Spotify [6th Bochum Regionals]

Cluster Fox 592

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This is the Asa Group deck I took to the Bochum Germany Regionals and netted me 6th place in a field of 30 very compentent Netrunners (my highest result ever). It went 3-2 in Swiss and won the single game it played in the cut. If it's any indication, I played against three Clan Vengeance Anarchs, it lost to one but beat the other two. It's a deck I've been playing, tweaking and adjusting a lot of in the past month, and credit where credit is due, it's a variation of @pj20's Jukebox deck from the US Nationals (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/51009/jukebox-6-1-us-nats-2nd-place-). I've never been much of an HB fan or player, but the speed and efficiency the click compression this ID gives you is so much fun.
So how does this deck work? Essentially, early game you want to score out an agenda or two very quickly and then finish them off by scoring in an impenetrable remote. A fair early turn is installing an agenda click 1, Asa-triggering an ice in front of it, Click 2 another ice on a central and clicking for a credit. Score it out next turn. Most of the cards are strightforward. Rashida Jaheem is there for speed, Jinja City Grid is there to help build a monsterous remote, Marcus Batty is there to help keep them out of said remote, Jeeves Model Bioroids is there for even more click efficiency and Enhanced Login Protocol is there to slow down the runner and clear currents. Stack Surveyors on the remote and protect centrals. Set up a second remote for your Jeeves. Crisium Grid stops all sorts of nonsense.

One of the most gratifying plays is if you have a Jeeves and a Jinja installed and you play Ultraviolet Clearance. This rockets you so far ahead it's not even funny. Any ice you draw can be thrown on your Jinja remote, it gives you an Asa trigger to install something in the remote like Batty or Rashida, it lets you install something else entirely like an agenda, and it gives you a fourth click due to Jeeves so you can play an economy operation like IPO. All while giving you draw and 4.

Another thing that's really great with this deck is the combination of Jeeves and Project Vitruvius or Corporate Sales Team. If you never-advance a card in your remote (and then use it to Asa-trigger some more ice on it), they'll often never run it. It costs a lot of credits to get in to your remote at any given point in the game and people generally only want to risk it when you start advancing something. With Jeeves, you can advance the agenda 4 times, scoring out a never-advanced CST or a Vitruvius with a counter. This is very important in the Clan Vengeance matchups as it allows you to save agendas that they dumpster. But this deck does have a relatively good matchup against Clan Vengeance anyway because you just keep throwing all your cards on to or in to servers and often aren't holding very many cards at all. And if they're sitting there durdling for CV counters, that gives you the tempo to score out before they're ready to attack you.

Some final thoughts on why I chose certain cards over others. I went with Vanilla over Najja 1.0 because I wanted a cheap gearcheck that actually had a hard ETR and over Seidr Adaptive Barrier because while it's really good, you just don't have the economy to support it. Once they have a fracter on the board then just throwing them up on your remote to increase your Surveyor strength is fine. I also tested this deck with the original Bryan Stinson and found that it almost never fired. When it did it was because the runner had paid through the remote and stolen the agenda, so I was down points and all my ice was already rezzed anyway. I also tested Arella Salvatore and it's a good card, but I think it only has a home in this deck if you're playing things like NGO Front and Bio Vault, otherwise it's just a win-more card that doesn't really help. So I ended up on Batty, which is a solid choice to make sure they can't get through your remote twice. And what in the darn heck, three Crisiums? They were the absolute last-minute include and I'm happy for it. It stops all sorts of shenanigans like Indexing, Diversion of Funds, Omar runs, Apocalypse,.. it ended up being a very good meta call for me on the day.
In conclusion, I'd like to make shout out to everyone from my local group who helped me test and fine-tune the deck, especially @Slowriffs who kept me grounded and called me out on stupid deckslot choices. Also of course @dalhill for TO'ing an excellent tournament, and all the people I met and played against. It was a fantastic day of Netrunner and it is one I will not soon forget. Love you all.

For those interested in reading how I piloted the deck and how it performed in specific matchups, you can read my tournament report below.
ROUND 1 - vs Sunny LeBeau (Matthias) - LOSS
This was a very short and very unfortunate game. I scored out a Vitruvius very early. After that I drew nothing but agendas and he drew nothing but Legworks. I'd managed to eek out an Ikawah Project but he'd stolen the other two. Seeing there were no more Ikawahs in the deck, he Deep Data Mined me for the win. Fair.

ROUND 2 - vs Apex (Alex @PuMeGo) - WIN
I was able to set up a scoring remote very quickly with taxing ice on centrals. Unfortunately for PuMeGo, there's no way for Apex to keep up, especially seeing as though Endless Hunger can't break Turing and I scored out quite comfortably. I do want to shout out to her because while I don't want to spoil what the deck was doing, it was very cool, and it won games on the day. Bringing Apex to a Regional, how do you sit down with balls that big? Kudos, Alex.

ROUND 3 - vs Valencia Estevez (Benjamin @Antisthenese) - LOSS
The first half of the game seemed to be going in my favor. He was durdling for CV counters and I was scoring. He rebirthed in to Omar and I stuffed his Turning Wheel run with a Crisium on Archives. After that, it kind of went down hill. I wasn't finding agendas and he played his Clan Vengeances very astutely. Nothing much to say. You know how this goes.

ROUND 4 - vs Valencia Estevez (Carl) - WIN
I scored a relatively early Corporate Sales Team behind some ice with Jeeves. He contested the Jeeves and that dropped him so low, combined with the fact that his Zer0 triggers seemed to be trashing all his Liberated Accounts and things, he couldn't contest my scoring remote and I scored out an SSL Endorsement. That money kept me afloat for the rest of the game. He hit a Surveyor last click and took the tags. I waited a serviceable amount of time for him to take actions, then I trashed his loaded up Clan Vengeance. IAA an Ikawah in the remote, he tried to contest but was only leaning on Turtle and oddly hadn't found a Black Orchestra yet, so I stuffed him with a Turing and won the game.

ROUND 5 - vs MaxX (Alex @ff0x) - WIN
This match excited and terrified me at the same time. I've known ff0x for quite a while now and and he's such a great guy, I love playing against him. On the other hand, I've never actually beaten him before and I needed to win both games to be on the bubble and he only needed a split. I got really lucky in this game. Like really lucky. He never contested my remote but did trash the first Jeeves. After that I installed a Jeeves with a Loki in front of it and that kept it safe for the remainder of the game. I scored out an over-advanced Vitruvius, then a Corporate Sales Team, then another Vitruvius with a counter. He had a really neat engine with District 99 and over-installing Titanium Ribs to build Counter Surveillance counters. He CV'ed me twice for a lot of cards, but never hit an agenda (see, this is where I got really lucky). And if he had, I had two Vitruvius counters to pull agendas back. After the second CV, I really needed to dig for the last agenda so I used a Vitruvius token to pull back an Ultraviolet Clearance, throwing some more ice on my Jinja remote, installing the last Vitruvius in the remote and playing an IPO. He ended up not trying to contest it and I scored it for the win. Very well fought to ff0x, I think we were both quite tired at that point and the heat in the room was getting to us. I was relieved and quite a happy camper.

CUT ROUND 2 - vs Steve Cambridge (Oguz @Lostgeek) - WIN
This was the only game I corp'ed in the cut and it won relatively easily. Seeing his decklist I saw he was on an Apocalyspe build and I thought well I'll be damned, isn't a good thing I slotted three Crisiums at the last minute? I assume there was the inverse feeling on the other side of the table. One of the lovely things in this matchup is that his economy was largely based on his restricted card, Señor Tapps. I could purge (and in the process wipe Aumakua counters) and still have a click left over from Jeeves to install something and get an Asa trigger. I couldn't find a Crisium to save my life though, but I managed to score a Vitruvius and an Ikawah before the Apocalypse landed. Thank god I managed to get both my Architects out on R&D and HQ before that happened. After that I kept drawing Crisiums to stuff any further Apocalypse attemps and casually installed a card in my two ice remote. It was a Turing in to Vanilla remote, and he had an Abagnale and an Aumakua on the table, but didn't consider it to be an agenda, or perhaps didn't think he could get in. It was the Corporate Sales Team that I scored out the next turn with Jeeves.
All in all the deck performed very well and I'm glad with how it turned out. At this point, there's nothing I would change. Thanks for reading!
6 comments
23 Jul 2018 Cpt_nice

Congrats on the win! This is the kinda deck I always dread playing against cause it goes so ridiculously fast.

Also, happy to hear Pumego was on Apex again, such a ballsy choice

23 Jul 2018 Cluster Fox

Thanks David! And yeah respect for playing Apex, it was rad.

23 Jul 2018 lostgeek

I can confirm. There was the polar opposite feeling on the other side of the table.

Congrats on the win! It was definitely a great game and I'm happy to even have gotten off the Apocalypse even once against ELP + Crisiums.

23 Jul 2018 PuMeGo

This deck is definitely fast and hard to compete with as apex. Congrats bro!

If someones interested now, you can have a look on my apex deck here: netrunnerdb.com

24 Jul 2018 pj20

Well done!! I always wanted to fit a Crisium in, so I like some of your changes. I'm glad you enjoyed the shell of the deck, I think it's extremely underrated, and it's a blast to play. Congrats on the strong performance

26 Jul 2018 Cluster Fox

@PuMeGo & @pj20 thanks a lot! :)