Thesis statement

Victorinox harnesses the power of unlimited economy via Magnum Opus and the Shaper suite of midrun cards and powerful breakers to get a damn good R&D lock going while remaining flexible enough to respond to nearly every possible corp threat.

Who should play this deck?

People who hate dead draws, discarding cards, and having to dedicate 12-15 slots to economy. People who like Stimshop, mid-run tutoring, and enjoy always having the right solution at their fingertips – or if you really, really like the idea of saying 'take ten credits, go' to your opponent. Do note that it sacrifices flexibility for power - Opus is infinite, but predictable, and the breakers aren't the greatest - meaning you will often have to choose one server to completely lock down at the cost of the rest.

2017 Store Champs

The Kuala Lumpur meta is incredibly difficult to tech against because what people will bring is a complete crapshoot. The top four IDs:

Andromeda/Near Earth Hub
Chaos Theory/Blue Sun
Geist/SYNC
Valencia/Potential Unleashed

My choice therefore is to run a deck that has infinite economy because most of the time, money lets you deal with most threats - while making tech choices against what I assumed was going to be a kill-heavy meta. In that regard, I was correct. 3/4 of the top 4 were kill decks.

(also I've been playing this one deck for 3 years. I like Opus what can I say.)

Round 1 vs Palana Foods

I hit a harvester on turn 2 and chose to let it fire. I ended up discarding 2 sports hoppers, my plascrete, an artist colony, a scavenge, and Chameleon, which in practice meant that Palana had saved me 6 clicks worth of drawing. The Agroplex he rezzed shortly after + Beth draw meant that I drew through my deck extremely quickly - when the game ended his archives were empty and so was my stack.

This would have been a problem had I hit any Snares, but to my extreme luck I didn't see any of the three in R&D. Triple RDI lock and Cyber Cypher to break DNA Tracker for a reasonable 5 credits ended the game.

Round 2: vs Near Earth Hub Power Shutdown Boom Combo

My strategy against NBN decks is 'hit R&D until the agendas fall out.' This NEH build ran 8 ice so a femme on Little Engine let me score out before he could find the combo. I did get lucky here because the game went long (archives was taller than R&D) and yet no Power Shutdown for the corp.

Round 3 vs SYNC

I got Hard-Hitting News'ed 4 times this game. I cleared (nearly) every single tag because Opus is a champion. I also trashed: 2 SanSan City Grids, 3 Team Sponsorships, 3 Jeeves Model Bioroids, 2 Pad Campaigns. My only installed cards the entire game were Plascrete, Sports Hopper, Femme, and Opus. Lots of taking credits. Once I stole 2 Quantum Predictive Models by Femme-ing Data Ravens, Sync's only real out was Psychographics, but I kept my tag count very low. Eventually he snuck out an Astro to put him at 4 points and HHN'ed me for psychographics, but HQ had 4 agendas in it so I stole the last points from there.

Round 4 vs Potential Unleashed.

PU and Val are really poor matchups for my 40 card Shaper with no net damage protection and Blue Sun without Executive Boot Camp, so when my opponent asked for an Intentional Draw I took it. We played the PU matchup anyway and I lost by running out of deck. Note to self: Do not play Diesels or install Sports Hoppers in a net damage matchup. I could have won if I had 1 or 2 more cards in my deck. (the winning agenda was sitting on the table but I needed to take 4 net damage to steal it and I didn't have 4 cards.)

Elimination Rounds

vs NEH Combo (Game 2)

The same opponent as in Round 2. I didn't run until I had an RDI set up, then Parasited Quandary and stole 7 points in 2 runs. Ridiculously lucky.

vs NEH Combo (winner's finals)

Stole 4 points, got combo'ed. I made a mistake by using my Sports Hoppers to draw cards instead of leaving them as BOOM protection because I had been playing netrunner for 8 hours and was very sleep deprived from a late night medical emergency the previous day. I could potentially had won if I had just slowed down and kept my meat damage protection up (no 24/7 Boom) and waited for HQ to flood before going in and stealing what I needed or hitting an agenda-thick R&D with 3 RDIs ready to go.

Version History

I also did a full writeup of the deck choices for a previous version: go here to read them.

The only changes so far have been a concession to the speed of the meta by changing to Cyber Cypher and Parasite from Torch and Imp (killing Resistors at 0 str is key, as is being able to save Test Runs and Scavenges for David recursion) and using Sports Hoppers to link up and protect yourself from BOOM. Cutting Fan Site is painful but IMO okay because Astrolabe and Sports Hopper let you speed up if you need to while 2x Artist Colony remains as a way to not instantly lose to Exchange of Information.

Future changes: Misdirection is a gamechanger. With infinite money, HHN is a non-issue. 3 Stimhacks seems excessive, I may get an Employee Strike instead.

Thank you for reading this writeup. For my Corp deck (Glacier Blue Sun with a Boom option) click here