[Nerdrunners] Skullduggery v1.1

markusfriend 565

Overview

Faust is an excellent breaker. It gets in quickly and cheaply, and all it will cost you is just a few cards from your grip - but you're Anarch, so what's trashing a few cards to get into a server?

Since Faust is a very hungry breaker, constant card draw with Wyldside and Adjusted Chronotype is very important. Not only do they fill up your hand ready to use Faust, but drawing 2 cards for free at the start of your turn really helps you to find the cards you need and get set up quickly. Origami also works wonders in this deck. It super charges Faust, and gives you a 14 card hand size. This provides you with so many more options for your turn, and also helps to protect you from a lot of the damage the Corp can throw at you.

Origami also combos well with Ekomind - especially as you need to use 3 MU just for Origami! With a lot of programs in the deck, all pressuring different areas, and the 2 MU that Morning Star requires, having up to 14 MU to play around with means that once you install a program it can stay on the table for the entire game and continue to be a threat to the Corp. It also means that when you want to drop the surprise Sneakdoor Beta or Nerve Agent you won't have to trash anything to do so.

While Faust is great, it's even better when paired with D4v1d - between them you can get past pretty much anything. Making them even stronger is Quetzal's ID ability to get past barriers, e3 Feedback Implants to reduce the number of cards you need to trash with Faust and to savour the D4v1d counters, and Net-Ready Eyes to increase Faust to 3 strength, which will save you from trashing an extra card when faced with ice that has odd-numbered strength. Also, to support Faust and help keep runs inexpensive in the late game, there's 1 copy of each of the Anarch fixed breakers in the deck.

Another great thing about Faust is that you can trash cards during your turn. So, you might draw into a Morning Star, make a run trashing it with Faust, and then Retrieval Run archives to install it saving 5 credits. No more discarding expensive programs and hoping the Corp doesn't start defending archives before you can make the run next turn!

2 notable omissions from this deck (or from any Anarch deck) are Datasucker and Parasite. Parasite was in the deck originally, but I found that I was never installing it (or even using Clone Chip to bring it back into play). Since most low strength ice is cheap and easy to break with Faust, or the fixed breakers, it meant that the Corp either had to spend more money installing ice in front of it, or just trashed the low strength ice themselves in hope that the new ice would do a better job of securing their server. As for Datasucker, I think it would work well in the deck and definitely support Faust and the fixed strength breakers, although Net-Ready Eyes works just as well (even if it can only boost 1 breaker by 1 strength per run).

This is a really fun deck and it really puts a lot of pressure on the Corp. Between Quetzal, Faust and D4v1d there is very little the Corp can do to keep you out - and all it will cost you is a few cards from your grip.

Let me know if you have any thoughts and feedback, and check out episode 13 of Nerdrunners for more on this deck.

6 comments
26 Jul 2015 whuppo

faust without levy kinda sucks

26 Jul 2015 markusfriend

@whuppo Not as much as using Levy when you have Ekomind and 3 Origami out and you need to trash 9 MU worth of programs! :-)

27 Jul 2015 juliandark

Faust in Quetzal is surprisingly ok without levy. If you play parasite recursion(unlike this deck), that gets rid of some ice, and barriers are often broken without Faust.

Also as pointed out the Ecomind combo doesn't like LEVY.

I really feel like this needs more options to deal with Turing or Swordsman on centrals. Getting blocked hard and waiting for that 1-off breaker that might be at the bottom sucks.

28 Jul 2015 D4KEN

@markusfriend pls help me, i don't know how you get the handsize up to 14? honestly, 5 Base + 3 Origami is 8 for me

29 Jul 2015 markusfriend

@D4KEN Each copy of Origami counts both itself and each other installed copy.

So with one copy out you get +1 hand size (new hand size of 6).

With two copies out you get (1+1) + (1+1) = +4 hand size (new hand size of 9).

With three copies out you get (1+1+1) + (1+1+1) + (1+1+1) = +9 hand size (new hand size of 14).

Hope that helps!

29 Jul 2015 markusfriend

@juliandark My general philosophy is not to worry about the 'what ifs' of other players' decks. And at least you can click through Turing (assuming you are running on your first click) or use D4v1d on it if its on a remote, and hitting a Swordsman just means losing a copy of Faust and taking a net damage (so you can still get through it).

However, after some more playtesting I have added in 2x Datasucker and 3x Parasite - because they do pull their weight, and I can always feed them to Faust if I don't feel I need them during a game.

I'll post the revised decklist later.