinking through some prevention options (even considering Sacrificial Clone!), but decided afterwards that there isn't a good solution. My current solution against meat damage is having a big ol' hand. If I've got 8 cards in hand, even a double Scorched Earth can't finish me off. It's not perfect, but it does the job well enough.

What I've found to be even worse than meat damage is that dastardly Chronos Project. Losing 10 or 15 cards from my deck is brutal (but maybe E3 will change that a little.)

I'll post an updated version soon.

18 Jul 2015 shimya

Perhaps add Inti singleton just so you can deal with Wraparound and not waste cards on Galahad?

19 Jul 2015 Jackson Howard

Having just lost in a very close game to this deck as NEH, I can say that this deck can blast through wraparounds like nobody's business. Believe.

19 Jul 2015 Salrantol

A Strength-5 Faust isn't intimidated by Wraparound. It's no harder than Eli 1.0.

25 Jul 2015 MalaFide

Since Faust is your main breaker have you considered Dinosaurus?

25 Jul 2015 thesm17

Unfortunately, you can't host AI breakers on Dinosaurus. I wish.

25 Jul 2015 MalaFide

Oh my bad completely forgot that point. Amazing what you forget

17 Aug 2015 Lahsbee

Drug Dealer seems great for this deck. You lose a credit (which you'll likely lose anyway) in exchange for more blood, er, a card. In fact, this deck probably wants more than one of them in play at once.

25 Aug 2015 Sidkah

hey man! I made an updated version here netrunnerdb.com but do not know how to derive the deck from yours! Just wanted to give credit where it is due

16 Sep 2015 kando

Is Collective Consciousness at all feasible?