Fairchild Division v.3.2

grimgravyboat 298

I've always heard people say how bad this ID is. How useless it is to try and make a brain damage deck. How you can never hope to win with that sort of strategy. To those people I submit my best effort to the contrary.

Once the Fairchildren suite was available, I knew that they fit in nicely with Cybernetics Division. From there, I just updated an older list utilizing Snares/Prisecs with that ice and some other options that have shown up since I originally created the deck.

As of now, the ICE suite can stand to tweaked for optimization (as much as I want Nerine 2.0 to earn its spot, it hasn't) but the Fairchildren perform as advertised. I've recently taken out a Brainstorm in favor of Janus 1.0, mostly because Killers are everywhere and usually nerf the Brainstorm's potential, and Janus is nasty even if they have to click through, or pay.

Gameplan: you are not trying to score out, but you should still score agendas if possible. Ideally, you want to score a big guy (Hades or Elective Upgrade) to help your deck remain flexible. But, more importantly, if you score a big guy, your Cerebral Overwriter becomes a more likely target for the runner if they fear another big agenda rolling through. The same can be said for scoring ABTs to disguise your Edge of World in scoring server, which can really shift the momentum to the Corp side. Even landing one brain damage can make all the difference.

The kill plan should be obvious: hope they hit some combination of Snare and Prisecs while you have Neural EMPs in hand. In a slim deck, it happens more often than you'd think. I used to only pack 2x Neurals, but I decided to swap out two Jackson Howard to free up influence and round out the recursion with more Preemptive Actions. In a slow tempo deck like this, using your last click to put back in nastiness (or necessary econ) never feels like a bad move. Enforced Curfew is a great addition and does double work for you to kill Runner currents.

Obviously, the big problem with this deck is econ. Still trying to figure out the best mix of operation economy to sustain it, but it has been an issue. I think the goal should either be to switch up to a cheaper ICE suite (I've been known to fire an ABT to hopefully get a big ICE rezzed) or really finalize what op econ works best.

Would love to hear people's feedback! Thanks!

2 comments
9 Aug 2017 Krams

I've always loved the ID and I made quite a few brain damage decks as well.
Some of them sport 2x Neural EMP + 2x Archived Memories for the dreaded EMP+Archived+EMP kill combo. (I never had the inf for 3 EMPs :D)
Most of them have 2x Enforced Curfew, just like yours.
I've had some success with Defective Brainchips, but I do see the advantage in your much smaller agenda suite.

Seeing that you have excusively bioroid ICE, I think Ravana 1.0 could work in your deck. It can copy brain damage or ETR subs, so it will always be a viable threat and offers good tax for it's prize. Perhaps as replacement if Nerine 2.0 really fails to earn it's spot.

I see two porential issues with your deck.
The bigger one is to make the brain damage reliable. Only 1 Overwriter, only 1 Edge of World, only 1 Black Level Clearance, no Brainchips, no Batty/Troubleshooter to enforce that your ICE are firing, no Ryon.
A careful runner that let's no s ever fire can avoid your hand size reduction pretty easily. Snare! and Prisec alone are not setting up anyone for the EMP kill.
The other potential issue is that your eco looks relatively light in relation to your ICE suite. Hard-rezzing Janus and Fairchild is nice and all, but you have to be able to afford it. You have no eco in your ICE, agenda or assets. Only 1 "eco" upgrade (that may or may not gain a whole credit!). Only 6 burst economy operations. 6 are not many, even in a "small" 44 card deck. You gain 22 total from playing all of them. That covers for maybe 3 ICE and firing 1 ambush.
I know, I know, you can recur them for free with Preemptive Action, but I don't think that's enough, since you will probably also want to recur your traps, cycle your agendas, recur trashed ICE or random mills, etc..

9 Aug 2017 grimgravyboat

@KramsThanks for the feedback! I've considered trying to squeeze in the Defective Brainchips, but I'm actually closer to taking out the ABTs to consolidate the agendas even more haha.

Ravana 1.0 used to be in the original build and I think it definitely pulls more weight than Nerine 2.0. The reason I dropped it in the first place was that it seemed to always show up by itself in my opening hand, which frustrated me. Will probably add it back in because Nerine frustrates me more everytime I see it.

Your criticisms are exactly on point. Although, I feel like I see Overwriter and Edge fairly often in games (obviously, this is due to recursion, as you acknowledge at the end) but if I consolidate the agendas more, I could find room for another Overwriter. BLC has been pretty meh thus far, acting as minimal econ as you say haha. Batty would be great but finding the influence for one would take away from the Neural EMP consistency that works well here. Troubleshooter (or even the new HB upgrade that boosts STR) is an interesting addition I haven't really considered, but will now.

You're right that careful runners are rarely flatlined, Usually the Snare!/Prisec combo only sets up the kill on a lucky big dig on RND or eager HQ dive, which makes it nice to have 3 copies of Neural to find.

You're also right that the econ sucks lol. When you write out the 22 credit total it really dawns on me how bad it is hahaha. Of course, slow tempo decks cause you to mostly spend your turn clicking up credits which supplements the econ somewhat, but I need to rethink the spread for sure.