[3rd at Italian Megacity] Girlmes Tao

This is the runner that I took to Italian Megacity, which went undefeated in Swiss (vs Baserton's Rigshooter Ob and Atien's LEO) and then lost to BraveRising's Nebula in the loser's finals. Combined with my usual Nuvem bullshit, I took third overall! This deck also found interest in a little complotto group made for Italian Nats, which lead krys to take a variant of this on a Conduit game plan to 2-1 in Swiss.

If the title and Eru Ayase-Pessoa didn't give it away, this is an attempt to run my girls deck post-Akiko's rotation. The deck was good enough to win games, but I want to mainly use this writeup to talk about the deck's construction, how it feels different to girls in the previous meta and the issues I think it has. Discussion of the event, being sappy about my performance and loved ones, and general excitement are in my Corp writeup!

Deck Construction

This deck originated from Sobek sending me his girls Tao list, which I was very excited to try after a lot of time trying to build Dewi girls and failing. I took it and generally smoothed it out as well as making a few different breaker decisions. Regardless, it was his idea to combine Hermes Tao and girls, which is probably the best part of the deck!

Tao feels like a very good choice right now because of a number of very impactful ice. Pharos has always been a nightmare for Shapers to break, and Tao can effortlessly swap it away. People keep bringing in Biawak with Eminent Domain which can now be swapped to a server of your choosing. Funhouse in Nebula can be moved elsewhere. Rezzed Anemone can be kept on a server to avoid giving the Corp a chance to rez another one. Bioroids out of LEO can be moved elsewhere as well to prevent them from having a cheap end the run.

The aim of this particular Tao list, as is with girls in the previous meta, is to dig deep on R&D while still being able to pressure other servers and generally play the early game. That particular pressure comes from a new breaking force of Chromatophores + Propeller, which can break pretty much any ice once for only a few credits. This gives us a nice way into servers early to steal an early agenda or take a reasonably-sized R&D multiaccess. Rising Tide naturally complements this as a late-game breaker: use the Propellers for your early breaks and one-shot big breaks and the Rising Tide for sailing through late game remotes.

This takes up a lot of slots, so we need some way of turning them into economy. Aesop's is the solution from previous girls decks, and “Knickknack” O’Brian takes their place. Spec Work also helps, particularly with the programs that cost only 1c.

The R&D dig engine in this deck consists of Devadatta Drone, “Pretty” Mary da Silva and Eru Ayase-Pessoa as a finisher. Eru is particularly important as most players do not ice Archives against Tao as to avoid their big ice being swapped there! A notable omission compared to previous girls decks is Jailbreak: this is for slots reasons and because it feels worse with no Akiko ability from turn 1 - one of the best plays from previous versions of girls was to take an early triple access with Jailbreak, but an early double access feels worse enough to me for it to be cut.

Issues to Consider

A fast Shaper deck wants to run fast economy, and the banning of Creative Commission puts a heavy damper on that. I think there's a lot of alternatives to consider: Overclock with more Self-modifying Code could be good, as could Into the Depths for some midgame money and cheap Devadatta tutoring. Telework Contract is doing an okay job at making it possible to recover from low money but it is sometimes a little too click intensive. Environmental Testing was put in at the last minute and I really disliked it - I expect it is a good card in the hands of other players, but in mine it feels like too much of a credit sink.

Knickknack is no Aesop's, not just in payout but also trigger condition. Shaper does not have the kind of run triggers needed to always be making impactful runs: in-faction options like Into the Depths require you to break ice or catch the corp on low credits, you now need to pay influence for Clean Getaway where Dirty Laundry was previously free, and Side Hustle is an incredibly slow payout. Sometimes in Netrunner you need to not run, and that means that you're not getting value from Knickknack.

The influence being very tight, with a minimum core of 2x Hermes and 1x Eru already eating a large chunk of your influence. In this case, it meant taking an in-faction killer, which is awful: Echelon is too slow and expensive for a deck claiming to be aggro and Living Mural proved disappointing in testing. We at least have Chromatophores to avoid breaking some of the worst sentries as sentries, but it is definitely a weakness of the deck. I'm considering cutting a Pinhole (we can bounce enough with Hermes) and Cupellation for a Revolver to avoid this.

Finally, the girls package just feels less good without a permanent source of multiaccess on the ID. Getting “Pretty” Mary da Silva to fire is a lot harder without potential multiaccess from turn 1. Every access counts, and not having access to more accesses (what a phrase) from the start of the game makes the deck slower.

Anyway, I think this idea has legs but could be improved a bit. The economy is probably the bit that needs the most careful thought, along with whether this multiaccess package works with the cards we have available: it is more complex than putting in every card that mentions additional accesses from R&D. I think my personal challenge is that this deck feels less like the original girls lists and needs more fundamental tweaks to work as a result. For now though, I can be proud of my performance even if the deck feels like it needs improvement, and happy that I'm at a point in my deckbuilding where I can think about my lists as critically as I do.

Most of the thanks are going in the other write up, but I do want to put one extra deck-specific thank you here. Thank you to my partner AceEmpress for everything, but here in particular for being my Shaper Muse for building these kinds of aggro Shaper lists. While we settled on very different lists, we've still taken so many ideas from each other and this list wouldn't be as good as it is without our work.