Unwatchable Prestige Drama

Erithtotl 27

It kinda sucks that this is a winning deck.

I decided to put this up here because I've been running it (with slight variation) on jinteki.net, as well as my local meet up. It basically wins. Obviously I'm not always facing top competition, but I'm guessing the win rate is about %90.

In many ways its everything I'm against in Netrunner. It's fast advance, its extremely boring to play and play against, and its NBN. But it wins. All the freakin time.

Most Haarp decks go for the kill. Either straight up with Midseason or 24/7. I'm not really sure those truly take advantage of the ID ability though. On the surface, this deck is very simple. Amass huge amounts of credits, draw into more credits and midseason, blast the runner, then fast track->psycho->Beale, game.

Win Conditions

1) Pyschobeale decks typically aren't consistent because they actually have to bother to defend servers long enough to set up the combo while also collecting a credit advantage But with Haarp, I don't care! Slap on R&D Interface and hit R&D, or Legwork HQ. Steal an agenda (but never two), while I amass a 20+ credit lead in the first couple of turns. Having the 6 HB credit/draw transactions helps break R&D lock as well. I can get money so quickly that it takes the runner a lot longer than normal to tilt the balance to where stealing is worth it.

2) There is a plan B. If the runner is sitting back, gets an early credit advantage (via siphon or similar), then I just start a shell game. Drop down an Award Bait, Breaking News, and an Astro. They have 1/3 chance of getting the right one. Either way I score something. Perhaps even get a tag off with Breaking News and trash a resource. IF they don't get the right one, I either get an Astro scored and the train starts rolling, or they hit award bait, and I can pull off a 3 point turn. Same with Award Bait/Beale.

I win about %60 off of a Psychobeale (more often a 1 and a 6 pointer), %30 off of good old astrotrain/FA. Pretty much every game I've lost has been a match point pull, often with a lucky draw.

The counters

Employee Strike is never pleasant. The runner has to time it perfectly though. It's too easy with 4 2/1 agendas to FA one and trash the current the next turn or two.
Clot can slow the deck slightly after a midseason (since before midseason I rely more on the shell game and clot doesn't matter). But try cloning or SMC'ing a Clot with 0 credits. Thats where Closed Accounts comes in.
Film Critic. A first turn film critic can definitely be a pain. But that assumes the runner is running on click 1, removing the agenda, then running on click 4. It's probably the most challenging scenario, but its very time consuming. If they waste a click running a jackson, or a central and not hitting anything, or whatever else, it still means they are only snagging 1 agenda in a turn, and they have to get the right one.

Account siphon: This can be a pain early, but not as bad as it seems . Sweeps and Green level help recover from it quickly. Playing tag-me against this deck is suicide, so the runner is burning 3 clicks on the siphon which means NOT running shell game agendas.

Data Leak Reversal: Same problem as Siphon, tag me is suicide. Plus I usually have plenty of credits to trash DLR. Also milling 4 cards into Archive isn't nearly as dangerous against this deck since the runner can only take one agenda at a time.

Leela: A perfect storm of Leela power, siphon and gang sign might really punish this deck, but frankly, hardly anyone runs blue cards right now.

Some card debates

I'm not sold on the ice. Resistor is a no brainer, but the other 3 I've been shuffling around. Cards like Gutenberg and Data Raven are good before a midseasons, but after the runner typically doesn't care. I typically don't need the credits from pop up. Turing is a nice backup if I need to score one early. I don't want any expensive ice that might take credits away from the midseason threat.

Another debate is whether to replace a Beale with 2 1 pointers. The main reason I don't do this other than card space is that it's key to make sure there's a Beale available for Psycho.

Finally, I'd love to fit News Team in here as a tempo hit, but I just don't have the card space.

I can't emphasize enough how unpleasant this deck is. Its brute force. It is totally un-fun to run against. I don't even like playing it for fun anymore. But right now I can't think of a better tourney option.

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