45 ACCOUNT SIPHONS: Reina's Halloween Costume

Bigguyforyou518 1758

While Netrunner has its share of innocents and contemplatives, some women just want to watch the world burn. Reina Roja is definitely one of the latter.

Because who else but Reina would show up Trick or Treating at a corp executive's home residence, beat him bloody, rob the poor guy blind, and then pull off her latex Quetzel mask and stand there with her boot on his neck while she calmly smokes a cigarette?

It's like that scene in the original Terminator where Arnold goes to that old lady's house and ring's the doorbell.

"SARAH CONNOR?"

(in squeaky old lady voice)"Yes?"

BAM SHOTGUN TO THE FACE

(Don't actually play this deck against old ladies, or your friends for that matter. It's mean.)



The Deck

This is a Reina Account Siphon deck, whether you believe me or not. It's the most hardcore Account Siphon deck that's ever been made. Because it goes absolutely 1000% all-in on the Siphon strategy, you can get completely shut down by an early Crisium Grid on HQ. That's actually the whole reason we're playing Quetzel - nothing screams "Install your Crisium on HQ!!!!!" like Reina's ID hitting the board, so Quetzel might give you the surprise you need (once you start landing siphons, it's far too late for them to correct that mistake). In the worst-case scenario that they install Crisium on HQ anyway, Quetzel gives you a decent shot at getting in quickly to trash it, since Eater is your main breaker, and your single Corroder is probably hiding under the blankets somewhere.

First I'll explain what to do when you start siphoning, since that's the fun part, and then I'll cover the less-fun part about how to get it running.

Okay, so you've finally made the corp's credits hit zero. Maybe you landed your first Account Siphon cleanly, or maybe they rezzed a piece of ice or an asset somewhere else to stop you from profiting. Whatever. Their turn now, they click for credits 3 times, and maybe discard a card due to an overflowing hand.

"Look's like the recession's turning around." They say, smirking at the second Scorched Earth they just drew.

Say nothing.

Account Siphon them again. Then Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Trope 3 Account Siphons, 3 Deja Vu's, and 3 Same Old Things back into your deck, draw, and Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Trope 3 Account Siphons, 3 Deja Vu's, and 3 Same Old Things back into your deck, draw, and Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Trope 3 Account Siphons, 3 Deja Vu's, and 3 Same Old Things back into your deck, draw, and Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then play Levy AR Lab Access, draw, and Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Deja Vu and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them. Then Same Old Thing and Account Siphon them.

That's not just a wall of text. It's a wall of suffering. It's a wall of madness. What you are in fact looking at is a legal 45 card deck that has 45 Account Siphons in it.

Yes, it really works, and the Siphons really do flow. Once the first one is in the heap, there are 8 other cards in the deck that you could draw that will effectively be another Account Siphon. With their credits constantly at zero, the Corp's hand won't merely be full - it will be overflowing. That means a Vigil draw every single turn, and if you don't draw a siphon or recursion, there's a good chance you'll draw I've Had Worse or Inject instead, to feed you the siphon all the same.

Sometimes you'll have to hard-draw for a few clicks, and if you draw a Same Old Thing after your first click, you won't be able to siphon with it that turn. That's fine, just play some of those econ cards that have been chilling in your hand, go poke R&D, or throw down a Parasite if they've managed to rez some dinky piece of ice somewhere.

You've got some limited tech responses to some of your stronger counters:

  • A Corroder for stacked Wraparounds or a Crisium'd HQ protected by multiple barriers or multiple barrier subroutines.
  • A Mimic for Swordsman
  • 3 Parasites for Swordsman, Turing, or taxing ice that manages to get rezzed in front of HQ
  • A Spooned if a Lotus Field gets rezzed somewhere that's inconvenient for you.
  • A Plascrete Carapace, since you'll be running 8,000 tags. Assuming you're keeping them at 0-1s, they shouldn't be able to threaten you with a double Scorch anyways, but the Plascrete will give you more flexibility with your hand size.

Early Game

Any mouth-breathing code jockey can faceroll the siphon train once it gets going - the difficulty in piloting this deck is entirely in navigating the early game before the corp is locked down.

This is all about deception and misdirection. To convince them that we are a goofy green-haired bird girl we must become a goofy green-haired bird girl. If you don't have anything important in your hand, start face-checking R&D and their remotes. This serves two purposes:

  • It hints at a nonexistent strategy (maybe she's going to install a Medium? Maybe she's going to keep checking my scoring server? Better beef those up)
  • It drains their 's from where they really need to be invested - installing and rezzing ice in front of HQ.

Don't worry too much about econ assets. They will delay judgement day (corp finally hitting 0), but as long as you don't take too long getting your combo set up, they won't ultimately stop you. Initially what they will do is guarantee that you always get full and juicy 10 siphons (later on you will probably only be getting 2-6 ones because that's all the corp can recover). So you can just use those buckets of duckets to go trash those assets at your leisure, and then proceed to suck them completely dry.

Surprise is absolutely crucial. Do not install Eater if you can't immediately siphon them, and do not siphon them if you aren't 96% sure it's going to land. That often means sitting and clicking up credits for a few turns. 9-10's is generally a good number to be confident you can install Eater and immediately land a successful siphon. Later on, you're going to have so many credits that siphoning them from 1 to 0 will be perfectly acceptable, but earlier you may really need them, so try to get at least 4-6's out of it (try to judge this based on how many ice are in front of HQ, and how much other assets and upgrades are out on the board that they could potentially rez).

If you land the Siphon and end a turn with you at 5 or more 's and them at 0's, congratulations. The hard part's over, you've pretty much won the game. Keep the siphons rolling, and lazily scoop the agenda crumbs out of archives, or poke at R&D and HQ to steal/trash things with your infinite money.

"this might be the least fun I've ever had playing netrunner"

-Anonymous OCTGN user

"Wow, another Account Siphon. What a boring deck."

-Jinteki.net user who ragequit immediately afterwards

"F*** you for playing such a degenerate deck. Enjoy having no one to play with, kid."

-My Dad

19 comments
19 Sep 2015 nychuus

This is why I love saying "Account Siphon" when I play a Targeted Marketing.

19 Sep 2015 dante77

Nice, very nice. Love it.

19 Sep 2015 Bigguyforyou518

Made some adjustments for slightly less Account Siphons (well, not really), but infinitely more rage:

19 Sep 2015 Bigguyforyou518

Already changed my mind, immediately played 2 games where I needed Levy AR Lab Access (Tropes got trashed early for handspace or Injected, and then I couldn't wait for them to cook up later). Also thought I finally found the deck for Record Reconstructor, but scooping stuff off the top of R&D is one of my main win conditions, so sadly I can't justify it.

Ignore earlier adjustments.

Memory definitely gets tight later on, but once they're under the boot I rarely need to Parasite things anymore, and I can often dump Mimic. Fisk Investment Seminar would work wonders here, but I would have to dump the LARLA again.

19 Sep 2015 Kalibra

Amazing deck!

21 Sep 2015 Dr Bees

Fun deck to play, was surprised how it actually works rather flexibly. I found that

-1 Eater

-1 Vigil

+2 Keyhole

worked to speed up games nicely, however the element of surprise with keyhole is still important so don't install and mill until the moment they're too poor to rez R&D ice.

21 Sep 2015 Bigguyforyou518

@C6H6

Thanks again for the game, I still can't express how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel when someone shows up and crushes me with my own deck XD!

The Keyhole suggestion is definitely a good one. I've been experimenting with 1x Medium to great success - it's really fantastic when it hits the board after the HQ lockdown and the corp realizes they have to defend not one but two centrals with 0's.

Comparing the two, Keyhole obviously works very well with Eater, especially if they managed to rez some annoying end-the-run ice on R&D like Quandary or Enigma. I usually don't have an issue Parasiting down small stuff like that for the Medium to get through, but of course Keyhole would allow me to save the Parasites for other things. Ultimately I've never been 100% comfortable with the division in a Keyhole/Eater/Vigil deck (that isn't also running MemStrips), because there's so many little things that could go wrong where you actually need space for Trope and Corroder and Parasite, but Keyhole might be so powerful that it eliminates a lot of those situations. I'm definitely going to test it.


After much more general testing, I can say with some confidence that (aside from an unlucky Crisium Grid), the main way to lose with this deck is not being patient enough. Sometimes it takes you 5+ turns to see the first Account Siphon or Eater, and you want to start doing something before the corp gets too far ahead of you. That's when you eat an early Snare! that threatens scorch while the corp is still rich. That's when they manage to rez two Ichi 1.0's on HQ.

Letting them get multiple Astros or Oversight AI's off is going to be difficult to come back from, but aside from that and a few other narrow cases, you can almost always catch back up to them and shut them down to 0, even if it doesn't happen as early as you'd like.

21 Sep 2015 Dr Bees

@Bigguyforyou518 I laughed so hard when I found out I was playing against the author of the deck without realising it!

In my limited experience (just found the deck this weekend), the memory hasn't ever been an issue for me. Although this will never apply to all games, I found that I rarely needed Corroder as so many decks run Wraparound or Wall of Static that the ID is usually enough, although I'd definitely keep it around for a Spiderweb or something. Parasite is naturally very useful.

The main thing is, the games have never gone on long enough to require more than one trope. Getting one out early enough will recycle enough of the deck to extend the game long enough to charge up a second, but I think what happens is that keyhole speeds up the game so drastically that I never get far enough to need 3 tropes...

I realise that may not be as true to the siphon-hell deck you created, which definitely frustrates people to an amusing amount, but I'm quite pleased with the little bit of versatility it adds, not to mention how much faster games become... but Siphon will always remain the MVP!!

22 Sep 2015 Leviathan

Why not import everything to Ed Kim? Does Quetzal do that much work to justify her? Seems like using Eddie to bust up any possible economy recovering operations (or just anything else troublesome) would be a good move.

22 Sep 2015 Dr Bees

@Leviathan Ed Kim would be nice for mid game denial, but Quetzal's ability can sometimes be key in landing the early siphons such as against a Wall of Static on HQ turn one or two. After that, you can try and keep their economy down enough that Hedge Fund or Restructure aren't options, and things like Beanstalk I've rarely actually had to deal with in the first place. But it's an interesting idea, it might be worth trying.

22 Sep 2015 Bigguyforyou518

@Leviathan Frankly all the Anarch identities have something to offer this deck, and it can easily be slotted into any of them. Before Trope was released I ran a very similar deck out of Whizzard: Master Gamer so that I could trash assets/upgrades before the siphons, and it worked quite well.

I can confirm though, as @C6H6 said, that Quetzal does a lot of work here. In addition to making it easier to land the siphon, she also can get you into a lot of servers that you'd be locked out of earlier because of Eater.

22 Sep 2015 Leviathan

@Bigguyforyou518 @C6H6 After thinking about it I'm on Team Quetzal. Including Keyhole is a nasty piece of work and will pick items off better than Ed Kim anyway.

Thanks for the thought food, guys!

27 Sep 2015 SyncHole

One word...Paparazzi!

28 Sep 2015 Leviathan

@SyncHole I don't know. The more I see paparazzi in action the more I think it's a terrible card. It's best for the runner forcing a tag on themselves (for Data Leak Reversal or something), but for damage prevention it just makes the corp spend a click and 2 creds some point before they go for a kill.

I guess that slows them down a little, but it also slowed you down to install it. Just my 0.02.

28 Sep 2015 Bigguyforyou518

Normally you'll see Paparazzi alongside Wireless Net Pavilions to highly discourage trashing it, and like @Leviathan mentioned, it really shines when you're intending to take advantage of being tagged. Since we're already swimming in tags, you're essentially just including it for the damage protection, so it's competing directly with Plascrete Carapace.

If the deck is siphoning every turn (it isn't always), then the corp would have to spend their entire turn clicking up and trashing the Paparazzi, which is a pretty big tempo loss if you were planning on double scorching me anytime soon (not to mention that dropping the Paparazzi for 0's is an easier swing on my end than the Plascrete).

So from that perspective, playing Paparazzi or any cheap, powerful resource (Data Leak Reversal) really isn't a bad play for this deck, but it's taking up deckspace for something that ultimately won't advance your strategy very far.

1 Oct 2015 HolyMackerel

Decks like this are the entire reason I started brewing Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It as a competitive deck. Recurring credits+cheap big ICE is a reliable way to stop the Siphon-train, but I see few other options for corps other than going super-cash like Blue Sun or The Flash...

30 Oct 2015 Blankeds

I wanted to post here that this deck has singlehandly changed the way I approach Quetzal matchups. Prior to this deck being released, I expected either some weird surfer shenanigans, or E3 and an AI breaker of some kind (probably faust)

Now?

NOW?

I played a game today where I put Crisium, Caprice, and a Viper all on HQ on turn one. To the Quetzal player's credit, he didn't try to siphon me until his second turn.

I defend HQ against Quetzal more than I do against Gabe, and it's all because of this fucking decklist.

P.S. @Bigguyforyou518 whats your jinteki username? I'm wondering if I've ever played against you.

30 Oct 2015 Bigguyforyou518

@Blankeds Glad to hear I've had an effect on the local meta. Frankly I tried to stop playing this deck once I realized how truly cruel it was, but then sure enough I started going up against it when I was playing corp.

You have definitely played against me, my username is thehunter518 (for some reason I couldn't get that name on this site), and your name definitely looks familiar.

3 Dec 2015 jdharper

Played this deck (subbing out Vigil and a Trope for 2x Keyhole) a couple times tonight and it was a lot of fun. First game wasn't great since all of my Account Siphons were in the bottom 6 cards of my deck, but the second round was much more fun. Account siphoned at least 5 times.

Keyhole is an excellent include, btw. After the 4th siphon my opponent put a Caprice on HQ (and since Eater means you can't access Caprice to trash, you have to win the Psi game every time or break in some other way and win), so I was able to shift pressure over to R&D, where he was too poor to be able to actually rez ice.

The deck is also nice since it's basically immune to the All Seeing I. It's got lots of recursion for Keegan Lane. And they're too poor to Scorch (if you manage to pull your siphons). So most of the D&D new tag punishment doesn't hurt too bad. Lily Lockwell might cause you a little grief though.