Fear the Gnat

jazzmuse 88

Yes, this is a viable Fear the Masses deck. Thanks to Gnat's 40 card deck limit, we finally have a deck that we can burn through fast enough to be a threat regardless of the corp trying to rush out agendas. The strategy goes like this:

Step 1: Draw. A lot. Prioritize draw events in your opening hand. Process Automation, Inject, Deuces Wild, I've had worse.

Step 2a: Bookmark + FTM: Install Bookmark and stash Fear the Masses (and any extraneous cards you don't need.

Step 2b: Set up - really depends on how hard the corp is going to make it to get into HQ. But the one thing that is always a priority is installing Fan Sites and The Shadow Net while the corp is trying to score out 1 or 2 early agendas. If it's an icy corp deck, get that eater installed, or save up enough money and focus on finding Hippo and/or DDoS to avoid paying for HQ ice multiple times.
For horizontal decks, just dig for FTM and Amped up and let it rip.
For Skorp, you should just install breakers from your hand to be on the safe side

Step 2c: Hades - Don't risk opening a HHN window by running if you are worried about it, just pay the 7, then again your money should be high so just time your archives run well and it shouldn't be a problem.

Step 3: The Run. Here's where things get interesting. Here are a few scenarios I've encountered and how to deal with them. Let's go click by click here:

   CLICK 1/2: Amped Up! - if you need to stash the last few FTMs, it's all good, do it! After you have them stashed, pop an Amped Up (or 2 if you're really lucky!)

   Between CLICKS - now that you have 5-7 clicks trash bookmark, collect all of your Fear the Masses!

CLICK 2/3 - Play your first Fear The Masses!  - use Hippo and/or DDoS* to demolish their defenses and show them 5 additional FTM's for the full 6 mill.  

CLICK 3/4 and Beyond -  FTM and The Shadow Net - use fan sites to replay FTM from the heap.  Best case scenario you get to burn 18 cards in 3 clicks. consistently you will have 1 Fan Site and be able to burn 17 cards out of R&D in 3 clicks, but since you're so AMPED UP, you should have around 5-6 clicks, so you end up burning and additional 9 - 12 cards on top of that.  

 LAST CLICK - if you managed to install Hades, use all your clicks to burn their R&D to the ground.  If not, just save that last click for your archives run.  DDoS will help you avoid any ice they've thrown on Archives, but you should have enough money for one last run. 

 Hippo and DDos* - if you have Hippo and DDoS installed, and the appropriate breakers either installed or in your heap, you're good to go.  run, break the first piece of ice, pop the hippo, then pop the DDoS to disable the inside ice which is not the outermost piece of ice. 

Weaknesses: Best Defense is rough for this deck, luckily not a bunch of people are running this. Crisium Grid or any mysterious upgrade on HQ - will force you to run in and deal with it a turn or two before you unload. Usually a small delay, not a deal breaker.

Yes, this deck is really focused on one strategy. FTM is the primary goal but it is resilient. If you want to make it more well rounded could swap out DDoS and/or 1 Shadow Net for an Ice Carver or 2 to help out the conspiracy breakers. Also, if you want to get a little recycling out of the deck, add a Trope instead of the 2nd The Shadow Net and burn through your deck, use Trope to shuffle the FTM's (and some money/draw cards) back into your empty stack and go for it a 2nd time (although this is an unlikely scenario, although I would love to deck a corp with FTM, and it's very possible with a 40 card corp ID)

2 comments
28 Sep 2018 BlackCherries

Has economy really not been a problem?

It doesn't seem like you can get your ID ability to trigger very often, if at all, and you're really relying hard on the Fan Sites + The Shadow Net.

28 Sep 2018 jazzmuse

The ID is pretty much only for the 40 card deck size, any credits from the 2 card hand size is a happy accident. Economy is not an issue when you're only setting up and not doing a lot of running/checking remotes. Inject almost always pays for itself, process automation and deuces make you money so you're able to burn through your deck w/o spending money.

Fan Sites and Shadow Net are REALLY nice to have, but honestly, you could still do normal 6,5,4,3,2,1 FTM runs for a few less cards and it will often still work nicely. Usually you will have Amped up in hand or shadow net/fan sites set up or both by the time you need to run.