You Choose! Drip Leela

So here’s my dilemma, I’ve played a lot of different runner decks lately experimenting with different factions and styles of play. The one thing that I’ve observed consistently is that a lack of money is the knife in the heart for any runner strategy, even playing PVP Kate the constant rollercoaster ride of credits creates windows for the Corp to score. For this reason I want to move towards more of a drip economy. Free money every turn sounds great to me! But what kind of click-less economy deck should I play. Granted I have the most experience with Shaper and am extremely comfortable with Kate (but not in a sexy way… okay maybe a little bit!), but I totally love a number of the new Anarch cards and would really love to play an Anarch deck. However, I am looking for a competitive deck and I’ve found that the Anarch decks that I’ve played are more complicated to set up and just don’t seem to win as much. Maybe that’s my inexperience with the faction, but that leads me to this experiment: I have posted 3 runner decks, one Shaper, one Criminal and one Anarch (respectively titled: You Choose! Kate Click-less Econ v.3; You Choose! Drip Leela and You Choose! Click-less Econ Reina). All of these decks are based on the same click-less economy principle and are built to be quite similar. So I want the benefit of your expertise as a community to tell me which one of these decks is best and why. I don’t know, maybe they’re all crap, just make sure you backup your reasoning.

Here’s my evaluation under a number of key categories:

Economy

All the economies are fairly similar but the criminal deck probably has the best Econ given that the supplier can be used to fund the resources and hardware. It also has account siphon and crash space to fund the tag removal. Obviously you don’t want to ride tags with any of these decks due to your massive number of resources. A close second however would be the Kate deck which benefits from her identity’s discount as well as pro-cons.

Draw

Again these decks are pretty similar when it comes to draw, the Kate deck previously had Astrolabe which would have clearly put it ahead, but The Toolbox was just too tempting to take given that it benefits everything that this deck is all about. The criminal deck has Mr Li and so the two are probably on par again. Anarch is the loser here.

Tutoring

As you would expect the Shaper deck wins when it comes to tutoring with Test run, Clone Chip and SMC. The Anarch deck also has Test run (because I love it so much) but I just didn’t have enough room to squeeze in a couple of Djinn. The criminal deck is the big loser in this department with a couple of Special Orders.

Quality Access

Making quality accesses is always important but this one is a little difficult to predict. It seems to me that the Shaper deck will be the most reliable in making big R&D accesses with 3 R&D interface and 2 Makers Eye. The other 2 both have Medium but they are both less likely to draw it and have to power it up once they have it. In terms of HQ access the criminal deck will edge the others out. My vote here is that the Shaper deck is best.

Breakers

All of these decks have very similar breakers, just aiming for reliability over a huge breaker suite. Against big sentries the criminal deck will have the edge, but the other 2 both have D4v1d which is fantastic against big boys. The shaper deck here seems to have a slight advantage due to the ability to both Scavenge and Clone Chip programs back in. The Anarch deck has Yog which is obviously great against the right ice, and Knight specifically for dealing with troublesome ice like Lotus Field. It also has Rook, which I’ve never used before but just couldn’t make a Reina deck without at least one.

Ice Destruction

The Anarch deck definitely has the edge here with cutlery and 3 parasites plus Clone Chip and Déjà Vu recursion. The Shaper deck comes in a distant second with a bit of solid parasite recursion due to Clone Chip and Test Run. The criminal deck is the loser here.

Asset Destruction

As you would expect the Anarch deck will win out here with a couple of Imps however the shaper deck is very close with the ability to recur Imp with Scavenge, Test Run and Clone Chip. The criminal deck has to use money here to trash assets.

Being a Pain in the A$$

Corps are always getting up in our face, so how do we return the favour. It’s great if you can find a few different ways to pi$$ off the Corp to disrupt their plans. In this instance I think that the criminal deck has the greatest ability to disrupt the corp’s tempo. Account Siphon, Emergency Shutdown, Forged Activation Orders and Inside Job all have the ability to give the corp pause for thought. The Reina deck has some decent taxation capacity with Reina’s ability + Xanadu and Rook. The shaper deck is weakest here really just sporting Indexing.

Reliability

It’s a little difficult to gauge this one but tutoring and draw tend to provide the greatest reliability making me initially feel that the Shaper deck would probably be the most consistently dependable deck.

Your Opinion

So anyway, I’m interested to know what you think. Which of these decks do you think is better and why?