IT WAS ME, AUSTIN, IT WAS ME ALL ALONG v0.8

Shiiuga 1266

Iain Stirling, aka the Vince McMahon of Netrunner. He just sits back, does nothing and profits immensely from it.

I genuinely don't know why, but this is only the second Iain Stirling: Retired Spook/Turntable deck on this whole site. It makes no sense, because Turntable is ABSOLUTELY BEASTLY for Iain.

The early game is farily standard ShenanigIains. You sit back, set up your Icebreaker suite and econ engine and let the runner score out an early agenda. This of course boosts your econ even further.

You can easily be pulling down 10 credits a turn before you even take a click. Adding in Earthrise Hotel for some extra click efficiency allows you to be reliably taking 4 definite actions a turn, such as installing rig pieces or using your burst econ. For even more efficiency you can click the baby!

Mid-late game the econ helps a lot too. Being able to pick up 6-10 credits at the start of your turn makes it hard for the corp to out-econ you unless they spend a lot of effort focusing on it. Blue Sun can still be a problem, but otherwise you'll generally be far enough ahead that you can discount a lot of standard Scorch/Punitive strategies, as long as you're careful. The Plascrete Carapaces are there just in case.

Originally the deck ran Overmind, but this was a spectacular credit drain, so I've swapped in a more comprehensive and, generally, cheaper Icebreaker suite. You should only need 2 Dyson Mem Chips to keep your Data Folding on, which isn't cheap, but then you needed the extra MU for Overmind anyway.

Now for the meat and veg. Turntable is the Ministry of Darkness to Iain Stirling: Retired Spook's Corporation. By the time you have a decent set up and feel ready to start ruining Corps' days they will likely have 4 or 5 agenda points on the table. If you're playing NEH they probably have scored their first Astroscript. RP will likely have a Nisei token stored up. Some Weyland might have a Project Atlas. You get the idea.

Turntable is such a great console for Iain, moreso than other runners, because it pulls double duty for him. First of all it does the obvious swapping out of agendas that means you can deny the Corp their precious tokens. To be clear there is no window for the corp to spend the tokens between the initial agenda steal and the Turntable action. If you're playing NEH and you steal an Astroscript and swap it for another Astroscript then EVEN BETTER because it denies them both tokens. You may even get them to burn a Nisei token without stealing, meaning they don't have it later when they need it to win.

In one game against NEH the deck shut them down by being rich enough to trash their SanSans and then switching out their Astro token. If there's one thing NEH doesn't like it's having to play the runner's game, rather than their own, which Turntable combined with sick econ makes them do.

The coup de gras for Iain, however, is being able to do that while still keeping your ID ability ticking. Several times now, when the corp is 5-0 up, I've run and stolen a 2 point agenda. Swap that for their 3 pointer and now you're at 4-3. You still get your 2 and the Corp is ever so slightly further away from winning. If you are 2-0 down normally with Iain it's unlikely that you would want to start running for fear of stealing a 5-3 and turning your ability off. Now you can run, switch it out, get a score and still get your money. Of course you might get unlucky and steal a 2 pointer, but allowing Iain to pressure earlier is not to be sniffed at.

I doubt this'll ever win a tournament, but then I doubt any of my decks will. I built this because I like messing with Corps that aren't prepared for nonsense. Win by jank or don't win at all, I say. Unless you're at a tournament in which case go hog wild.

15 comments
18 Jun 2015 konradh

If Turntable is so important, how do you expect to find it reliably with just one copy? Maybe instead of Clone Chip, invest that influence in second copy of console?

18 Jun 2015 Shiiuga

The deck draws through quite quickly, and unless it was in my opening hand I'd probably mulligan either for the Turntable or an Earthrise Hotel to get things moving along. Iain can afford to spend a decent amount of time setting up, so you can generally draw through enough to get it out in time.

A second would be nice, but the influence is a problem, as with any Iain deck. I think I'd be more inclined to change the ZU.13 Key Master for a Cerberus "Rex" H2 and add the second Turntable in than drop the Clone Chip. Without a clone chip if you lose a breaker it's gone forever. I may do that actually, and drop one of the SymVis to bring it back to 45.

I'd be inclined to drop the Corroder to use the influence on another R&DI too, if criminal fracters weren't so universally rubbish.

18 Jun 2015 konradh

Ive just played a game with it at Jinteki.net, it was my first Iaans game ever.

  1. I got turntable quite early
  2. My opponent didn't try to score anything
  3. I was just running and trashing his unprotected Adonises (Adoniee?)
  4. At 4 creds drip a turn I just decided to play Legwork and stole 9 points from HQ

10/10 I'll definitly try this deck again! Im currently experimenting with Hard at Work + Adjusted Chronotype Anarchs, with a little help from 3x Career Fair so your idea fit my style of play! :)

18 Jun 2015 Chuftbot

Iain didn't choose the jank life. The jank life chose him.

The 10 influence didn't help though.

19 Jun 2015 x3r0h0ur

Easy, frop the zu and add tyson observatory x2, tutoring for your dysons to turn on UWC, and for the 1 off turntable and RDI, and it takes time, which is fine with Iain.. Find another 2 influence to free up (clone chip and slot crypsis or something).

19 Jun 2015 razortoy

I am a new player and I was thinking about turntable with Iain, actually, nice to see I was kind of on to something with a first deck.

19 Jun 2015 x3r0h0ur

It's out there, only testing will tell if it's any good.

19 Jun 2015 Shiiuga

Had a fun game using this last night against Stronger Together.

They ABT'd twice and got a Janus and a Wotan out, which hurt a bit. I managed to Inside Job past the Wotan for a steal, though, and Femmed it later for a second. For the win as I Special Ordered a Corroder (all three special orders were in the bottom 10 cards!), And Legworked in to HQ using Faerie to bypass the Janus.

They had two Jacksons out early so I forced them in to tripping them before they wanted to, which helped a lot I think.

Turntable didn't really factor in the game at all other than as a way to keep my MU up for the Data Folding, but I guess HB isn't really the matchup where it's essential.

The econ was, as expected, sicknasty. I got quite lucky with how it came out and had used all 3 daily casts and sure gambles by mid game. I was sitting on about 30 credits for most of the match and I was only hampered by being unable to fetch my breakers. When it came to it though I could fairly reliably get in to anywhere I needed to thanks to Inside Job.

19 Jun 2015 Fireburns

Why not the supplier instead of career fair?

19 Jun 2015 Shiiuga

A couple of reasons. The supplier becomes exponentially less useful the further you get in to the game, so if it's not out early you have dead draws, whereas Career Fair retains its usefulness pretty much throughout.

Additionally with the Supplier you usually want to put Hostage in to make sure you get it out and that's just three extra cards that dilute your draws. Support cards for support cards and all that.

Generally the return on investment with the Supplier over the course of a game is barely worth the effort of finding and installing it, but Career Fair works as a nice burst to get the bigger resources down for free.

As a clincher, a lot of your resources are start of turn triggers, so if you count the credit that you would gain from the first turn trigger against the install cost you're actually only saving one credit per Data Folding/Underworld Contact because they don't trigger off the Supplier.

Anyway, the deck makes silly money so you needn't worry too much about saving the credit on the install.

I get that it works with hardware as well, but I tried it initially and it just didn't make that much of a difference, especially if it just doesn't show up early.

9 Jul 2015 unitled

Favourited just for using the phrase 'ShenanigIains'. Will sleeve this up and give it a shot, always had a soft spot for the old guy (and despite what you say, I think I might swap a couple of Easy Marks for Suppliers... I imagine you will be right, but I just love the Supplier!).

9 Jul 2015 Shiiuga

EVIL SHENANIGIAINS.

I've just changed up the breaker suite to be central breakers/the new cloud suite for remote pressure.

The Easy Marks went from my deck too to free up some room for Crescentus but otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Still no Supplier for me, as I am a SUPPLIER DEFIER.

9 Jul 2015 unitled

I'm moving towards my Drip Andy rig, with Overmind helped by all the Dysons! I'll give it a go at the next game night and report back...

12 Aug 2015 Vimes

@Shiiuga have you been able to play the deck since going Centrals and Breaking and Entering Suite? Are you really just using those and no Femme or Farrie? If those work it certainly frees some influence up for interesting things...

I've never used Spike Crowbar and Shiv before, and I really nervous about trying them. They eat up lots of clicks to install and you can only get a few uses out of them. But Iain can take his time more than say, Geist, and the amount you run may counteract Power Shutdown and similar trash abilities, which is my biggest concern in playing criminal.

13 Aug 2015 Shiiuga

They work. Iain can afford to set up a lot slower than most runners, so the extra clicks aren't a huge deal. They act as great Power Shutdown protection because even if the Corp trashes 10 cards you are still only obliged to trash a 0 cost card if you have one.