Custom Biotics: Making You Feel Bad About Your Body

Junkware Pt 1: Security Subcontract + Ad Blitz

This is the first in what will (until I get bored) be a series of decks built around all the cards that I haven't used in a Netrunner deck (and probably most other people haven't either). We're talking the really bad, narrow, near-unplayable cards. You know. Junkware. Since you paid money for these cards anyway, you may as well find a use for them, right?

The rules for the series are:

1. I must play the maximum number of copies of the cards in question.
2. The deck must be reasonably considered to be built around the cards.
3. I must build around cards in chronological order (although I can skip ahead if there's another junk card that would fit in the same deck).
4. I cannot skip any cards, no matter how narrow or purely reactive they are.

So, let's get started.

Custom Biotics: Making You Feel Bad About Your Body

The idea here is to use Security Subcontract to sell cheap ICE for profit once they're no longer a significant barrier and use that money to invest in bigger ICE and huge Ad Blitzes. You can then use Architect and Friends in High Places to recur the ICE onto your money remotes and sell them again if the runner trashes their assets. You can also use Ad Blitz to get back Pop-up Window.

So How Does It Play?

When it goes off it's pretty fun and you can make some ridiculous scoring servers. The problem with the deck, in this meta, is that Parasite kill really puts a damper on both your early game and your Subcontract economy. This build is a little rough - Biotic Labor would probably be a better way to finish out the game than Domestic Sleepers, and the ICE mix could use some tuning. If you cut the Subcontract plan altogether you could probably turn this into a fun Ad Blitz deck, maybe running it out of Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future for better economy.

What's Wrong With The Cards?

Security Subcontract just doesn't give you good enough rates for the cost. Unless you're trashing very cheap ICE you aren't making a profit off it and spending to do so makes it stack up poorly compared to other cards. If you could trash unrezzed ICE, or trash at instant speed, there might be more interesting applications for this card. Also, 3 is a pretty low trash cost for such an underpowered card. Although the look on the runner's face when they realize they have to pay to trash this jank is priceless.

Ad Blitz has a fine effect, it's just very expensive. Having to pay to rez all the advertisements up front means you take a big hit, especially since the runner can go trash them before you even make any money off them. I expect I'll be revisiting this card when I get around to Rebranding Team and see how it does there, but compared to other cards that let you mass install it doesn't give you a very good rate for how limited a set of cards it works with.