You Can Run, But You Can't Live

Nordrunner 4159

Nice to have a reasonable deck to publish again. This is one of the more fun corp decks I have made in awhile and it has a pretty good win % on Jinteki.net.

The primary win condition is usually a flatline, but you have plenty of outs to win with points if necessary. The standard win conditions are as follows...

  • Snare! by itself. Apparently a lot of people still forget Snare! is a card and like to run on 2 or less cards. Also, people don't seem to expect a Snare! in Gargarin.

  • Snare + Dedicated Response Team. Pretty self explanatory how this combo works. It's 5 damage o' meat and net, often enough to get the job done. The key is knowing when to rez DRT. I will almost always rez if the runner runs HQ, I have a Snare! in hand, and a possibility for a flatline. Even a 20% chance to end the game on the spot is very powerful and worth the chance. I am certainly rezzing on Deep Data Mines or something similar.

  • Urban Renewal + Contract Killer. This might be the bread and butter of this deck. Most players will have a hand size of 5, UR will knock them down to 1 card, and CK is the sealer. You will usually have to protect your UR, but CK will often be unrezzed and unchecked in a remote, or if you know you have the kill in sight, try to protect both assets.

  • This deck can also go the distance on runner card attrition, and can even burn through runner decks with Levy. Not ideal because 3 pointers are fragile and can be easy to lose with, but a good draw and solid defensive play can win you a game this way.

Cheeky City Works Project plays:

  • A Kakugo (or 2) in server making stealing impossible without dying.

  • Put it behind a Data Raven with a Dedicated Response Team on the board. The best part about this play is that you can rez DRT after they have fully committed to accessing CWP and will be an auto kill upon completion of the run.

  • My favorite is to install advance advance a CWP when Urban Renewal has one counter left. The runner is really in a bad spot here, and that's a very good thing.

Other thoughts worth noting.

  • I have messed around with Housekeeping vs Scarcity of Resources, and even thought about Paywall Implementation. Housekeeping is a pain to get out turn 1 since 2 credits to spend on turn one is pretty steep. And the later the game goes the less value it has. However, the text/effect of Housekeeping most directly supports my primary win condition, so that's why I am using it. Also, Housekeeping + Haley is pretty comical.

  • All asset economy. This can be a difficult style to play, especially if you have a runner with money and the where-with-all to trash everything in sight. Use your ICE wisely. 1 Mumba Temple can take you a long way, so don't be afraid to protect one if you think the runner will trash it. The idea is that it costs nothing for a runner to trash a Hedge Fund, but 4 creds for a Mumba Temple, 3 for a Commercial Bankers Group, so on and so forth. Will the runner have the chance to get to all of my econ, as well as the cards threatening to flatline them? Normally they can't do both. You can even outlast a Magnum Opus if you get off on the right foot.

  • Advance the Mausolus and even Ice or Fire Wall when needed. The Ice Wall/Fire Wall advance is often an overlooked strategy that can tax the runner pretty severely under some circumstances. For example, an investment of 2 counters on an Ice Wall, will tax a Laamb 3 additional credits on every run. Well worth it. As for Mausolus, as far as I am concerned a 3 advanced Maus is one of the best ICE in the game, but the biggest reason are those three precious words, "End the Run".

  • Hostile Takeover? Perhaps this card belongs, but giving up bad publicity completely undoes Gargarins ability, and playing Atlas opens up one more card slot to massacre the runner.

  • Prisec goes in central servers. PRO TIP: The runner is not forced to access every card in a remote with Gargarin because of the extra cost of accessing something in a remote (at least this is how I understand it, someone correct me otherwise). So if the runner knows it's a prisec in the remote, they can avoid accessing it and still steal your agenda or trash your asset depending on what you have it paired with.

I think that is about it. I have to give kudos to the A:NR design team. A lot of new and interesting playstyles are emerging, and I think getting a fresh perspective has paid off for FFG. I hope you all have fun with this if you decide to try it. Any comments or questions always welcome.

6 comments
28 May 2018 Thike

Been having a ton of fun with this, even against Valencias that manage to get 3 BP. Man does no one expect the Snares, you're right. Thanks for posting this, saved me from being a scummy Skorp player :P

28 May 2018 ctz

This deck is beautiful

28 May 2018 lopert

Can you rez DRT after they've decided to spend the 1c to access CWP? Seems like they could just decline to pay the 1c after you rez DRT?

28 May 2018 Nordrunner

@Thike Glad you like it!
@ctz Thank you. :)
@lopert you are correct, they may choose to not access the agenda because of Gargarins ability. Two things on that, most won't (cuz they don't know the rule), or you likely score the agenda, which is also great.

29 May 2018 MoxWall

I've been looking for a solid corp since reg anarch started being very strong again, and I had thought I'd be playing IG. This deck has basically the same overall strategy, but it has more ways to set up the kill at any given moment, it has a real opportunity to score out, and in general its more adaptive.

2 Jun 2018 wedgeex

I think I'm going to try to squeeze some number of Dedication Ceremony into this. Looks like a really fun build.