Necessary Evil v3

v2 was one I used while more datapacks and H&P were coming out but I've recently included some O&C goodies which should really make the deck tick, so jumped straight to v3 which has a slightly different playstyle.

On the whole the same just with newer cards added in (and some card I don't have physically also removed - though this does benefit actually) and some gameplay experience changing the stlye of plays.

Ideal Play

The ideal play is still to have 3 Off the Grid remotes, a heavy binary-iced HQ, heavy tax + tag ice R&D with Archives iced as necessary. In the remotes we want to see 1 scoring, 1 DRT, 1 The Root and then maybe another DRT in the open with a tag source over it.

Ireress is still a key part in the deck running smoothly as you accept bad pub happily, though some of the sources have been reduced and there are ways of playing around not seeing it. With no Sneakdoor you want an Ireress on each of HQ + R&D and 2 on whichever server the runner likes running the most (HQ is probably the best default choice if unsure) and if Sneakdoor is on the table have the 3rd over Archives (preferably outside any etr ice). Interesting point - I've not seen Yog quite so much so the surprise of Ireress is currently getting better.

Important Points

As with the older versions getting the above can be quite shuffle-dependant so it's been a bit of a learning curve for me to work out how to play the deck into a winning position around what draws and accesses happen. This explains some of the card changes since last time (other than having fun with Order and Chaos).

Agendas

R&D is your bait and so I jumped for joy seeing Gov. Take. as a way of reducing Agenda density (as you should see it's much lower than it was), however this doesn mean you have to be careful as each R&D access could be game point if you haven't seen it yet. Hopfeully if they have taken it, it's likely they won't have seen any of the other 5 Agendas, and you will have a Punitive in hand to teach them a lesson but sods law states this will not be the case so be careful.

The fragments really help the deck. Hades as it's likely a lot of items will be getting trashed and Jackson is a limited resource. Eden as this is glacier and so things will get expensive. This does mean that the smaller agendas got lost to make the number as low as possible, but that did cut a couple of BP you didn't have complete control over.

Econ

This is tough. You will need quite a lot to get your big assets rezed, build your servers and still have credits spare to rez the ice itself. There's a range of sources which cater to the different situations. I've not relied solely on asset econ as they would be easy prey for the runner, but also not completely gone for operations either. I'm not sure what to say about econ as I tend to fly by the seat of my pants in this regard. GRNDLs can backfire massively in this situation, so I tend to go for a limit of 4/5 advancements and not going ham-fisted on them unless I have a spare OtG server. If you're broke don't worry about efficiency and just go for 2 counters if you can't spare a turn - this is more than a melange! At worst they are lose-not win cards for the runner when encountered and can make them disregard an agenda.

I try to play on using the 10 credits to boost me up even further at the beginning and playing cards that the runner doesn't expect to see early, but be careful dropping too low to begin with, that's one of the death-signs for the deck.

Server Play

Don't rely on OtG turning up, or even staying on the board. The Root helps getting them rezed and Lotus Fields can really help in securing HQ and stopping shenanigans. Don't worry about them trashing items as long as it's keeping them poor and away from agendas. you can get crucial items back with Jackson and less crucial with Hades.

Linked to this feel free to use binary ice to protect a remote early game for scoring if you're seeing no OtGs and can create a scoring window from it. Adding a little bit of tax ice to that later on if you've already towered HQ/R&D pretty well couldn't hurt as this still means the remote forces the runner into some math should they pull some trick to get into HQ.

Tags are useful for getting rid of annoying resources and not just meat damage, but don't over punish the runner like this if they haven't seen the tag-punishment as they aren't likely to be going Tag-me to begin with, no need to give them more reason to drop them (unless they've gotten super-rich).

I tend to use J-Hows as operations rather than card-draw as it's a slow deck so one/turn tends to be enough and with bad pub floating around they don't cost much to trash.

Card Options

I know this is long, but just a couple of points on cards that I'm considering swapping in future after some play-test and also for slightly different variants if people want to try.

• Archer. I'll admit I didn't check the deck when I published it, so this seems a little odd. It can be used by forefitting Fracking without too much of a hit and may surprise the runner quite nastily, but without a lot of 1-pointers that may reliably end up in the score-area it's a target for swapping. (possibly Searchlight no. 2)
• Bernice Mai: I did cut her a little while back as she can be situational and needs a high board awareness to be useful. But after re-editing for O&C I had a slot and 2 influence free and couldn't think of a better fit, the synergy is just tempting.
• Increased Punitives + Scorch: I feel that the deck is slow and can be crippled by a lucky R&D pull so there's just a little more instant fear-instilling added here to make the runner really think about when the best time to run is.
• Hadrian's Wall: I love this little beauty, but with the release of Firewall I need to do a lot of testing to see if the two can co-exist happily. Fire Wall is 3 credits cheaper at any given strength (at a cost of 2 more advancements and one sub) so not sure how the balance lies, and the extra 5 credit upfront capital isn't a small thing.
• Geothermal Fracking: Another card I really love, but may get shadowed by newer shinies. Personally I think I will still run this but if you feel at all squeemish about keeping high-point agendas in hand swapping it for glenn station could be worth a shot.
• Addition of AN: I'm considering this as a response to the Gov. Takeover problem I mentioned above. If you can hold off scoring a 5/3 for a turn or have gone IAA/AA on your choice of 4/2 then you can use this to drag the big bad out of your deck without even showing the runner you're doing it. Downside is it's quite situational by relying on you having one of only 6 cards ready to score.