NBN is fine without Bellona

holzpubbnsubbe 141

gone

TLDR

Currently 80% on Jnet out of 10 games.

Premise

With the recent ban of Bellona let's have a closer look at it's competitor Degree Mill. The way how Degree Mill protects itself can be just as good as Bellona's, if we lean into it by uninstalling a lot of the runners cards. And preventing them from reinstalling stuff.

The bad part about Degree Mill is, that it is tempo negative. Luckily RWR brought a lot of tools for scoring agendas clicklessly.

Game Plan

It is very helpful to score out an early AR-Enhanced Security, and it is worth it to go broke on turn 2 to do so. But it is by no means necessary. Get your assets on the table and advance advanceables (Ice Wall, Mestnichestvo) with them. HQ should be protected with something annoying, like Jua or F2P, but against Crim something that ends the run is better (Mestnichestvo shines against Crim). R&D can be protected much later, but is usually helpful. The Powers That Be and License Acquisition are here to get back your trashed assets, so we don't need to recur them all with Spin Doctor.

Try to score the helpful small agendas early and close the game out with a single Degree Mill. Once you are going, you can score an agenda every turn and still have clicks to make the runners life hard.

Generally, be confident and brash.

How does it play?

I think it is a lot of fun to play. I also think it is not too frustrating to play against, because you can still do stuff and make decisions, just don't install too expensive toys all day ;-)

Cosiderations

  • I haven't tried Oppo Research yet, because I think Threat Assessment is more in line with our game plan and cheaper to play.

  • License Acquisition doesn't seem to be doing that much here, because our assets and upgrade do not cost a lot - I'd be happy for suggestions!

4 comments
23 May 2024 CelestialSpark

For the License Acquisition replacement, if you can score out a 4/2, you could consider Cryptocrash to make Amani easier to land and further your gameplan. Kingmaking for draw + bonus ARES score might make some sense too, but only if it doesn't generally result in you scoring to 8 or 9 points to win. Otherwise you could just switch to Post-Truth Dividend.

23 May 2024 holzpubbnsubbe

@CelestialSpark

Very good suggestions! I took the Cryptocrash route and it made the deck stronger. Also made some other minor changes that you can see here: netrunnerdb.com

Thanks!

24 May 2024 Telos

Love this! I had a similar idea but wasn't sure how to make it work. I'm not sure about Biased Reporting since it doesn't add much if your gameplan is working, and if it does give you money what do you do with the money?

What could be really spicy would be Game Over but giving bad pub into any asset spam is usually bad. Maybe it could be a fun build around.

24 May 2024 holzpubbnsubbe

@Telos

Yeah, you're right! I thought of Biased Reporting to have a counter for a LOT of installs, as Az or some shapers sometimes do. Often I find myself trashing it with Cohort. I think it isn't bad but Game Over sounds much better, if we can afford it. I added it in and also moved away from the Hydra (to another Starlit Knight as tag punishment). See link above for the updated decklist.

I also thought one TechnoCo might be annoying. I know it is not good, but if we have an AR-Enhanced Security out it might be worth rezzing it.