Sahara RP - no ICE is bad at str 10

"Sahara" because the word sand is in Sandburg alright? Also Komainu was never meant to have more than 1 strength.

Play this if you want to see your opponent crippled to the point of tears, unless he/she is playing Whizzard. In which case I guess we reap what we sow, playing a deck that is weak vs. the number one runner. :-)

The PLAN :

The overall plan is to get so rich that the strength of all your ice is in double digits. Eventually you'll want Cobra or Komainu as the outermost ICE on all centrals to truly enjoy the synergy between your ID and Sandburg.

Step 1: #MoneyUp!

To do this we slap a sundew down behind Enigma/Baku. We obviously also play our Hedge Fund/Celebrity Gift and install our Pad Campaigns when these are in hand, but to really #Money up! we will want to stick a Sundew.

Step 2: ICE accordingly

We are very selective when placing our ICE. Cobra/Komainu/Yagura goes on centrals 90% of the time. Enigma/Baku are used for remotes unless we need these to protect against Siphons or deny Temujins/Sec tests etc. - every once in a while Baku's ability comes in handy in these situations when moved from a central to a remote server.

Same as with the first Sundew we want a Sandburg behind Enigma/Baku. Throwing 2 or 3 down down rezzing the unprotected ones first is always hilarious and taxing because runners really have to trash Sandburg. Late game we might want to double ICE the protected Sandburg.

When we have taxing ICE on all 3 centrals and a protected Sundew, more often that not, unprotected Sundews will stick to the table due to the simple fact that economy denial is no longer a viable option to the runner.

Any server with net damage behind a double digit Komainu is a secure server so do this on RnD for late game lockout.

Step 3: Basically step 1 and step 2

We now have lots of credits, high strength ICE and time on our hands - so now we want to install an Enigma/Baku or two on top of nothing and just score out. If we feel insecure we throw Caprice in there as well.

Step 4: Steps that are actually in between steps

• Try to get draw on the table Howie/DBS/Sensie - we are slow so we need to get rid of the agendas from hand with Sensie/Howie sometimes.

• Secure centrals and prepare remotes with appropriate ICE.

• Shuffle good cards or just Hedge Funds back into the deck with MoH.

• Install back-ups of everything - Sensie/Howie/Museum/Sandburg. It's really nice to just rez another copy of these after the runner trashes one. Rez protected Sandburg last if you have several of these out.

CARD CHOICES:

Agendas:

• GFI - stops you from losing games since september 2015 or something.

• TFP - for low agenda density. They never steal this we never score this.

• Nisei MK II - I often feel this could be Braintrust instead, but it isn't, sometimes we use the counter.

• Fetal AI - These act as semi Snare!'s and generally protect themselves very well.

Assets:

• Draw/Money/Sandburg - Self-explanatory? :-)

• DBS - Had 3 Mumba Temples once, more card draw feels stronger. I'm never sad to see this when playing.

• MoH - Recursion is very good. MoH helps keeping RnD fat with Snares! and other stuff. 54 cards is good don't worry.

• Snare! - Don't remove these or Fetals to go to 49, I tried. They win a fair amount of games for us and make running through Komainu with no cards in hand a bad idea in general. Especially against shapers, who tend to make it to 4-6 points, we need this to kill them when they start accessing with few cards in hand late game.

Operations:

• Cerebral Static - keep both of these in hand whenever you see them. The big bane of this deck is Rumor Mill. Only against Whizzard do we play this before they play their Rumor Mill/Employee Strike, and even then we'd rather not. 2 is good don't cut one, I haven't tried with 3 of these.

• Hedge/Gifts - Money is power.

Upgrades:

Caprice - only two of these, unfortunately this has the same bane as Sandburg/Howie/MoH, Rumor Mill, also she rarely does any work when #MoneyUp! is done, but still the occasional protection from Multi accesses/Siphon/Apocalypse makes her worth it.

ICE:

There are two categories ETR/remote ICE and Net damage/central ICE.

• Enigma/Baku - these are great with Sandburg. Low cost high utility. I tried with 1-2 Lotus Fields, it's bad, we are out of Yog range soon enough anyway and are always in D4v1d range. Parasites doesn't matter.

• Komainu/Cobra - both so taxing. Only two Komainu because two of them on the same server is the same as one, Cobra on the other hand feels like a definite 3-off. Both a little costly to rez early game.

• Yagura is the worst of the bunch, but still does a ton of work on RnD and becomes ETR if placed behind Komainu. Every once in a while this goes in front of a Sundew/MoH as an Enigma/Baku in disguise.

No Crick because it isn't bad at all to face check compared to Cobra/Komainu and MoH/Jackson is a lot of recursion anyhow.

You rarely have more than 2 ICE protecting one server. Ideally never more than a single Cobra/Komainu on archives, but Temujin and stuff doesnt care about our ideals.

Final thoughts:

I'd love to hear any and all suggestions regarding changes, especially if they help against pesky Whizz builds. There are probably some tweaks to be done, with quite a few of the cards being somewhat optional includes. Mumba Temple/Caprice/DBS and the ice suite are all cards that I think might have better options - I Just haven't found them.

Here is a Whizzard deck that this probably just flat out loses to, it'll be really popular due to winning Nordics yesterday :-) https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/37989/temujin-whizzard-1st-place-nordic-championship-2016-