Fast Advance is a Crutch - 1st Place Cape Town Regionals

TR1S 625

The name sums up my feelings about how HB ought to be played.

Inspiration

I've been playing EtF since I started playing Netrunner in March. My inner capitalist likes having all the money. The initial idea for this deck emerged from my n00bish observation that "if I just build a 9 ICE server with super strong ICE, there's no way the runner can get in". My understanding of the game has become a bit more sophisticated since then, but I still get a childish kick out of rezzing a Wotan in the runner's face.

Y u no play Vitruvius?

This deck has evolved substantially as I have played more games and acquired more cards. What is most notable about it in its current form is the unusual number and nature of the agendas it runs. Two Priority Requisitions and ABT shouldn't come as a suprise in a deck playing a fair amount of expensive ICE, but the Utopia Fragment and Voting Machine Initiative don't seem to be particularly popular. I am, however, always happy to draw and score these two.

The Utopia Fragment combines really well with Red Herrings to make stealing agenda's out of my scoring server prohibitively expensive for the runner. Rezzing Red Herrings has become one of my favourite tricks in this deck because runners aren't used to seeing it in an HB deck so are willing to waste money running into the server or trying to beat the Ash trace.

Similarly, VMI is very useful in a faction that allows the runner to click through subroutines. It is wonderful watching a runner lose a click at the start of the turn, spend two to run on a remote with a Jeeves in it because of Enhanced Login Protocol and then running into a Turing or a Markus 1.0. Having the runner bounce off ICE that is normally porous, and force them to go and get the right breaker is very helpful. Otherwise, just denying them options is often a good way to close out games.

The choice of agenda means that I can get away with running just seven. The low density means that I am often happy to let a runner rummage around in R&D (saving credits on rezzing ICE there until I need them) and focus instead on building up my board state.

Regionals Performance

A slight variant of this deck guided me to a win at the Cape Town Regionals, going 3-1 in the swiss and 2-0 after the cut. It's probably worth mentioning that our regionals was very small, just 11 players, but did have 9 different runner IDs featured so the field was pretty diverse.

Rather than take a third Jeeves, I had opted to take an Eliza's Toybox. One of the other players had said he was going to bring one of those horrendous Ddos, False Echo Val decks and I was paranoid that a single ABT or Pri Req at the wrong time would make that match a problem. He eventually opted for a different runner and the Eliza, ironically, was responsible for the one match I dropped. Some woeful shuffling resulted in me drawing it and virtually all my ICE for the first couple of turns. Being frustrated, starved for credits, and worried about my opponent sniping an agenda off the top of R&D, I went a bit mad rezzing all the ICE I could on R&D and my scoring server. Watching Wotan bypassed by Sunny's console and an agenda stolen for three turns in a row while I could only get ICE left me pretty unimpressed.

Outside of that match up though, I always felt in control with this deck. Only once did someone score 6 points (in turn 1 and 2 in the final, would you believe) and two of the matches were shut outs.

Changes

With the benefit of hindsight, I think I will swap out the Brainstorm for another Ichi 2.0. While it is hilarious to watch a runner face-check it with 6 cards in hand, the prevalence of Shrike in my Meta means that multiple subroutines isn't particularly useful once they have a breaker out. I'm also pretty sure that the games I win off excessive brain damage probably aren't the ones I'd have lost anyway.

Obviously, any and all suggestions are welcome :)

5 comments
4 Jul 2016 gammanet

How much work does the sansan ususally do with that agenda lineup, i guess it enables you to have a pretty nifty never advance stratagy once you get a jeeves to stick, but i feel like there could be better options to help your gameplan.

also, no Ravana?

5 Jul 2016 TR1S

@gammanet I have actually found it a lot more useful than I was expecting. In the original build of this deck it was included for circumstances where I might need to rush out the last agenda with a biotic labour, but more often than not it was just an expensive dilemma for the runner - if pulled out of R&D its an expensive card to trash, and more often than not they'd pay to trash it during a run on the scoring server which opened a window the next turn to IAA (I'd normally bait with a GFI and then install the agenda I actually wanted to score).

Since Jeeves, it is as you say. There are plenty of options it gives you: Never advance; IA, take a credit -> AAA, install; or indeed IAA an ABT. Surprisingly, runners are seemingly willing to let me keep it at the moment, so it works more often than not. Additionally, when they see a rezzed SanSan followed by an ABT, many will assume this is a FA deck and go hunting in R&D, wasting credits and becoming increasingly annoyed as their third indexing (no joke) still fails to find an agenda.

TBH, it is a big influence hog and the MWL loss is also not great. Any recommendations for an alternative?

Ravana is a tricky one. I actually ended up cutting it for Enigma which is more useful (IMO) early game because it can't be clicked through. Late game I tend not to be strapped for cash very often so I am wiling to pay the upfront cost for a Vikram, Ichi 2, or Heimdall 2 which tends to be more taxing at that stage.

5 Jul 2016 gammanet

at 4 influence a caprice nisei could do wonders, alternatively it could be split into another red herrings and a couple of elis, or into a playset of eli and the third architect.

I've found biotic labor with jeeves does wonders for Never advancing 5/3s

5 Jul 2016 kwind

Congrats on the win. Deck looks like a lot of fun to play. Amusing writeup.

6 Jul 2016 TR1S

@gammanet My initial thought was a Caprice, but in play-testing her I tended to lose most of my psi-games :/ I'm sure this is just rubbish luck, but I am a little hesitant to put her in at the expense of SanSan which is generally useful. That said, I think the third Architect and an Eli along with another red herrings is a great idea and I'll test it out.

I also LOVE biotic labour, especially with Jeeves, but it was the last card I cut for an Enhanced Login Protocol - a meta specific call.

@kwind Thank you! :)