Ultraviolet Calibrations

Krams 949

This is the deck I've been playing on JNet recently. My win % with it is over 60% (in ~15 games), which is much for me, because I'm not really good :D
More importantly: The deck is fun to play and plays "fair" Netrunner.

The main idea

This deck may look like a fast advance deck, but in practice I score a lot more agendas over 2 turns then in 1 turn, because Asa excels at building up defenses fast.
In this deck, the ID ability is mainly used to add ICE layers or for Breaker Bay Grids on top of the thing they want to rez (Adonis or Calibration).

The influence

I said this deck looks like a fast advance deck and the inf is why. Calibration is great in Asa and Tennin works surprisingly well, because of how easy it is to make every server taxing with ICE.
I wouldn't want to miss Tennin, but most of the times the deck is rich enough that a Biotic would work just as well instead, so this is where influence could be cut.

The economy

AAL, Lateral and Ultraviolet are great "install a card"-cards. (Architect might work, too, occasionally.) Asa can turn this into a "install 2 cards", which makes this deck very hungry for draw, which wasn't a problem in testing so far.
The combination of a light asset-based eco with lots of burst eco Operations works pretty well. Though sometimes I wish I could make room for a few Marilyns. Oh, and Breaker Bay is an eco card as well. It can kickstart the whole deck if combined with Adonis turn 1 or it can save a mere 3s by being installed along a Calibration Testing. Mostly this card acts as a red flag for the runner. They always trash it. Which is okay in a deck that tries to create scoring windows by being taxing.

The dream combo

This is totally silly and only worked once so far, ever:
Use Ultraviolet to install Breaker Bay in a new remote, use Asa to add AAL, end turn. When runner starts turn, rez both cards, pop AAL to install Adonis onto the Breaker Bay and use Asa to ICE it. Profit!

The ICE suite

Najja 1.0 is way better than I thought, so I added a third copy just today. It's not enough if it's alone, but I often find myself double-ICEing servers using the ID ability anyways, do that's not a problem. Ichi, FC2 and Najja all require 2 s, so if the runner only has 3 to spend after initiating the run, he can't break two of these. Other than that, it's 2s for a 2 tax, which is more than most barrier alternatives can offer and that makes it decent Seidr fodder.
And this deck wants Seidr fodder. Seidr Adaptive Barrier is the greatest barrier for Asa in my book, because the ID makes stacking ICE so easy. The remote just naturally grows by ID triggers while you use it for Campaigns and agendas alike. All of the non-barrier ICE is more or less general purpose standard stuff. For mid-range rez-cost (4-6) you get mid-range strength (3-5) and 2-3 subs that hurt on a facecheck. All-in-all, these ICE are pretty taxing, which is what we are looking for. My favorite setup is FC2 over Architect in front of R&D. They won't run that one again until they have their breakers and even then it's a ~7 tax for 9 investment (including install cost).

The Cards that were left out

Cyberdex, Black Level, Wisp, Marilyn.
All of them would have great synergy with Breaker Bay and it would be nice to have a tad more economy to stack ICE with or a tad more defense where you need it. But I really wouldn't know what to cut for it, because basically, the cards that are in the deck now are doing the same job better.
Except for CVS. Leaving that out was a hard decision, but I stand by it. This deck neither totally folds against Tapwrm, nor Clot nor Aumakua. Yes, they all hurt, but not enough to include a Silver Bullet.

The agendas

Yeah, well, I have some. I'm not too excited about it, since they're basically standard general-purpose stuff.

7 comments
19 Jan 2018 SHIEL

Looks good! Is there enough ICE that actually can stop the runner as opposed to just taxing them, though? All the Fairchildren are lovely, but at the end of the day, all the glacier in the world won't stop you from losing if the Runner can just decide to eat the subroutines and still make it through to get what they need.
That said, of course, I'll still give this version a try alongside mine and see how they feel compared to one another!

19 Jan 2018 Krams

Architect can make some central runs pointless by installing agendas that would otherwise be accessed and there are other 9 of the 17 ICE that can be used to end the run. Yes, Seidr is the only non-porous of those, but stack Najja and FC3 and the runner can't pass with just clicks.
I my plays I found the stopping power to be generally good.
My usual tactic is to save Seidr for the remote if possible, since accesses on the centrals are less likely to score points (9 agendas in 49 cards is a pretty okay agenda density for random accesses)

20 Jan 2018 Krams

But, of course, if you want more porous ICE that's an easy change...
Maybe -1 Architect, -1 Najja, -3 FC2, +2 Enigma, +3 WoS (or Quicksand, it's a matter of preference, I guess).

23 Jan 2018 ChairmanHiro

I've had some really good plays with Successful Field Test in ASA. I'd recommend switching the Hopper for that. Really helps keep up tempo when you score an agenda and install 2 more cards. Especially if those cards are money.

26 Jan 2018 BobAloVskI

I'm still not sold on Najja 1.0. I understand it is nice to put it in front of FC3 because they cannot click through them both but the same can be said about Vanilla. If they do get their Paperclip out Najja 1.0 is one credit more taxing but early game, Vanilla is just too strong for protecting your assets early on or for a cheeky early score. It guess it comes down to person preference and play style.

Other than that, the deck looks really good!

3 Feb 2018 BECKETT28

One change you might wan’t to consider is: -1breaker bay +1 Jeeves. Since the Jeeves would give you a click after playing ultraviolet. Another thing you might want to do is take a architect and replace it with a Marlyn campaign.

7 Feb 2018 Krams

@BECKETT28 I'm not really sold on Jeeves.
Jeeves gets trashed easily unprotected, because runners fear him, so I'd need to dedicate ICE to protect him. That's okay I guess, since installing Jeeves and 1 ICE in front of him can be done in a single .
But then I need to trigger him to make use of him. And I need to use him more than once in order to make him worth his rez cost. So let's look at my options:

  • Triple-advancing an agenda. Meh. This requires a slow-advanced agenda along a Jeeves, since I don't have Biotic. So I'd need to protect both in order to use it. May work from time to time, but is hard to pull off. I wouldn't rely on this to never-advance a 4/2, so it's mostly a bonus after scoring.
  • Triple Operation like Lateral into double Tennin. Highly unlikely. Unless I use it for pure eco like Hedge Fund into double Lateral. But why?!
  • Triple clicking for creds. A desperate move. If I need to do this, I can't afford rezzing Jeeves.
  • Purging. Well, this is situational and silver-bullety.
  • This leaves my 3 copies of Ultraviolet as pretty much the only cool option for Jeeves. That's not enough. Especially since Ultraviolet already uses my ID ability, so the extra Jeeves click can't install 2 cards.