Betrayal!

A deck that was 2Broken4Beyoken. This is the untold story of friendship, betrayal, and the pursuit of YouTube views.

Setting the Scene

It's raining.

Of course it's raining.

It's always raining in this country.

In a way that's fitting for how I am feeling. I adjust my collar and shove my hands into my coat pocket. My hair is slick from the rain and I am cold. I'd made a conscious choice not to play a Siphon deck today and I am not wearing my beanie as a result. I regret all the choices that had led me to that position.

"Fucking Shapers. Fucking Smoke" I mutter to myself as I pass a corner store. I don't know why I committed to her. Maybe I just needed a change of pace? Maybe I just can't say no to a Femme Fatale. Especially not when she is an alt art. Either way it means that I don't have Whizzard in my bag and that means I am soaked. The neon sign in the window flashes, declaring the store closed and casting a purple glow that is caught by the puddles along the street.

Purple.

Of course it's purple.

It's always purple in this meta.

A Beautiful Friendship

Things weren't always this way, though its hard to remember a time before the mere mention that the Moon is watching made people quake in their boots. I missed my old friends at the propaganda arm of the local news agency, and the guilt still gnawed at me. Was I right to abandon them the way I did after Boggs' NAPD goons showed up? Could I have made a difference? Would the Moon have let me? It's not like I hadn't tried. I'd enlisted the help of friends at the Daily Business Show, and I'd dropped my relationship with the Bankers. But it hadn't been the same. The spark was gone and with it died the last hope of a reasonable meta game. I hadn't given up, but with each passing sleepless night it seemed like my ideas to fix things were getting worse and worse. That's how I found myself pulling my phone from my pocket as it buzzed away.

It was a message from Ben and I can almost hear him laughing at me through the characters:

"Srsly, what is this deck? And why aren't you on 3 GFI? This is just a mess".

I feel myself wince at his biting assessment.

"The plan is fast advance" I fire back. "That's the point of the two sensies".

"I can see that, you're running all 2 copies of SanSa- oh wait".

"I had to sacrifice something".

"(sorry if I'm coming off as a douche haha)".

"I had it coming, and I knew you'd be straight with me. That's why I trusted you with this".

There's a long pause.

"You know, it could be better. I have some ideas..."

":) Tell me what you got".

That's how we ended up with it. Ben tweaked the operations, pulled out some of the more stupid assets I had chosen to include, and streamlined the ice suite. It looked good, and the core of my deck remained. I was pleased. Our collaboration had created something playable that resembled the CTM of old. Sure it wasn't as nimble as its predecessor, but what could be? I messaged him my thanks.

"Ben, this is awesome. I can't wait for the world to see what we have made here together."

"Me neither fren, me neither..."

Betrayal

My phone vibrated again, I pick up expecting to see a message from Ben with updates from the testing, but I am greeted with a notification that he has gone live on YouTube. I check the title: "Controlling the Moose with Beyoken". I send him a quick message:

"Hey, you haven't revealed our secret tech have you?"

Seconds turn into minutes before I see the notification that Beyoken is typing.

"Sure I did, what of it?"

"I thought we agreed to debut it together? That was the plan".

"That was your plan."

A sickening realisation dawns on me.

"Oh my God. You weren't in this to save CTM at all. You... You just wanted an idea for a new video".

"Of course. What did you expect? CTM has always been the inferior specimen. Why do you think I played Sync at worlds? Sure, it's a people pleaser but I have never really been committed to it the way you scrubs have. Still, I can't deny it gets the views and that's really what I am all about. Giving the fans what they want. That revealing your secret tech allows people to respond to it is just the icing on the cake. My Sync will be preserved and your little "Controlling the Message" will die in the crucible of Jnet".

"You son of a bitch. You've sold out the one deck that could save PPE netrunner".

"I did what I had to to preserve my legacy! You wouldn't understand".

I shake with rage.

"I won't let you get away with this. People will know what you did!"

"What I did? No. What you did. You should watch the video fren. I didn't sell out the deck, I merely commentated my smurf doing it. He's someone I think you will like. Tris von Doggo. That's who is going to go down in history for tanking CTM. And who knows where he will go next? He's got a lot of great ideas for the channel..."

Game Plan

It's a CTM deck designed to have a plan vs. both tag-averse and tag-me runners. For those that don't want to get involved in contesting your board and want to try and set up before they start making runs and opening themselves up to the threat of HHN, you have Pad Campaigns for money and double Sensies to help find the pieces you need to assemble a taxing scoring remote of a SanSan behind a Tollbooth. This threat means that you can either fast advance vs. Criminals and force them to go and find their Decoder or play never advance games with Shapers that try and clot lock you. Black List is currently a great bit of tech vs. Bloose, and pulls double duty of enabling FA if a Shaper unwittingly allows you to put their clot into their heap. Against Tag-me runners, your ice gets switched on, and closed accounts helps you to punish them and prevent them from getting too far ahead of the game. Psychographics then becomes an alternate win condition for you as you can try to go for an over-advanced Beale or a GFI to win.

Go fast, play hard and force the runner to play your game rather than adapting to theirs.

Performance

A solid tier 1.5, the deck will unsurprisingly struggle against all the hate that currently exists for Moons such as Temujin, Aeneas Andy and Desperado Slums Whizzard. However, you can leverage the CTM ability to make that a bit more difficult to get away with and shenanigans with MVT can buy you the space you need to rush your way to victory. It is not easy, but it is certainly doable. Otherwise, you have all the advantages that come with playing CTM and the added one that people have seemingly forgotten how to deal with it. It's a surprise to see a turn one Sensie at the moment and you can make the runner very miserable by immediately installing or rezzing another one after they have gone through the effort of trashing it.

The deck went 3-1 at the GNK, with the one loss being by @Quarg's own admission a very lucky win. 5-0 up with an Astro token still available, I watched in horror as four accesses through an archangel that ripped up his board resulted in 4 agendas. Such is Netrunner: R&D giveth and R&D taketh away.

But otherwise the deck did feel solid and it was fun to revist a classic list in a slightly less obnoxious shell. I think the lack of Bankers and EoI, as well as having a slightly higher agenda density make this feel like a fairer deck to play.

Revisit the glory days and help keep CTM alive.