Look mum, no hand! v0.9

Shiiuga 1266

The deck has been through a number of variations since I had the initial idea a week or so ago. Since Chrome City has been rezzed on OCTGN it has, honestly, not fared brilliantly, though it is getting better.

Observations in testing so far:

NEXT ICE does not work here. It's too porous early on, and with your small hand size not being able to prevent wanton HQ access is deadly early game, Bioroids obviously have a similar problem, but you can use that to stick an early Ryon Knight brain damage on the runner, so there's that at least.

Fenris is an absolute monster if it comes out early enough. Every game I've played it it's been rezzed, and the brain damage has stuck. It's difficult to land in conjunction with Ryon, and it's always been an either/or situation, but pinning a brain damage early really helps keep the runner nervous.

Faking out a Self-Destruct Chips early as an Ash 2X3ZB9CY is a beautiful way to make the runner sweat. If you can manage the aforementioned Fenris rez early too you can have them down to 2 hand size by turn 4-5, and hey, if they don't fall for it it's only 1 point.

Gyri Labyrinth isn't worth it. By the time you've reduced the runner's hand enough to make it worth it they've already got their breakers out to deal with it for minimal cash. I'd rather put a Turing on the remote to slow them down and cost them money than a Gyri.

Once their hand size is down to 3, a fully upgraded remote with 3 ICE is basically untouchable. If they get in, Ash them and they're not coming back this turn. I have considered some Cerebral Overwriter to bait the runner near the end game but they're generally so reluctant to take the Valley Grid punishment that they avoid it and go for your centrals instead.

The big problem I've been having is with finishing the runner off when they're on the ropes with 2 hand size. Neural EMP just isn't quite spiky enough, Chairman Hiro is too difficult to protect and rez and so it's a toss up between Snare! and Punitive Counterstrike. Both are, if they come off, insta-kills when the runner is down to 2 hand size, especially as so many of your agendas are 5/3s. I've not tried either yet, but when the late game switch to the runner focusing on your centrals happens, I think a Komedy Snare! access from a Legwork could butter the runner's toast for good, so I'm going to try that one first, and then give Punitive a try after.

Overall a promising if underwhelming start for this archetype, though I expect a good deal of this is due to me being quite shit at Netrunner. In the last incarnation of this I did run a PPVP Kate pretty far, but I was about to deck myself when they won anyway, so ya boo sucks to good decks.

8 comments
29 May 2015 Shannon.L

This is good to know - and my recent tests with my variant backs up your NEXT ice notes. I like this move to bioroid ICE, with Ryan to punish its 'porosity'.

I'm surprised, though, that the Chairman didn't work out for you. Can you give us some anecdotal evidence on what happened when you used him?

29 May 2015 Shiiuga

Honestly I never tried him in the end. It was just too many cards in a small deck. 1x Hiro, 2x Interns, 2x Architect and 2x Self-destruct was too big an ask on top of everything else in 44 cards. It meant missing out on a lot of econ or ICE and the boost to influence lets you do functionally the same thing with less cards.

Believe me, when I came up with the deck Hiro was the star and it killed me to drop him, but it's for the best I think.

30 May 2015 BobAloVskI

I've made a Cybernetics deck (http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/21160/cybernaantics) which I have not yet played but I don't think the econ is 100% yet. Since you have had some games with your Cybernetics deck, how does Peak Efficiency go in the deck? As in how many ICE do you get rezzed mid to late game? I am also thinking about Successful Demonstration but not sure if there would be many unsuccessful runs. Do you find you have many of them?

Hopefully Chrome City will arrive next week and I can start playing it as well.

30 May 2015 Shiiuga

@MrBobAloVskI Peak Efficiency works. I've usually got 4-5 ICE rezzed midgame. It syncs quite well with my deck because you need your remote ICE to be up and running in order to put the squeeze on.

Successful Demo I think less so, because against this deck mid-late game the runner either runs because they can get in or doesn't run because they will die.

2 Jun 2015 lajcik

I took this to our weekly ANR meetup today and I have to say it's super fun to play. Between Fenris, Self-Destruct Chips and Ryon Knight it's quite easy to stick that additional hand size reduction early which really opens up the game for the corp. The runner can suddenly die from a snare or running that remote server.

Ryon Knight is a very punishing card coupled together with Ichi 1.0 and Turing, runners who haven't established that economical superiority to basically buy you out will eat a brain damage trying to click through those expensive to break ICE.

My record this evening was a total hand size reduction of 5 (ID, agendas and brain dmg combined) against a player who had Box-E out, he died to a Snare!

Honestly though this deck has a very tight economy, a lot of my time was spent clicking for credits. This means it might struggle against denial decks (Siphon/Lamprey shenanigans) or decks targeting R&D heavily. I think one Valley Grid. could be cut to free up some influence for more econ but I'm not sure what I'd put in.

Subliminal Messaging might be a good fit because people often spent turns drawing and installing so they don't have to discard, but it might not work against a runner who's got you pinned down.

Anyway - great build, I look forward to playing more with it :)

3 Jun 2015 Shiiuga

@lajcikthat's interesting. Did you win all your games with it, or just the one? I also seemed to reduce the hand size the most against a Box-E player.

Econ is a continual problem. I wonder if subliminal messaging is the way forward. As an additional test I've swapped the Green Level Clearances with Blue Level Clearances. I'll see how that pans out.

I want to say the solution is the Adonis campaign, to sit nice and cosy in your remote until you're set up enough to start scoring, but with reduced hand size I'd be worried about agenda flood.

3 Jun 2015 lajcik

I actually managed to win all 4 games that evening. One was against a person who's learning the ropes. One person flatlined themselves with Legwork, one got baited into a snare installed in my scoring server.

One game against Noise was super close and was basically a race. He was really putting the pressure on and I actually won because the last two agendas (3 and 2 pointer) were sitting at the bottom of my 4-card R&D. Milling is very effective against this deck because of the smaller size and Green Level. I didn't get to stick any damage early but he didn't draw his Knights and enough parasites so the game became a race.

I had a great game against Chaos Theory running Box-E, Overmind and such. He got the early Opus and Overmind and I was forced to constantly install stuff face down in the my scoring server and an empty server forcing hard choices on him. The game was a bit skewed because he didn't know the cards from Chrome City in advance (he was traveling and just came to our meetup to play) but he was being careful and quickly caught on what the game was. In the end he died to a snare in the scoring server. However what actually won me the game was Ichi 2.0 even though I went broke rezzing it. It's so expensive to break with Femme and Overmind that it gave me a window to stick another Self-Destruct Chips in.

What I like about running Beanstalk Royalties and Green Level Clearance is that it lets you quickly get back on your feet after going close to 0 credits. Blue Level won't do that for you and it can cause that agenda flood.

After having a day to think about it I actually might splash a single Neural EMP to keep them on their toes or a single Jinteki ICE for that additional surprise factor. There are some great choices here, both cheap and effective. Inazuma is great for protecting R&D. Kitsune is just fantastic to flatline a unsuspecting runner with that Snare! for a total of 6. Chum is an excellent 'oh wait' ice to enable scoring windows, tho it doesn't really secure those kills. Cortex Lock is great early but it can quickly become useless, especially against Shapers who just fill up their MU and laugh at you.

Ok, this post got somewhat long. Thanks for a great deck idea :)

6 Jun 2015 spore

So far I'm using Melange Mining Corp. for my economy in a similar deck and I stacked a few Neural EMPs if the hand limit goes low enough.