Temple London (A modification of London-Femme)

Spiche 108

Hello, my name is Spiche. My English skill is not too good, so I would be grateful if you'd tolerate my bad grammar. I am one of those players who love putting "bad" cards in my decks, and no sooner the theme of Caissa programs fascinated me than I saw them. Though, you know, power levels of Caissas except Knight is under usable. I am glad to come up with an idea to make good use of one of them, the Bishop.

The idea is simple. It is Brahman's drawback that the runner must return installed programs to his or her stack, but in some cases this is not a drawback at all. Previously, to use Femme with London Library, one must have had to invest half of his or her turn. One click for hosting Femme on the Library, and another click for getting back the Femme before the end of turn. Now one does not need to do the second process manually; just run and use Brahman to save Femme from collapsing Library. Another synergetic card is Bishop. It cost you nothing to install, and helps the Brahman to break ICEs with reasonable cost by lowering their strength. Brahman is good at breaking ICEs with low strength & multi subs, so -2 strength from the Bishop helps a lot. The corp cannot even trash Bishop by spontaneously trashing the ICE hosting it, since you would send it back to your stack immediately after the encounter ends. If the game went on in accordance with your plan, typical play of a turn would be like this :

Click 1 : Host a Femme on London Library. Hopefully get back a click from Autoscripter, and then trigger Hayley's ability to intall Bishop on Scheherazade. Immediately Deep Red throws Bishop to any ICE on which you want to put it.

Click 2 : Make a run. Let's say that it's a 3-deep server which is being protected by Tollbooth - Enigma - Assasin. Then you must have "Femmed" the Tollboth and "Bishoped" the Assasin. You bypass the Tollbooth with Femme, break the Enigma with Brahman (returning the Femme to top of your stack), and break the Assasin again with Brahman (this time returning the Bishop to top of your stack). Note that the Bishop goes back to stack after the encounter ends, so you don't need to match Brahman's strength with that of Assasin to break its subroutines.

Click 3 : Use Oracle May. In most doubtful and hesistant tone, as if you didn't know what the card on your stack's top was, say "Program". Reveal the Bishop you have just sent away, and then draw it and gain 2c.

Click 4 : Click to draw the Femme you have just sent away. Gain 1c from Symmetrical Visage.

Click 5: This is a free click we got from the Autoscripter. You may get credits on a Technical Writer if you are low on money or suspecting the Corp to SEA-Scorch you.

Now let's look at some card choices.

Trade-In

In current meta I expect to face lots of horizontal decks, so I chose to put in 3x Astrolabe. But as a console you eventually have to switch it with Deep Red, so either Pawnshop or Trade-In would be needed in the process. Also it serves as a good hardware tutor to find Autoscripter, Deep Red, or Net-Ready Eyes.

Artist Colony, Fan Site

After you set up your economy & breaking engine, the rest of your stack is useless and you are not gonna draw any new cards. That is, you will just repeat drawing Femme and Bishop over and over. To arrive at the state, one cannot rely only on drawing cards; it would be too slow. Artist Colony and Fan Site serves as a secondary mean of getting combo pieces. Sometimes you may even want to sacrifice "real" agendas other than Fan Sites to find the missing pieces.

Aesop's Pawnshop

This is your main economy engine, with Technical Writer. Consider selling off not only Cache but also Astrolabe and Oracle May if you have copies in your hand.

Inti

Mainly it serves as a cheap solution for Wraparound. Also It can be another Brahman fodder if you are gonna run into 4+ deep server.

Net-Ready Eyes

Brahman and Femme both cost 2c per boosting one strength, so NRE synergizes well with them. In mid to late game you would have surplus copies of London Library, Symmetrical Visage, ... etc in your grip, so suffering a little meat damage wouldn't be too painful. Just don't risk installing it when you have Autoscripter or Deep Red in your hand, since there is no hardware recursion in this deck.

Clone Chip

It is just a safety plan for losing important programs (e.g. Brahman) by net/brain/meat damages. You may replace Clone Chip with second Femme or Plascrete Carapace, if you prefer it.

Lastly, thanks for the J-net player who told me that the deck seemed cool. (Though I can't remember his nickname :( ) I had no plan to publish the decklist, but I am writing this because he asked me if I would post it on netrunnerdb. Anyway I had much fun playing this deck and It would be great if you also like it. Happy netrunning , fellow runners! :)

Edit : Renamed title after finding a published decklist with exactly same name.

14 comments
7 May 2016 Dothanite

This is really cool! I've always been a huge fan of London/Femme, so I commend you on finding a new and original approach to it.

How do you fair without any multi access? Do you feel like you need it?

8 May 2016 ArchmageBB

Great writeup and English skills as well. Don't be embarrassed by your English, it is excellent. I love the synergies and the wackiness, but how effective have you found it at winning?

8 May 2016 Spiche

@Dothanite It's great that you liked it. :) I noticed that the corps tend to rush agendas in deep scoring server, maybe since they don't see many breakers from me. So for many cases both players' attentions are focused at the scoring server, which means that I don't need multiaccess tools too badly. But as you said, I sometimes feel sorry for not including R&D Interface when I face NEH FA. Maybe adding a copy of R&D Interface would do nice.

8 May 2016 Spiche

@ArchmageBB Thanks for your kind word. It put me ease to hear that. The deck actually went better than I expected. (It is notable since janky decks often look better on paper than play.) Though definitely it is not tier 1, for causual plays I have won many games with it.

8 May 2016 Zakalwe

There's a problem: If you host Bishop on Scheherazade you won't be able to move it off again because of the 'if already hosted' clause.

8 May 2016 Spiche

@Zakalwe oh.. that's true. :( Now I should consider replacing Scheherazade with something else.

8 May 2016 Nerdfighter

@Spiche``@Zakalwe Actually, the bishop can move to any ICE if not hosted on an ICE. SO Scheherazade is decent

8 May 2016 Spiche

@Nerdfighter I thought so too before looking at ancur.wikia.com It says that "Bishop cannot be hosted on a piece of ice if it is already hosted on another non-ice card."

8 May 2016 atreios

This was reversed in a later FAQ, and ancur's Bishop entry isn't up to date. See here: ancur.wikia.com

8 May 2016 Spiche

@atreios Glad to hear that. :)

9 May 2016 maxmallard

Thanks for posting this @Spiche, and I'm glad I remembered your username to look it up here. I'm looking forward to trying this tomorrow night.

Also, your English and your writeups are great. Keep up the good work!

9 May 2016 Spiche

@maxmallard It's nice to see you again. I hope you would find the deck entertaining to play. :)

17 May 2016 Myriad

Bishop is a cute trick. But I would probably just run either datasucker or paricia in the same slot.

Especially since you could hypothetically use Paricia, then bounce it and reinstall it with something else fresh to trash something else.

23 May 2016 Alteris

We are in a Kill deck heavy meta here. Would you have the money to run a Guru in this deck? Say drop an oracle for it? Or just add in plascretes?