Chessrunner

Earth Red 971

Pretty straightforward build, been teching a lot of other decks as well, but I'll put this up first since releasing this decklist requires by far the least work for me at the moment. The pawn idea originally derived from db0s Homeless Kasparov, though this deck has shifted quite a lot from his ideas.

  • The main point and game plan of this deck is steady aggressive tempo-play. You should focus on maintaining a steady flow of cash and made runs. If you can't, set your rig up up until you see a possibility to continue steady runs.
    • If in matchups that just spike their icing out of your game pace, you'll have to switch to calculated turtling and strike at right moments whenever you can.
    • If you have the game pace for it, two runs per turn is usually your optimal amount for you. (Thus, I chose the interfaces as your long term agenda stealing cards. As you'll be pushing for a steady flow of runs instead of single, more disastrous runs, they'll give you more bang for your buck than if using event runs. I run both interfaces due to the fact that I'll want to pressure both HQ and R&D, and keep their icing even.)
    • That means, in general, that you should avoid making a lot of plays that cost you most of your game pace.
    • Keep in mind that your breaker suite gives a lot of freedom to catch corps when they try to get an agenda out. In general, I chose this breaker suite due to it's flexibility, speed, and not being reliant on several draws and tutors (plus both breakers being breakers that heavily require the recursion-oriented cards that exile always wants to play, plus e3 is a godsend that gives you even more credit-efficient breaking, especially with D4v1d). If you have the cash, you most of the time have the option to roll out and get through with one card alone, rig up or not... You shouldn't be afraid of playing Overmind if you really need it, even if you don't have your Deep Red up yet. Having a breaker base that is both flexible and fast mitigates a lot of the clunkyness of exile and your bread and butter Pawning in my experience. D4v1d is there to soften otherwise disastrous match ups such as Blue Sun, and to otherwise soften the credit cost of your aggressive plays. Even as you're not running the Cerberus suite that requires a lot more tutoring, you'll still be using SMCs usually whenever you can, as if you have your breakers up you'll be getting Pawns. I favor this suite to that for this deck due to the Cerberus suite having a clunkier nature.
  • Pawn + Scheherazade + Deep Red is your bread and butter. The reason I chose this economy is it's continuous strength and longevity.
    • At it's worst pawn is a sub-par ice trashing card (since getting rid of it will require trashing hosted ice,) which is okay, since you should usually be able to keep it on the right ice as long as you can balance the amount of runs you make each turn with your opponents ice basing and rez pace.
    • This is kind of obvious, but don't start fooling around with Pawns until you get your Deep Red. The only exceptions are against damage heavy decks, if you have to run or risk damage, and when you'd have to discard them otherwise at end of turn.
    • As other general rules of thumb, your first SMC will usually burn up for your Scheherazade unless you're against a super fast advance and haven't naturally drawn Overmind (and D4v1d if they have Wraparound/Turing et cetera). Also, don't go digging for your pawns like a madman unless you really see no rational loss to do so. Usually you should draw a few cards each turn and try to keep up your general tempo up.
    • When you have Exile and Masanori doing all the card draws for you, you should just focus on running and and playing the few floating cards out of your hand.
    • Remember to actively reposition your Pawns when necessary. I can not stress this enough.

Explaining my splash and other choices:

  • I chose Tyson Observatory for consistency. I'm able to run one copy of every hardware I need as either a part of my core rig or as answers to certain decks, and still be able to get them consistently into play. This also saves me a lot of card slots and influence (adding up to being able to play D4v1d, as this breaker base let's me run 1x Scheherazade as I can spare a SMC for it).
  • Levy AR to let me keep my game pace up in longer games, and to recover from too many successful trash programs and forced early damages.
  • Modded synergizes with my pace of drawing and wanting to play things from my hand until at 5 when I have my bread and butter up. It also lets me get an interface up for early runs without losing a lot of credits I could use for runs.
  • Swordsman isn't currently very popular in my countries tournament meta, but if you need an answer for it, I'd say even pipeline is okay, due to it not costing influence (that you need). If your meta, for example, is fast enough and not super trash heavy for you to not need Levy AR, take it out.

Tips for beginners and the like:

  • Your main focus should be learning how to keep up your game pace. You'll probably lose some games due to the fact that you've been too passive or aggressive with your runs, or due to not drawing and playing cards with a steady pace, instead solely focusing on hunting cards out of your deck with draws or clicking money turn after turn and only starting to draw cards when you already need to have the option for plays at hand.
  • Don't understand your bread and butter? You have a Pawn in your heap, and a Pawn in play, plus Deep Red and Scheherazade. You make a successful run, and Pawn is installed on the innermost ice, so it trashes itself and installs the pawn in your heap. You install it on to Scheherazade, and then move it immediately due to Deep Red. This nets you a card from Exiles ability, and a credit from installing onto Scheherazade. Having two Pawns installed at once and John Masanori further increase the efficiency of this bread and butter synergy.
  • Until you learn this deck inside out and can analyze your hands by more than a few thumb rules, you should prioritize to have at least two of the following in a good starting hand:
    • A card that gives you credits.
    • Diesel.
    • Pawn.
    • Scheherazade. (Especially if you get Diesel or some other credit giving cards with it, or your sure you can manage being a bit more dependent on draws)

Anything I forgot to add in these notes? Drop a comment below! I'd love to hear feedback and ideas. I'll be putting up more decks later, but seeing as I want to release a lot of briefing, strategy and thoughts with each deck, it'll be more about my schedule than anything else. I actively test and tech decks almost every day, though. Thanks for reading, and I hope you like this deck. :)

12 comments
6 Jun 2015 Earth Red

I added some missing stuff into this decks article due to feedback from our local community, such as the note about Swordsman.

6 Jun 2015 terkala

Just played against you using Space Camp: netrunnerdb.com

The frequent run style of this deck is really good, and punishes players for not protecting all of their central servers. And the pawns punish you for having only one piece of ice on your central servers. It feels like your deck is pretty light on icebreakers though.

I realize the core icebreaker is Overmind/David combo, which does break pretty much everything. But maybe consider adding a few Test Runs, in order to recycle your icebreakers once they've expired. It combos well with those cards, because on a test run you don't care if you have to waste all the tokens on the card.

7 Jun 2015 SlayerCNV

so ur overmind breaks 3 ice (max) then have to trash it?

7 Jun 2015 Pinkwarrior

@SlayerCNV I count 6, 5 if you have a D4v1d installed which seems fine with Scavenge knocking around. I feel id want to transition into a normal rig my self using scavenge to help cheapen that process.

7 Jun 2015 Earth Red

I've been playing around with substituting one Overmind with one Cerberus "Lady" H1 for the increased credit efficiency. On paper we'd be getting more counters to break, plus it costing 3 less to break barriers, plus more use for SMC and other recursion. I'm not sure yet if it'll affect the decks tempo-mathematics and flow too much, and at least it would shift the use of SMC a bit (giving it more usability in some situations.) On paper, at least, I shouldn't be loosing too much flexibility, since Overmind will still be my main breaker. The most imminent edge is, of course, if I'll be getting Overmind out as often to be able to maintain the windows of flexible plays and pressure while ignoring subtypes.

@SlayerCNV I rarely face a situation where I don't have enough breaking power. 6 cards of recursion, 4 copies of a breaker card plus e3 usually guarantee that I'm not running out of counters to break. Plus, Levy AR Lab Access resets my deck, in the event that I'll need that.

@Pinkwarrior The thing is, what's the use

@terkala On paper, Test Run is great, but in credit-efficiency it falls off a bit. In theory it would be good, but with the limited amount of card slots I'm not so sure. When I run out of breakers, why not just play Levy AR Lab Access and get a new stream of breakers, recursion and credits? Scavenge is super credit efficient, and Clone Chips give me both recovery potential and instant speed recursion. That leaves Test Run with only giving us extra counters for running for one turn. What matchups urgently require that from me? What can I take out for recursion I barely need, or do I have a reason to substitute part of my current recursion with Test Run?

7 Jun 2015 Pinkwarrior

@Earth Red The use is that its less costly allowing more runs, in my experience with Overmind i find that theirs usually AI stopping ICE in peoples decks more so since Eater came out. But maybe that's just the people i play against.

7 Jun 2015 Earth Red

I've been playing around with substituting one Overmind with one Cerberus "Lady" H1 for the increased credit efficiency. On paper we'd be getting more counters to break, plus it costing 3 less to break barriers, plus more use for SMC and other recursion. I'm not sure yet if it'll affect the decks tempo-mathematics and flow too much, and at least it would shift the use of SMC a bit (giving it more usability in some situations.) On paper, at least, I shouldn't be loosing too much flexibility, since Overmind will still be my main breaker. The most imminent edge is, of course, if I'll be getting Overmind out as often to be able to maintain the windows of flexible plays and pressure while ignoring subtypes.

@SlayerCNV I rarely face a situation where I don't have enough breaking power. 6 cards of recursion, 4 copies of a breaker card plus e3 Feedback Implants usually guarantee that I'm not running out of counters to break. Plus, Levy AR Lab Access resets my deck, in the event that I'll need that.

@Pinkwarrior The thing is, what's the use of transitioning? It'll take a reasonable amount of both in-game resourcing and deck slots to be able to transition, only to not be reliant on power counters, in a deck that has very stable power counter recursion. At least that's how I see it. Care to open why you see transitioning mid-game into a normal rig as useful and efficient in the long run? I'd really love to hear your thoughts.

@terkala On paper, Test Run is great, but in credit-efficiency it falls off a bit. In theory it would be good, but with the limited amount of card slots I'm not so sure. When I run out of breakers, why not just play Levy AR Lab Access and get a new stream of breakers, recursion and credits? Scavenge is super credit efficient, and Clone Chips give me both recovery potential and instant speed recursion. That leaves Test Run with only giving us extra counters for running for one turn. What matchups urgently require that from me? What can I take out for recursion I barely need, or do I have a reason to substitute part of my current recursion with Test Run?

7 Jun 2015 Earth Red

Oh, sorry, I was not aware of how NDB commenting works. I accidentally submitted my post before I was ready, and now it's still standing there, only hidden. :D Sorry, above is my complete comment.

7 Jun 2015 Earth Red

@Pinkwarrior At the cost of a reasonable amount of credits and an immense loss of tempo, as well as less deck slots, that is, straight out of my tempo, answers to matchups, and/or recursion. What other ice do I fear, aside of Swordsman (which has become really rare since the popularity of Mimic) that isn't already broken by D4v1d? Also adding one single Cerberus "Lady" H1, if I decide to do so after playtesting, increases the longevity and credit-efficiency of my suite, and makes Wraparound an even lesser threat. On paper, of course, you have a point, but is there enough actual incentive to take the hits to my tempo and flow of pressuring, as well as deck mathematics? (Assuming I pretty much always have my breaker suit ongoing and recurring, do you see a point in the game where it actually would net me enough credits to have a normal suite?) At least in the games I've played with this deck, which is about 50 games, I haven't been tempted to have the possibility of transitioning, and rarely run out of breaking power or am stumped by the cost of breaking with Overmind. I'd also be limited to Shaper breakers, due to my influence being already really tied up.

7 Jun 2015 Earth Red

Of course I'm not claiming that I'm running around with infinite money, but I just don't see the return large or needed enough to take the hits necessary.

8 Jun 2015 terkala

@Earth Red I think Test Run is better for your deck than clone chip, in terms of credit efficiency in the late game.

Let's assume you have an Overmind in your heap. You could Clone Chip to install it (total cost 5 credits), and then you would get to use it until your counters run out. Or, you could Test Run to install it (total cost 3 credits), blow through all the counters, "and" put it on top of your deck at the end of the turn so you can get it again next turn (with fresh counters). If you have a modded in hand, it'd be 1 credit to install, or you could just pay 4 the normal way. So it's either 5 credits for one use worth of overmind counters, or 7 credits for two sets of fresh overmind counters. Is it worth 2 credits (and two clicks for the draw/install) to get one turn worth of "free overmind counters"? I'm not sure, but it's worth considering.

Notably, you can also use it to dig for D4v1d on command, getting it with a fresh set of counters, use them all up, and then have it ready to draw and re-use next turn. Right now, you have no way to dig for D4v1d if you really need it.

8 Jun 2015 Earth Red

@terkala Yes, that is true, and in that sense you are right. The real value and reason to play Clone Chip over Test Run, as I was trying to make out, is it's recovery potential, that is, bringing back Pawn (or Scheherazade in the worst case scenario) that are trashed, to keep you up. I do see it as a possibility, though, but based on the games I've played Pawns are trashed often enough to justify Clone Chip. Test Run is better for purely getting your breakers, there's no denying that, but based on the games I've played and the situations I've been in I wouldn't play it, and if I would, maybe as a one off. That's not to say that it'd still have it's reasons to be in this deck, and I'm not denying that evolved iterations of this deck could use it. You are absolutely right on it's benefits, but I don't think they are necessary, seeing as we'd be cutting recovery out of a fragile synergy. Thanks for the point, though!