Nico Suave

Sometimes you don't want to play the meta.

Sometimes you want to play the best thembo around.

Sometimes you want to liberate some siblings in style and have people on Jnet tell you that what you're doing "isn't real Netrunner" and "has no counterplay" despite archives remaining uniced.

Nicooooo. Suaaaaaave.

My local meta is not a fan of this deck invalidating several of their favorite lists, so I'm taking a break from it and giving it to you, the people! I maintain that Merc isn't all that great or we'd be seeing them at the top of ABR results, but this deck does vile things to a lot of corps regardless.

Keeping with the thembo theme, this is super easy to pilot! You put down resources, you play money, and you get bigass accesses you don't deserve. Did you know Banner is a weapon and Asmund can get it for you? It's true! As long as you space out which centrals you're hitting when and time your deepest digs to bounce agendas out of the remote with Hermes you're golden.

The backbreaker play is Divide and Conquer with a loaded Cupellation to see archives, 4 from HQ with cup/docklands, and 3 from R&D with Merc/Pretty. It gets things done!

Aeneas Informants are the secret MVPs. I was having a hell of a time keeping Merc above water until I dug through the digital binder to find 'em, and now I can't play them without. You ever touch a naked asset for 3 credits, or have a whiffed R&D dig pay for the next one? No idea what'll happen once these ladies rotate, but that's a tomorrow problem.

Think of this list less as a hard 45 cards and more as a blue(berry)print. I tweak it constantly depending on the day or the field. It's not always on 3 lasers, cup is pretty often a 3 of, sometimes I swap a Bahia for another copy of Pretty, etc. I've experimented with Ashen but the game really shouldn't be going that long. The real core is bypass, multiaccess, and D&C. That's only like, 30-something cards. Everything else you can salt to taste, and it's delicious.

Go forth and eat corps raw like sushi.