Run from behind, to victory!

Concept

There are lots of runner decks that are slow to get started but eventually built to a level of invincible awesomeness. A term for these decks is ‘losing’. A slow runner is a failed runner unless they get a lucky matchup or the corp a very bad draw.

Rubberband is designed to play from behind by punishing the Corp for scoring and accumulating credits, while at the same time protecting itself against the typical threats created by a corporation in the lead (tags, damage and eventually, scoring out). This is basically an attempt to make Ian Stirling viable by not starting as Ian Stirling at all.

Strategy

It contains a lot of one-offs tutorable by either Hostage or Logos. Key is to get Logos up before any early agenda scores. A number of the cards are designed for running from behind: Rebirth to Ian Stirling. Beth for countering rich corps, The Source for slowing down the corp after it has the lead. Then there's a collection of hate cards, Drive By, Pol Op, Councilman, Film Critic, employee strike and critically, NACH. Played smart, you are functionally immune to tags, Snares, and Midseasons. You'll be amazed at how quick you can get Rachel up and now you are running with 5-6 clicks and or 2/3 free credits per turn. The extra clicks make Pro Contacts and Tri-Maf, click intensive cards, more valuable.

Against most opponents, you want to mull and get Logos in your starting hand. Against Weyland or NBN having a NACH too is pretty critical. Key cards to tutor quickly are Rebirth (with Logos), Pro Con and Beth with Hostage. After those, depending on the state either Film Critic, or Rachel.

I've had a good amount of success with this in moderately competitive environments. It's very strong against credit centric and tag centric decks as well as most glacier builds. It is competitive against fast advance as long as you can get Logos up early. The main weakness is against Jinteki attrition decks. The lack of any native card recursion in Criminal is a killer and one that makes nearly all creative builds in that faction vulnerable to this. Having to devote 3 influence automatically to Levy puts Criminal at a frustratingly huge disadvantage over the other factions, and there's no easy way around it. I see it as the main reason that even fantastic cards like Temujin and Siphon get almost as much out of faction play as in. Guru is too expensive to handle IG with multiple Bio-ethics backed by hostile infrastructures. Stab-teki is beatable but only if they also don't run Bio-ethics and Hostile and Prisec as protection.

Card Choices

I've fiddled with a few different cards from what's in here. The Source was a later addition. It has won me several games but it is of course costly on influence so I still debate it. Crypsis is there in case I lose a key breaker to damage (again due to lack of recursion). I tried Net shield, but since it has an anti-synergy with Guru, I ended up abandoning it. Siphon's anti-synergy with Beth had me give it up as well. Temujin is always nice but hard to find room, especially since this is a deck that prefers to do the bulk if its running late. Golden instead of Mongoose is a personal choice as are the balances of Pol Op and Councilman. I tried Hernando Cortez but had the same issues as Siphon, it just has an anti-synergy with Beth. I don't really care if the corp is rich which is the beauty of the deck.