Rocky Balboa

TL;DR Run a lot. Smash ICE. Profit!

You like running? You like breaking things? You'll like Rocky Balboa... He's buff. He's fast. He's tough. He wrecks shit and he's hungry like the wolf.

If you're familiar with the concept of click-compression, you should be familiar with the concept of click-decompression. This deck is built around click-decompression and all you need to do to leverage that click-decompression, is to run.

This deck is old-school netrunner. You need to run a lot. You really should run at least once per turn, possibly twice, favorably thrice. Run all the time because it's how you: access cards, earn money, get data sucker tokens so you can break in, it's how you trash ICE, it's how you draw more cards, it's how you force rezzes so you can plant Parasites.

Plan:

• Load up on data sucker tokens early.
• Get desperado in play ASAP (hence the 3 copies). You really want this in your opening hand.
• RUN, ROCKY RUN!!!
• Get ICE rezzed so you can parasite it. Whatever ICE it is, get RID of it. Parasites in archives can be instantaneously brought back during a run with Clone Chip out which works as great facecheck protection provided you have data sucker tokens to trash or break whatever you encounter.

How to Get More Cards:

The card draw engine is based on John M and Symmetrical Visage. Anarchs have had issues drawing cards without significant drawbacks in the past, but with Symmetrical Visage (a much improved Professional Contacts I think) and John M you can now draw cards whenever you're doing what you're most likely doing anyway.

You'll often start your turn Mashing the Baby(tm) for a card and a cred, to see if new possibilities open up with whatever you draw. Often you'll make a run on an unprotected, or lightly protected, central server which should net you desperado money, another card draw from John and a 'sucker token at the least. If you made that run through Dirty Laundry you're also a lot of money up already.

If you're unsure of your ability to access and clear potential tags from failed runs, Mashing for creds/card is a mightily viable and safe alternative. Symmetrical alone is great, pair it with John M and you're really putting on the running shoes.

The beauty is that both John M, Desperado and Symmetrical Visage are working for you and none of them really need other components of the engine to work for them. The order you build Desperado, John M and Symmetrical doesn't matter, so play whatever you have and start running/drawing.

This is by no means a rare scenario: 2 clicks in and you've already gotten 5 credits, 2 cards, central access and a data sucker token. Hell you can lean back and click for 2 creds if you like and not feel bad about it. If it's the late game you probably have Kati Jones out. That just adds even further to the click-decompression.

This is basically what the deck does: Make runs for 4 credits, access, a card draw and a sucker token. That's a lot for a single card played. Add Symmetrical on top that not only trickles in money (we all know how far an Anarch rig can run on 3 creds and 2 'sucker tokens right?) and a card and you should start seeing the click-expansion going on here.

If you're not satisfied with John M and Symmetrical as a draw-engine, then use I've Had Worse to dig even deeper. You really want those two 'Worse as band-aids though, they're there to protect you from Hokusais, Snares, Komainus, Neu(t)ral Katanas etc.

Wrecking Shit! ICE is always annoying so 3 parasites and 2 Deja Vu with 2 Clone Chips means that you can potentially play 9 Parasites during the course of the game. You've got Imp as well, so feel free to trash troublesome ICE that you come across in R&D or HQ.

The Anarch rig is so ridiculously efficient that you really only care about maybe half of your opponents ICE as a real and tangible threat. GET RID OF IT BEFORE YOU FACECHECK IT! Again, Imp and Deja Vu will do work for you, don't trust Kim's ability to trash economy and combo-pieces to do the work for you; keep the servers open, keep ICE away, trashed, or unrezzed.

Any piece of ICE that rhymes with 'ole booth; IMP IT! Any piece of ICE that rhymes with parcher; IMP IT! (I'll let you come up with plays on words yourself from now on)

ICE that you can click through doesn't hurt as bad as usual since you're still being paid your 1 cred and your card when the run is successful. Don't be afraid to click through Elis until you find your Knife.

Data sucker tokens are worth more than your clicks!

Dirty Laundry and Knifed are both run events that boost what you already should be doing; Dirty Laundry is self-explanatory for this kind of rig. Knifed? Everyone plays Eli (they should) so every Anarch plays Knifed (they should). It's simple checks and balances.

Also, KnifeEating a Barrier -any Barrier- alleviates the tag-pain from John M when you run head first into something unpleasant. Putting Knifed in the heap is where you can fetch it again with Deja Vu in case you REALLY need it.

Eater is basically there to make sure that every possible server you could run has at least one piece of rezzed ICE on it, lest you get your pirate's treasure pile of rewards for running there. You'll get to love people who play PAD campaigns open, because their trash cost is too high for the runner to deal with. Just keep running the 'campaign at the beginning of every turn until the corp tires of watching you make money and cards off of visiting the voluptous cyan lady peddling her electronic wares all the time. Then run it once more to make the corp spend the credits too. No need to let ICE lie there unrezzed. Use Eater, you'll still get your John M card and your 1 credit refund from Desperado.

Got Tagged? -> Networking -> Click-decompression Done. I don't think I need to explain this too much. The economy and the draw-engine relies on Resources. Please don't get tagged too much...

Networking is a simple, click-decompressing way of losing tags again. You save a cred every time you play it, it's something since everything the deck does inflates the value of clicks spent.

Economy? Mottled.

• Armitage gets you scraps of money when you need them for a single hail-Mary run. Deploying it from dead broke is its biggest asset. You'll be dead broke from time to time, it's okay, Armitage is here.
• Kati is sustainable long-term economy.
• Symmetrical is just dandy as all h****.
• Dirty Laundry is where a lot of the click-decompression comes from. Paired with other installed cards you get a TON of value out of sneaking a peek at people's dirty jimmies.
• Sure Gamble... have you every played Netrunner?
• Desperado is the fulcrum of this deck, the sooner you have it out, the better.

All the economy cards patch up different things. I can't explain how it all works together, just try it out.

Wat n0 Dj1nn???

I moved out of my comfort zone. I've played Djinn in every Anarch deck I've built so far and this one doesn't need Djinn for anything except the Daemon MU. John and Symmetrical dig through the deck fast enough to not need the ability to dig out viruses.

True story.

Yes memory is tight at times, I can't find a way to mash in any kind of memory buffing that doesn't hurt the functionality of the deck, sadly.

ALTERNATIVE BUILD: Switch out the 2 Eater for 2 Knight. Knight is click-heavy, but takes care of Wraparound and dangerous high-STR ICE neatly. Knight is very nice to have in the early game since most servers now have to be protected 2 deep to keep you out which means 6 ICE on centrals to keep you from loading up on data sucker tokens. For many corp decks that's 1/3 of the total amount of ICE in the deck. A rough estimate says that's 16 cards drawn for a perfectly flat distribution of ICE in the deck. The Law of Serendipity says that ROCKY(!!!) found at least 1 Parasite in the meantime and is now gnawing away where it hurts most.

Try to load this deck in the card-draw simulator and see how the first three turns can play out if Archives aren't locked down immediately.

This. Is. Fun!