Do The Worm (1st - Store Championship Blakfyre Games)

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Amakaze 444

An elegant weapon for a more civilized age. This deck dropped two games on the day of the event (both in the swiss) but went undefeated in the top 8, including saving my bacon in the finals. The SC was attended by 23 players.

Lets talk about Panchabread, shall we? I imagine that will be the most debated part of this deck. I am, however, convinced that it is not only a perfectly viable breaker set, but one of the best sets available for criminals. Pancha is relatively influence light at 6, its easy to draw fast with Andromeda's starting 9, it doesn't require recursion (though it is vulnerable to rig shooters that can target your panchas). Most importantly, its extremely efficient on space, allowing you more room for shenanigans, its cheap to install, and it handles any one ice server from very early on. In addition, your NBN and ETF opponents will be startled to find just how many of their ice also happen to be tracers to begin with...

Short version? Criminal as its meant to be played. You can't face check with impunity any longer, but it costs a measly 4 credits to install a breaker for any one ice server. Show the corps how early pressure used to feel.

Playwise, this deck thrives on money. You shouldn't have too much trouble building up a massive amount of credits, enough to hammer any server with an opening and keep the corp on the back foot. Guru (We'll talk about him later) and Aaron, when combined with oodles of money, provide very respectable defense against corp kill, and you're not nearly as matchup prone as a lot of runner. Having both HQ and RnD interfaces means you can hammer whatever server is open, and get valuable accesses without the need to run the server multiple times in a row. Your data suckers will accumulate counters very quickly, and that makes pancha a very efficient breaker indeed against much of the ice that is being played. It will take a little practice to get into the rhythm, but once you find it, corps beware!

Some downsides. Gang sign was my attempt to count a little more ETF and CI than I actually saw, and they ended up being a little too slow for most games, your mileage may vary. However, freedom through equality functions extremely well with gang sign, as you can fire off the gang sign when the corp scores for one last attempt to connect with Freedom before it trash. As you might imagine, Leela was my rebirth target all day. Targeted Marketing is also a problem if you meet the same person twice, since you only have one freedom, as the corp is likely to target your panchas and really interfere with your game plan. Its less so if the corp doesn't know what you're running, as Pancha isn't usually the card that comes up.

Some specific card thoughts.

Account Siphon - Yes, this is an amazing card, no this isn't a siphon deck, and yes, 2 was more than enough. Use this when its an economic advantage for you, don't be afraid to toss it. You're working to go through their ice cheaply, not trying to keep them crippled. The threat keeps HQ iced up heavy, which usually leaves archives or RnD open for your Temujins, and every so often you can unexpectedly pancha your way in turn one with sure gamble, ginger, pancha, siphon as your turn one (As always, don't try this against NBN or anyone you suspect is using boom).

Tapwrm - The namesake of the deck and the newest card, this was respectable, but probably not really earning being the title card. Its very good in Andromeda, as you're very likely to be dirty laundrying somewhere on turn one, and dropping this on the first turn is a major pain for corps. Its not uncommon for this to earn you 10 credits before it finally goes away. The downside is its usefulness drops if its not in your opening hand. When you're on the bookfoot, this little buddy isn't really what you want to see. Still, great economy, nice annoyance, the corp will be unhappy.

Guru Davinder - Okay, now that you've clicked on the card to remember what he does, this card is a definite meta call that turned out to be DEAD ON today. I saw a lot of accelerated diagnostic Boom decks, and Guru is an absolute dead stop to them. What answers they usually have frequently require them to contort their combo around a lot, and when combined with Aaron (to protect from breaking news) you can feel really confidant that a combo kill is not going to go off. I wish I had more of him in the deck and would probably go to 2 hostages, as both this runner's loss were from corps that assembled the combo too quickly. He also proved valuable against Jinteki, though more carefully. Combined with desperado, he allows you to fearless run unadvanced card and, since they aren't usually taxing you with ice, its not hard to keep up with his payments. Just watch out about playing him after wall of knives has been scored. Expensive!

Security testing - I thought decks might be going wider and threw this in at the last minute. They weren't, and even when they were (CTM) I didn't have time for this card, or a need. Replace with Inside Job.

An excellent day and a win for the blue team! Thank you to everyone at Blakfyre!

8 comments
30 Jan 2017 FunkeXMix

Look interesting, but I don't get it. Any two ICE server with two end the runs at least stop you completely, no? If 3 Pachantras are installed, does that mean I can use it's effect 3 times per turn?

30 Jan 2017 Amakaze

That's correct. Each pancha can be used once per turn. So it takes 4 non tracers on the same server to completely lock out, which just never happened. (The two most common corps, NBN and HB, will struggle with how many ice happen to have tracer as a sub type already). If your second pancha is being slow, you can have a little trouble with ETF, but usually its difficult for them to rez enough to stop you before you can dig for it.

2 Feb 2017 SneakyBookshelf

I found I hit a lot of inconsistency problems because you're essentailly stuck not being able to run until you have Gingerbread and 1 Pancha out. What do you do in games where the two are far apart in your deck? Do get more agressive and start face checking or do you just spend 2 to 3 turns drawing up?

2 Feb 2017 Amakaze

@SneakyBookshelfThe combination of the big Andy draw and a hotel will usually get you both pieces pretty early (I highly recommend three gingers and 3 panchas. You'll be tempted to go down to 2 gingers, but this is a trap). Sometimes your deck does hate you, absolutely, the way it sometimes hides the right breaker and your special orders on the bottom in a more traditional deck. I'm usually willing to face check a bit early, depending on the deck (NBN is usually okay if you have nothing that arch angel will mess up. HB is okay first click though Architect is coming back. Jinteki is not okay. Weyland is not okay). The other thing I usually do if play down a Temujin and make a few runs on Archives. That usually gets them defending all three servers and gives me the opportunity to draw aggressively. If you can find the influence, I'd love to have had 1-2 quality times in the deck to supplement hotel. As with most criminals, getting a hotel down early is a big win, and not having it really slows your tempo.

2 Feb 2017 SneakyBookshelf

@Amakaze Yeah I wouldn't consider dropping to 2 of the programs, I've fallen down that trap before with other decks. I'm thinking of Fisk Investment Seminar or Express Delivery for draw and Crescentus instead of Tapwrm to have more potential to slow the corp early. I've been on a pretty long break from Netrunner but I'll be trying it out at a Store Championship this Saturday, no idea what sort of meta to expect so it'll be a big learning experience.

Out of curiosity why is Weyland not ok to face check? What do they run now that's dangerous early game?

I was also wondering about the call on Guru, I can see from your deck description that he did a lot of work for you but I noticed other Andy decks like Takeshi's Castle don't run any damage protection at all. Is that because CI went up in popularity over the last few weeks or are you just playing extra safe?

2 Feb 2017 Amakaze

@SneakyBookshelf For Weyland its not SO much the ice (though both Veritas and Mausolus really suck to slam your face into) as much as you then have to worry about sea source or midseason counters if you get through, which can prevent you from laying down your resources to keep your credits up. Also because Weylands usually slow enough I'm comfortable drawing for breakers.

For the Guru it was a bit of a meta call. SIFR smashed a lot of corp strategies. Usually when that happens I find people running back to speed, which means either kill decks or fast advance. For my local meta, I figured I'd be dealing with a lot of Accelerated Diagnostic Boom decks. I was correct, too. I think I went up against 2 decks all day that didn't have boom in them. Best defense CAN accelerated diagnostic around Guru, but he throws gum in the works hard if they don't have it, and he's generally useful against all sorts of kill. If your local meta is falling back on the 7 point CI more than any railgunning, then I'd swap him for something else.

2 Feb 2017 SneakyBookshelf

@AmakazeSorry for all the questions but I was wondering about one more thing. How would you say Freedom Through Equality affected the tempo of the deck? I'm thinking of dropping Freedom, Turning Wheel and Rebirth to make room for 2x Employee Strike and John Masanori. Would you say not having that extra Agenda point or one fewer multi-access cards hurt the tempo a lot? I'm very comfortable playing Andy with regular breakers but I feel like with this sort of rig you want to score as fast as possible. Is the difference as big as I think or am I overthinking it?

2 Feb 2017 Amakaze

No problem at all! I think this is the type of deck without much in the way of keystone cards. Outside of the breakers, I think you can be comfortable changing it around to fit your needs (Though I would recommend keeping in Tpewrm rather than crescentus for a little bit. But that's mostly because SIFR is driving a lot of corps to very cheap cards)

Employee strike is always great, and I don't begrudge you at all. Freedom through Equality helps get you off the six point problem a lot of Global Food decks put you on). Its also synergizes very well with Gang Sign, since when the corp scores you can choose to fire gang sign BEFORE Freedom trashes itself, since they have the same trigger condition. This gives you one more chance to score an agenda out of hand and get your extra point, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone wanting Strike.

Oh! I didn't mention it above, but I got to do this once during the day. Macrophage is a popular card right now to counter medium. Corps will rez it to shoot down your Tpewrm or Datasucker. My recommendation? Let them. Bide your time. Then run back in on the same server when they install another ice. Use one pancha to make that ice at tracer (so you can break it) and the other to make it a Virus. Then you can let the macrophage trace fire, forcing them to trash their own ice if they have no other valid targets. You can even force macrophage to trash itself this way. Always feels good.