Acceptable Losses (Iceless Argus)

CommissarFeesh 410

Who told you you need ICE to win at Netrunner?

Timing with this deck is crucial. There are many dangers, but also several ways you can win. Most of them involve setting up an inevitable flatline, but that is not your only option - the deck CAN score out. You need to be aggressive.

Agendas that score big bucks early are your friend. Profiteering or Hostile Takeover scored early will set you up well for chaining into Hedge Fund and Restructure. Because you, my friend, need to be rich. Richer than Creosote. Rich enough to land a Midseason Replacements and make it stick for 5+ tags, but also rich enough to land a Power Grid Overload if the Runner manages to get a Plascrete Carapace online.

But when do you fire the Midseasons? Not too soon, as I've learned. If you don't have at least part of your kill-combo in hand, you WILL put the Runner into a frenzy where they'll start slamming into R&D repeatedly to get your Agendas before you can get your kill cards. And then your only hope is they hit a Snare! at the wrong time and you can drop a False Lead and Scorched Earth or Traffic Accident to finish them off.

How to play the deck varies depending on your opponent. Some runners will check every remote you lay down, which makes scoring out next to impossible. In that case, buckle up, sit back, and credit up for Midseasons. Drop your DRTs and Corporate Towns on the table, feed them an occasional Agenda (and if they fail to steal it, score it, obviously! Keep them checking!) and eventually drop an innocuous Snare.

If they ignore remotes, GOOD. Rush Agendas. Rush them HARD. Prioritise those that give cash. Never-advance most, but occasionally you want to IAA. This can bluff an Overwriter/Junebug or even Shattered Remains, but more often you're trying to land a Posted Bounty or a Vulcan Coverup to set up a cheeky killshot (incidentally, feel free to leave these sat advanced on the board to bluff a failed trap).

As all the Agendas are 1-pointers, Corporate Town was too good to pass up. That Personal Workshop has a lot of things on it, and you're quite poor after clearing the tags you took when you stole my agendas last turn... Those Professional Contacts of yours might like to come into my offices for a chat... Kati Jones has a lot of money on her doesn't she?

Medium is a nightmarish card (and not uncommon) so Cyberdex Virus Suite is fairly well mandated as a little R&D protection, but I worry that 3 is overkill and that third slot might be better as something else.

So go forth, my friends, take the tools I give you here, and hunt down those insidious Runners. Don't waste time and effort trying to keep them out of your servers - invite them in! Because the sooner they run, the sooner we can find them, and the sooner we can level a city block to take them out.

EDIT: Deck just had its tournament debut. Only dropped one game in the last round, and that was largely due to fatigue (would have won but I forgot to rez DRT before he found the Snare in my R&D which would have killed him). Placed 2nd overall as my Runner let me down. This thing is better than it should be.

15 comments
28 Jun 2015 Tinweazel

Yeah okay. I'll start playing weyland again. This looks like a ton of fun.

28 Jun 2015 CommissarFeesh

@HofstaedtersPet glad you like it :) it's great fun to just lay down two or three remotes on click one and cold stare at the runner across the table ;)

29 Jun 2015 aero

How in the sam hill do you come back from siphon though?

29 Jun 2015 CommissarFeesh

@aero I've been giving this a lot of thought lately! I think I need to find room for Sealed Vault but I'm not sure what to cut. Might have to be Corporate Town :(

30 Jun 2015 fathotdg

It surely is great fun but any iceless deck will suffer from Keyhole.

30 Jun 2015 tuism

Gave this a try, didn't run into Medium or Keyhole but I'm pretty sure it's fucked entirely against them. Then tried a few variations:

Taurus instead of Power Grid Overload... Theory is, why not have it tax the runner if you're gonna blow a whole load of money on killing a piece of hardware? Didn't really get to use it though. Nor Overload, to be honest.

Hunter and Shadow instead of Corporate Town and Corporate Town... I found that dropping 3 remotes etc led to a simple game of the runner getting money and untagging after scoring. Unless I drew the Midseason Replacementss, the game was over in a few turns. So using one remote to score out of and making sure the runner was at least taxed somewhat made the deck a bit more stable and not prone to 2/3 points a turn for the runner. But of course these trace ICE was only good for the early game, before the bad pubs started raining (heaven forbid I scored a Profiteering - I never go less than 15c :P)

So.... Interesting idea, a good surprise against a lot of people, but any prepared runner will be able to prevent death and win very quickly unless one gets lucky with Midseason Replacements/Scorched Earth/Traffic Accident and them not drawing their Plascrete Carapace.

I was hoping for some consistency here, and haven't been able to tweak it towards that goal yet :)

30 Jun 2015 CommissarFeesh

@fathotdg - so far I've been lucky enough not to face one. I suspect It would hurt. I've put my faith in our lord and saviour Jesus Howard to whisk away a number of points depending how much of the kill combo I have in hand (like, If I can double-scorch, or traffic-scorch, leaving 6 points in Archives might be ok if the runner goes on last click. Risky, but the whole deck is risky).

@tuism - I've thought long and hard about adding ICE to the deck. I suspect adding some would make the deck much more consistent. My prime candidates are Shadow, Pop-up Window and Archer, though I don't know what I'd lose to make influence for pop-up, and maybe Ice Wall. Ice Wall and Shadow are both nice because they can gear-check early or be made taxing if you get the time to advance them, but the problem (as ever) is deck space.

I've had more success than failure with the deck so far, perhaps people I've played are just too cautious against Argus, but typically I've been able to money up at high speed and Midseasons or Snare! into flatline shortly after. Most games don't go long. The only major loss I has was against Edward Kim and the only card he installed was Turntable - I managed to rush to 6 points, but he turntabled away my False Leads and Kimmed away my Midseasons, leaving me in a very tight spot. Jacksoned them back in, but ultimately couldn't get them (or a Posted Bounty) out before he scored out.

Thanks for all the comments folks, and I'd love to hear more from people who've tried the deck too :)

30 Jun 2015 Tinweazel

I'm looking at this currently, and I'm thinking of a way to get the kill-combo even faster. Card draw like Errand Boy and Anonymous Tip will BURN through your R&D. I'm looking to rebuild an old Argus deck and try this one out with a little pro-active/latent card draw.

'should be interesting.

30 Jun 2015 Daemonology4

Plan B and Space Camp seem like they would work in here REALLY well. With Space Camp mostly as a head game to temper the runner's desire to raid R&D. Also I can see how corporate town is somewhat on the chopping block, but without ICE the aggressive resource destruction is really critical. Maybe getting extra card space from incorporating NAPD Contract seems like a fit as well since four credits plus 2 meat/1 tag is a pretty heavy tax for the runner to pay.

Maybe -1 Dedicated Response Team, +3 NAPD Contract, -1 Chronos Project, -1 False Lead, -1 Vulcan Coverup, +2 Plan B, +2 Space Camp

30 Jun 2015 fathotdg

Adding a few ices helps this deck alot. Somewhere from 3 ~ 6 ices. I'm cosidering Quicksand, Errand Boy, or "Trap" ices like Janus 1.0, Archer. Still, inevitably doomed against a keyhole deck. But slow them down a little bit might help.

30 Jun 2015 CommissarFeesh

@HofstaedtersPet @fathotdg - gods yes, I had Errand Boy shortlisted and forgot to mention it. Great card for this deck if you want to add ICE, it's either a tax to break, or it's credits/cards as required.

@Daemonology4 I can see your thinking behind taxing with NAPD Contract, but can you imagine if I actually had to score one? I've routinely got like, 5 BP or more XD

I have considered Private Security Force, but seeing as I can't never-advance it it's a lot harder to score.

1 Jul 2015 fathotdg

The Almighty Architect will work also, and once it's up, it's forever there.

1 Jul 2015 Daemonology4

@CommissarFeesh the Plan B's and space camps would make that task a tad easier.

1 Jul 2015 CommissarFeesh

@Daemonology4 hard to bait a run on a 9-advanced plan B though ;) I do see your point about space camp helping with never-advance 4-pointers. Have you tested a version? Would love to hear feedback.

15 Aug 2017 zmb

This deck needs a Warroid Tracker update :) And maybe Meteor Mining ? :)