Project CROW 5

Welcome to the fifth iteration of the Project CROW mini-campaign for beginners familiar with System Gateway and System Update 2021. It consists of a set of duel decks that are upgraded over three stages. We start at the first stage mainly with cards from System Gateway + System Update 2021, but introduce a few key cards from the Standard pool (see here for further information on the tournament formats Startup and Standard). At stage 2, we open up the card pool to the Startup format, but also add some more necessary Standard cards to teach some further elements. Stage 3 are the two decks Frog off, Keeling! and Calibrating...TUCANA! that @percomis and myself brought to the 2023 EMEA Continentals placing 16th and 30th respectively (out of a total of 145 players).

New cards

We now include some more cards from the entirety of Null Signals history (also called the Neo format):

• Ob Superheavy Logistics - First and foremost, your ID is now Ob. This beast of a ship opens up a wide range of options. Whenever you trash one of your installed cards, you can tutor another installable costing one less. We will note possible targets in a separate section later.
• Audacity - We get a bit more careless in favour of fast advance now. Another copy of Slash and Burn Agriculture and Audacity means that you often score while throwing points into Archives. But this does not necessarily mean that you are bleeding off points to the Runner. If you score an Azef Protocol, as part of the scoring cost, you can trash a 1-cost card (Ice Wall or Vovô Ozetti) to fetch a Spin Doctor and install and rez it. This not only fills your hand back up, but also allows you to shuffle back any agendas that you might have trashed during that score.
• Extract - Enables you to use your ID ability very flexibly to fetch whatever is needed right now. The Runner found a Gauss and breaks your Ice Wall for cheap now? Turn it into a Spin Doctor or Rashida Jaheem and draw for other solutions.
• Calibration Testing - Already a good card on its own, this shines particularly in Ob. Just install it in the server in some previous turn. If the Runner goes in to trash it, they probably expended resources they would've used on other servers. If they do not, you get to fast advance an agenda from HQ, while also grabbing a 2-cost card on the way (Whitespace or Hafrún). Keep in mind that you cannot fetch Regolith Mining License this way, as your scoring server is still occupied by the Agenda you're just trying to score and you will not have any clicks left to empty the Regolith.
• Mavirus - The Runner is now including a copy of Clot in their deck. Watch this excellent video by @Sanjay on the timing to use this card. In short: Always use your fast advance option last.
  • So you go "install, advance" and then pause or actively ask for "action?" to give the Runner an opportunity to install their Clot via Self-modifying Code or Simulchip. If they do not, you can for example use Audacity and then immediately score before passing back priority to the Runner. This way they cannot install Clot in response to your use of Audacity.
  • On the other hand, if they do install Clot and you have Mavirus on board, you can still score by using all your fast advance tools to get your agenda to 3 advancement tokens and then rez and use Mavirus to get rid of the Clot and score your agenda before passing back priority. Once again, the Runner cannot re-install Clot as you are still holding onto priority here.
• Envelopment - A beefy ice with the downside of having a "Trash this ice" subroutine. While for other IDs this is an actual downside, for Ob, this just means an opportunity to search for one of your 4-cost ice instead!
• Sandstone - Amazing barrier from the Ashes cycle that gets smaller each time the Runner visits. Keep in mind that purging also gets rid of virus counters on your own cards!
• Afshar - Very efficient code gate to make checking HQ comparatively expensive to the Runner.
• Hafrún + Stavka + Winchester - Now we get into one of the dirty tricks of the Ob ID ability (that also works in Startup already). When the Runner approaches Stavka or Winchester, you can actually use your ID to fetch Hafrún either by trashing a 3-cost card to Stavkas on-rez ability or by using one of your 3-cost upgrades at instant speed. Your ID now installs and rezzes Hafrún, fulfilling its "when rezzed during a run on this server" clause and allowing you to disable one installed breaker of the Runner, likely their Sentry solution. Fire the subroutines and trash their stuff! For this to work, you need to keep track of where your Hafrún is. If you draw it, think about shuffling it back with Spin Doctor for the instant-speed install option.

Description

We now lean harder into the fast advance strategy. Over-advancing Project Atlas is now more valuable than ever, as reaching 5 points means that by tutoring either a 3/2 agenda or Audacity gives you the immediate win (unless Clot as mentioned above).

Your game plan often involves building a scoring remote early that later gets used to house your upgrades and assets to force the Runner to interact with you and spend their resources.

Be aware that the win condition of the Runner now is Deep Dive, a very powerful game-ending card. You need to push forward with every one of your choices, pulling the Runner into uncomfortable positions until something fails. Either their economy or their available Simulchips to threaten a Clot install.

One useful strategy if you cannot find your Mavirus can be to bluff the fast advance of a 3/2 agenda with an Hostile Takeover instead to make them install Clot. This allows you to purge next turn to clear the coast for your fast advances.

Standard meta game considerations

After the rotation of the bin breakers (Paperclip, Black Orchestra, MKUltra), many Runners have switched over to Aumakua, Leech, Botulus, and even Audrey v2 as their go-to breaking solution without having to hard-install their three breakers of different types.

Especially Aumakua out of 419: Amoral Scammer, can put up a lot of economic pressure on Corps. For that reason, many Corp decks were forced to include Mavirus as the only instant-speed purge effect in the card pool. While other decks have to swallow this bitter pill with its 1 influence and 3 cost, Ob can turn it into pure value, allowing much more flexibility and worst case offering a solid target for Extract, even when the purge is not needed. Also purging is valuable to reset the strength of your Sandstone.

Furthermore, Magnet is seeing quite a bit of play for similar reasons, to mitigate the power of Botulus to get into servers early and mess with Arissana decks.

Overview lists

These links show you all the necessary cards to build all three stages of the lists and give dedicated in/out lists for each stage transition.

Corp Overview | Runner Overview

Decklists

Corp 1 | Runner 1

Corp 2 | Runner 2

Corp 3 | Runner 3