Pew-freakin-hoo (GNK 1st-Place)

Venali 607

As noted in my runner (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/37251/disney-princess-gnk-1st-place-), new things are love, and so I ended up bringing big green to a local tourney. The Builder went 3-1, defeating a Rielle, DLR MaxX, and Edward Kim while falling to Bhagat Whiz.

Firstly, after getting some practice in from these games I think it's safe to cut down on the number of advancing ice, mostly because it's bad. Ice and Fire did a lot of work for me, but I very rarely got any use out of a shadow or wormhole, even for the damage. The small deck size and digging for pieces let me have one of my barriers up on important places quickly every game. Builder isn't worth the spot most of the time, but the times it does make a difference it can be a huge one. Probably just swap them for enigma or something.

Prisec is awesome. I had a judge behind some ice and threw out 3 prisec in an unprotected server, then tossed agendas in there and just dared people to come in. Obviously that won't happen often, but it's real funny when it does.

3 snare is the right number. I'd never had any experience with 3 in a 40 card deck, and man does it feel like they're everywhere. Snares and judges are cruel.

This deck makes a lot of money. Hedge and restructure are great, of course. You often don't care about the BP from Hostile, as the cost is offset by the damage they take from the run on the servers that matter. Subliminal is a lot of fun here, because let's be honest, no one wants to keep taking a hit every turn for little gain.

The Cleaners is a hard score. A very hard score. But if you get one and the runner isn't light-years ahead, it feels like it just ends the game. 2 damage when you run? 2 and a tag from Prisec? Stahp, Cleaners.

So yeah. This is probably a solid tier 2, but it's fun. If you swap out some of the bad ice it might jump to tier 1.8 or so. When the new code gate hits, and if there are any other advance ice that hit the table, we might actually see this be competitive.

Brief aside - playing against this ID as a criminal feels super shitty. That is all.

10 comments
21 Aug 2016 nutritionalzero

This is the most reasonable compromise between the Rush BoNs and the Space BoNs I've seen so far. I think the Rush BoNs are objectively quite a bit better, having played both. You make some interesting choices, some that I'm not seeing in either emerging archetype:

  1. 3 x Restructure. BoN runs poor. I've experimented with several options but Beanstalk or Subliminal initially seem to be the most viable way of getting on your feet post-Siphon. Interested to hear how this did.

  2. Zealous Judge instead of HHN/SEA. I have struggled to pick between HHN/SEA as frankly we all know this deck has only the narrowest financial bandwidth for landing either of these operations. However, it is quite easy to land tags in BoN, just not the kind that require traces. Another critical point here is that asset economy seems more durable in BoN than in Argus because the threat of Prisec and/or advanced ice requires more careful attention from the runner. I have run PAD Campaigns behind Ice Walls, Bankers under Prisecs, you name it.

  3. The Cleaners. Yes, it's the dream, but it's not winning games in the BoNs I play against and I dropped it myself the day after I got Blood Money. I am currently running 2 x GFI and this card's ability to stretch games out for the corp works in BoN's favour. I did manage to score a Cleaners once. Ah, it was a good day.

  4. Fire Walls. I think Fire Walls are too expensive to rush behind and also that, often alongside Prisec, a barrier is something you don't actually want to be too much of a barrier, if that makes any sense. You want the runner to think the meat damage from an Ice Wall is worth it. Interested to hear if the additional tax of paying through a Fire Wall helped, but if you're not trying to SEA/HHN I wouldn't care as much about how much money the runner has.

  5. Builder. I feel Builder presupposes an average game duration that far exceeds what is being implied by this ID. I agree with swapping this for Enigma. I have been using Quandary also.

  6. Trick of Light. This is, I feel, a vestige of Space BoN. I played a lot of this with the idea that eventually all my ice counters are going back on agendas for the win, right? Wrong. Doesn't happen. Each piece of ice needs precisely 1 agenda counter to do its job. When you think about the fact that this card does not really help you score 4/2s (in fact it's anti-synergistic with Oaktown) and is possibly even worse with 5/3s (why not put a big "PLZ RUN HERE" sign on your Food) the best it does is recoup a couple of credits and clicks in a mythical lategame this archetype does not support. I removed this card and have never looked back.

21 Aug 2016 Shulmey

Ran a similarish deck today at a GNK. Casting Call was my MVP card. Works miracles with Prisec and Judge. Like you, I am loving the non-trace tags. I also ran 1 Data Raven instead of the third Snare, and was happy with that decision. Data Raven on the scoring server with Prisecs and Casting Call is just gross. Even when the runner gets all excited that they have Film Critic, there are still just too many tags and a Zealous Judge to deal with afterwards.

22 Aug 2016 Venali

@nutritionalzero I came to the conclusion when playing this through that, despite the ID being a 40, I don't think it's a reasonable rush ID. Advancing ice is the antithesis of rush, and I couldn't make it work in my head no matter how hard I tried.

I found this version of BoN wasn't really poor at all. I think there was one round where I had a restructure I had to credit up a turn to use, and that didn't feel too awful. I suppose if I'd gone for a more rush focused version it would have though, for sure.

I loved Judge. Immensely. It can lead to clear no-win situations after hitting snares or prisec beyond click 1. On the point of HHN/SEA, I thought about swapping out one of the Snare for it (Or the trick, more likely), but ended up not. Having played I would have regretted the loss of that snare. The Trick, maybe not so much.

Yeah, Cleaners is... dream is a good descriptor. I did manage to get one scored after the noted example in the OP of an iced face down judge and a triple Prisec server where I IA and tricked it the next turn. Some part of the jank artist in me won't let it die.

Fire Wall actually did great for me, and I'm glad I included it despite some grumbling when I threw the list together. Between the 3 prisec and 3 snares, people have a decent chance of getting tagged and/or wanting to pay at the end of a run, and forcing them to pay something relevant to break and ETR while also getting hit was very nice.

I think a lot of the issues you're bringing up I've dealt with on the notion that I don't like this as a rush ID. My issue with Builder, for example, has nothing to do with how slow it is. It has everything to do with two things. One, it's useless on its own (Or if you have it and a Wormhole up. Woo.), so it does nothing to protect centrals. Two, this isn't an ID people run on with reckless abandon, so you won't get many runs into it, and therefore won't cause many breaks or triggers. If it let you drop an advancement token on any ice in that server without restriction, I'd be down, but as it was it just didn't hit the mark.

Trick was likely a waste of 3 influence. BoN has 12. No one likes wasting 25% of their influence. There are plenty of options for this slot. HHN/SEA as discussed, a myriad of other things, and... and oh my God now that I've played it I'm seriously considering An Offer You Can't Refuse. The number of games I had 3 snares in hand was... hnnng. But then I guess they might just give you the point. I dunno. Maybe Cerebral Casts? So many jank options at 3 inf, I love it.

22 Aug 2016 beladee

Another option would be to replace Builder with Space Camp, as an additional passive defense to go along with Snare!. The effect of Space Camp is quite similar to Builder but costs less in both clicks and credits. Can be trashed, but at least it still fires from Archives if it does. Downside being that the advancement tokens won't affect the current run, just the next one...but upside being that they can be put on any server's ICE or agenda.

22 Aug 2016 goodknite

I brought this ID to a store championship this weekend and ended up facing DLR Val, a SpyCAM Hayley, and spyCAM Geist, it got wrecked with runner's who only run when there are points to be had. I think some more engaging assets to force a run out from runners might be required, like commercial bankers group sitting on the Prisec. Might justbe my bad luck though.

26 Aug 2016 PureFlight

Did somebody say, "Jank"?!?! How would you feel about a Sherlock 2.0 instead of the ToL? Hard tags are pretty neat. Judge likes tags. Not having clicks to remove tags seems good.

I'm going to try out a Changeling instead of a Fire Wall in testing. Mmmm, sentry ETR....

Dropping the Shadows for Housekeeping might help in the matchups with rig-builders like @goodknitementioned.

27 Aug 2016 stefant

What about Satellite Grid?

17 Sep 2016 x-factor103

Could also consider 1 EoI for the Trick of Light. Might help you "score" that Cleaners.