[Standard] 2021 SYNC "Fiery Info" v1.00

System Gateway has me looking at old IDs in the Standard environment that haven't been competitive in some time. The addition of Ping and Tomorrow's Headline to the card pool made me want to have another go at SYNC.

This is my first pass at a Beyoken-style "Fiery Info" deck (for those who weren't netrunnering in 2016, see here: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/38734/fiery-info-worlds-2016-runner-up-). Obviously, we don't have access to the completely busted 24/7 News Cycle or Closed Accounts, but our ICE is better and our econ very strong (NGO Front, Rashida Jaheem, and Government Subsidy swap out for Sweeps Week and the draw power of Jackson Howard.

The game plan is simple: put down some ICE (Slot Machine is good on Centrals), make some money, and bait runs by advancing agendas. Your remote should generally be composed of at least 1 Ping and 1 Funhouse. They don't contest? Fine- you are tempo neutral on Bellona or tag them with Tomorrow's Headline. If they contest early, it slow them down A LOT, letting you build a scary position for the mid-to-late game as all their tempo is gone (and sometimes you just kill them).

Some time in the midgame, they'll be forced to run your remote, and pick up a bunch of tags. They remove them (painfully thanks to SYNC, which you basically never flip) which makes the follow-up Economic Warfare and Hard-Hitting News back-breaking. From here, you can draw until you find BOOM! or play QPM mind games with them, or whatever.

Is this deck competitive? Probably not as it stands, it's kind of a first draft, and there are cards that give it major headaches (eg Misdirection ), and it's not like Econ Warfare/HHN is a new way to play or anything. Your centrals are porous, so the Loup/Imp/FridayChip gang are going to eat your lunch.

But, this deck forces Tags often (not quite as well as CtM but they are more expensive), and it makes them cost 50% more credits to remove. You'll win games on that fact alone.

It's worth noting that I tested a copy of Orbital Superiority, and it was fairly disappointing- you want your agendas to tax your tempo as little as possible so you can afford to install and rez ICE and still have enough credits to win a HHN trace.

Cheers!