Argus First Ever Corp Deck

Critical Brian 52

I've only just started playing, so this my first ever home-made deck. I love the idea of the archetypal big bad corporation no-one dares mess with, so this deck is designed to (hopefully) rush out of the gate and murderise anyone who gets in its way!

EDIT: This deck was made as part of our ongoing Netrunner podcast series - the first episode can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9noalvychM or on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/criticaltwits/44-netrunner-for-noobs-1-our-run-begins

6 comments
5 Sep 2016 RubbishyUsername

Hey Brian! I'm going to guess that this is a rushier deck that tries to score out quickly and if the runner tries to stop you from doing that they have to deal with a face full of collapsing building. Overall, it's pretty good! Now, you haven't specified what cards you have and what you don't, so it can be difficult to make recommendations. Never the less, there are some cards here that you will find pull their weight and some that don't:

Space Camp can be very difficult to use when only Ice Wall can benefit from being advanced. It's very difficult to advance agendas with this because since you can't rely on the runner running space camp, you were probably going to score that agenda next turn anyway.

Private Security Force is unfortunately the kind of card that you only play when you don't have any other agendas. With only three clicks in a turn, it's very difficult to kill a runner with this card. Either you can kill them with Scorched Earth, or you can't kill them at all. If you have another two point agenda, I'd reccomend it.

5 Sep 2016 Critical Brian

Thanks for your comment! You've nailed the idea exactly, I love the idea of being the archetypal evil corporation that will do anything for a buck and destroy anyone who gets in their way. I've gone a bit mad with cards to be honest, and I'm happy to invest more if needed, so I'd love to know what you'd change Space Camp and Private Security Force for? Thanks again!

5 Sep 2016 RubbishyUsername

So one of the best agendas for rush decks is Oaktown Renovation from Chrome City. It's an agenda you can score from 1 credit if the runner forces you to rez ice, and it makes you money as you score it instead of losing it. Plenty of decks install ice on remote install Oaktown advance on their very first turn.

Although it's rotating out fairly soon, Project Atlas from What Lies Ahead is a much easier agenda to score than your two High-Risk Investments, because you can just install it in a remote and force the runner to consider that it might be a Snare! Additionally, if you know the remote is safe for a while, you could overadvance it and use that counter to add more agendas to your hand when you need them to keep the pressure on. (What Lies Ahead in general contains a lot of powerful cards if you can get hold of it, but do consider that it won't be competitively usable when the next cycle is released some time next year).

If you don't want to do that, consider running 2 Global Food Initiatives instead from Data and Destiny. This agenda is widely considered to be the best 5/3 in the game, and newer players may find it difficult to understand why. Basically, with this card you can win the game with 3 agendas where the runner needs to steal 4. Rush decks are all about slowing the runner down and speeding the corp up, and forcing the runner to run R&D 4 more times or so to find another agenda is a pretty good way of slowing them down. On the subject of agendas, you have 21 agenda points in this deck. Most decks want to run 20, again to minimise that chance of losing to a freak agenda on the top of R&D.

I'd also consider ditching the Traffic Accident for another Scorched Earth if you can. You want the game to go as quickly as possible, and that means you want as many cards that work with SEA Source as possible. Fast Track from Honor and Profit and Swordsman from Second Thoughts are both good replacements, but not essential and for completely different reasons.

If you want to see what cards an expert uses, Scottish lunatic Seamus has been running Seamusmodernism since Argus's release and has been very successful with it. Impressively, most of your list is similar to his, but there are some more subtle card choices that he's made (which you can choose to buy into at your own discretion) which help him against certain types of opponents. Deckslots are tight in something like this, so if he's not running what you're running it's probably because he found it to be too slow. What you want to take out of his deck is up to you. In particular, his deck is a little old and there are some cards that you can play now that he did not have access to.

Like Zealous Judge from Fear The Masses, which I would replace Space Camp with. Remember you can rez cards at any point during the runners turn, so you can let the runner hit a Snare! or Data Raven or an agenda and choose to take the tag, rez it before they can remove the tag, and then they have to remove the tag and get into the remote server the judge is in so you can't simply give them a tag and apply a couple of Scorched Earth to the face on the following turn.

5 Sep 2016 Critical Brian

Thanks so much for the tips! Gonna have a jiggle about this evening - I literally just this evening opened Fear The Masses and saw the Judge and decided I had to have him! Another Scorched Earth will be going in if I can find one to borrow. Just ordered Chrome City as well as Oaktown looks very very nice. Thanks again! The podcast I'm involved in are just starting up a new Netrunner segment (one show a month), which is what's got me into this - am I okay to thank you on there as well? (I know some people like that kind of thing and some don't, so wanted to make sure I asked!)

5 Sep 2016 RubbishyUsername

Sure - and post a link here!

15 Sep 2016 Critical Brian

@RubbishyUsernameHello again! The podcast is up at www.youtube.com - thanks again for all your help, I've been doing quite well with it so far!