Value Town // German Nationals // Swiss #14 // Beaten in Cut

This deck took me to my first ever cut in the German nationals. It was netdecked a couple of months ago and then heavily modified. The deck also kinda safed Netrunner for me :) I was unable to find any runner I liked playing for weeks and got really frustrated. Then I found this and had fun again. It's a fairly strong deck that offers nailbiting, really interesting games as reward for good piloting.

How to play it:

The engine is the Rogue Trading + Citadel Sanctuary combo. Getting this down before the corp gets too rich to start using it is mandatory and dictates your mulligan and early game. Mulligan for at least one combo piece, draw a lot. Don't let the corp dictate your actions, build your board state. Don't be completely passive, but if you do not get this online, chances are that you will loose. It's fine for the corp to take the lead, you can catch up. Try not to discard Power Tap, it is what makes the engine awesome in mid and late game. Early game, I often installed Power Tap and Citadel Sanctuary with Career Fair, even though it technically means loosing a credit. Always keep an eye on the credit differential. Do not go significantly poorer than the corp. Try to get some Aumakua token as well and, if you have the chance, use Credit Kiting for Security Nexus.

Once you established a money lead, Security Nexus becomes the center piece of your game. It allows you to face check with impunity and enables you to get into servers and charge up Aumakua again. It also triggers Power Tap and, if you decide to end a run and take a tag, Citadel Sanctuary for another turn of Power Tap. HQ and RD are protected by Anansi and DNA Tracker? Run anyways, trigger Nexus for 3 creds, a tag, and a turning wheel token. End the turn, get another 3 creds from citadell and remove the tag. Bammm....value town.

As you transition into mid and late game, you really want to get The Turning Wheel down. Then kick back, play the remote camping game and make tons and tons of money running, super charging your The Turning Wheel. If your opponent is on fast advance, try establishing R&D lock; you probably won't be able to get a complete lock, but if I wanted to, I could see more cards than my opponent in most matchups.

Changes I made:

When I copied the deck (really don't know from whom anymore), it was on Corporate "Grant" instead of Employee Strike. I think ES is a lot stronger and worth being the restricted card. The deck also ran no normal breakers, relying entirely on Aumakua, Security Nexus and I think Femme Fatale. I found that holding the breakers back and using them right after a purge is a viable strategy that prevents being locked out. It works best when you don't have to show them beforehand. There were other changes, but those were the most dramatic.

Card choices:

Spear Phishing > Inside Job: I would usually prefer Inside Job, but Spear Phishing is better with MTI around.

Credit Kiting: Time and again, I couldn't get myself to remove it or put in more of those - and I contemplated both. I think 1 is fine, you draw a lot with this deck and chances are good, you are going to see it, before you need to plop down Security Nexus. If not, the world doesn't end.

Femme Fatale: I think this is a remnant from the netdecked version. It just never really pulled much weight and is a candidate for removal. Just having Mongoose as a backup plan for dealing with sentries might be enough.

Weaknesses, changes, suggestions:

The biggest weakness of the deck is how much it relies on getting a credit lead with Rogue Trading and Citadel Sanctuary in the beginning. Not only do you need to draw the combo early, you often cannot just install the other stuff you draw (keep your credits up!) - which sometimes leads to a lot of unpleasant discards. As long as you are willing to draw aggressively, the deck fizzles less often than you might think, but it does fizzle sometimes. And while it is not super slow, it is not the fastest deck under the sun either. With my corp deck being a bit on the slow side, I went to time 6 times during nationals - and then was thrown out of the cut when I did again – with me and my opponent both being on 6 agenda points, but him having the higher seed.

Possible changes to make setup a bis faste are removing one The Turning Wheel and one Employee Strike for two Build Script. Also, as mentioned above - I'd replace Femme Fatale with Mongoose.

If anyone has more suggestions on how to improve consistency in early game... please share them here!

Also a shoutout @Volker who eliminated me from the cut in the maybe biggest nailbiter I had ever had with this deck.