Famous Dragons - Tagme Hoshiko (19th at BLM 4 -2)

Bridgeman 2151

This is the tagme Hosiko deck that I brought to the BLM tournament! It got me 19th place out of 113 people.

Credit to manicmoleman who inspired me to try out playing tagme Hosiko with this list: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/59535/dummy-sucking-fight-night-iv

I havent seen anyone else try the deck in this particular form and I´m pretty convinced this is as close as someone has gotten to the best build of the archetype.

The deck is kind of a build-your-own-Liza with john masanori, dream net, and obelus giving you insane card draw when there is any open server. Your ID also provides cards without forcing you to get tags right away as Liza did.

The main idea is to control your opponent long enough to land a counter surveillance, but sometimes if they defend R&D very heavily it´s okay to abandon that plan in favor of just pushing HQ or the remote. Also early on when you only have a few tags counter surveillance works great on HQ as well.

The struggle is how fast you find your pieces early on, the stuff you want first is quick cash and draw, and then as quckly as possible get dummy box + rogue trading going as well as at least one god of war, sometimes two.

For the matchups where you might die you naturally want dummy box + papparazi, and also wireless net pavilion if you are facing a deck with lots of cash to waste(like the outfit with all those TBTF)

Econ:

  • Rogue Trading is your main income tool, and also adds to your tag count. The deck would not work without it. Just make sure to protect it with dummy box. A lot of turns will be: click 1 run for cards, click 2,3 rogue trading, click 4 install something.

  • Pad tap + Dummy box is a nasty combo that can get you drip for the rest of the game. Works especially well against IDs like Palana and GameNET. Naturally pad tap is pretty good on its own as well.

Breakers:

  • The pre-banlist version of this played ddos instead of faust, and oh my god is faust an improvement! You get to save your credits for when they really count and it can get you into any server early if needed. You have so many cards with this deck that faust can end up literally granting you access to any server for 0 credits. Some games I stock up on 20+ cards.

  • God of war is there to give you tags for the big counter surveillance and to increase your hands size, it also helps you get into some servers if needed.

  • Black orchestra is there for Hortum(which could otherwise lock you out of a server), and is nice to have in general to give more options for breaking.

  • Paperclip was originally put there to deal with big barriers(Chiyashi, Bulwark), because they are too expensive to break with god of war. That is not always needed now with faust but it is a nice option to have, especially if there is a lot of bad pub.

Perks:

  • Does pretty well against ASA because of gatekeepers with 0 strength post rez turn and vanillas, god of war eats them up. Plus their only way of blocking counter surveillance is lakshmi, make sure to trash it.

  • Crushes argus when setup with paparrazis + dummy box, probably does well against rude outfit too but havent had much practice against that with this.

  • Is good against jinteki in general because you draw so many cards and keep so many cards in hand that it is hard to kill you. Watch out for viral weaponization and psychic field though when you are sitting on 20 cards.

  • Does pretty well against NBN because the tags often help you or do nothing. Your ctm matchup is pretty good cause they cant kill you, and their tag punishment is often one copy each. Land the counter surveillances at the right time and trash their important assets.

Cons:

  • Against glaciery solid corps it can be hard to get value out of runs early using John, DreamNet and Obelus. Later in the game border controls might give you trouble landing your counter surveillances.

  • Crisium can be annoying when accompanied with two or three ice to stop counter surveillance.

  • Closed accounts is hard to deal with, usually only one copy is played though, and only in CTM. If they play it too early you can sometimes just money back up.

Neat things:

  • John masanori can be used to give you more tags if needed

  • Trickster takas downside can become an upside in this deck, while providing you with extra money for breaking things.

Changes?:

Faust feels so good in this deck that I´m considering dropping one god of war for another faust, especially to be able to pressure servers faster. Not sure about this yet as it is often important to get at least one god of war up and running early.

Another idea is to add the final conspiracy breaker MKUltra for those scenarios where it is too uncomfortable to break Ice with your other stuff, or perhaps you got your other breakers trashed. This doesnt come up very often so I´m also hesitant here, but it is worth considering. Would probably drop one peddler for it if I put it in.

The tournament:

The deck went 4 - 2 on the day winning against three ASA(two smpomboish, one mushin NAPD cordon) and one punitive GameNET. I lost one close game against rigshooter outfit where I got duped into thinking the agendas suite only had 3 3-pointers after seeing triple hostile takeover, which made me run the remote over and over searching for an atlas. Only to find out that the deck was running city works project all along once my papparazzi was trashed to a trebuchet after going yolo ....

Also lost one game to a regular spombo ASA which i just attribute to poor piloting by me. Ended just barely getting comboed out the turn before my vacheron would tick down.

So all in all I was very happy with the deck choice for the tournament and never felt helpless in any matchup.

Shoutout to the peeps I played for being friendly and fun, really enjoyed the tense games!

Thanks to the organizers for running the event, and promoting a good cause while we are at it. Cool to see so many people chip in and play.

5 comments
28 Jun 2020 x3r0h0ur

Hey I was on tagme faust obelus CS hoshiko too! It was actually a really good deck, that I got unlucky with and sometimes played badly. I found Zer0 great in mine. I'll put mine up sometime in the near future, keep an eye out if you wanna compare notes! My record was about the same with it I think.

28 Jun 2020 Bridgeman

Oh cool! I figured the draw is already good enough, and you dont want to risk loosing crucial pieces from your hand so I figured Zer0 wouldnt be good. I find slots are pretty tight too. But l´ll check it out :)

It does actually feel strong now with faust, a lot less reliant on landing counter surveillance than it was withot it. You can contest more stuff and afford to run more in general.

22 Jul 2020 zmb

Nice meta call! Did you consider Devil Charm to make runs with God of War free?

30 Oct 2020 Bridgeman

Just noticed this comment haha :D Didnt really considered it. I doubt it would help much as slots are pretty tight and it only deals with one ice one time, but an interesting idea.

30 Oct 2020 Bridgeman

Just noticed this comment haha :D Didnt really consider it. I doubt it would help much as slots are pretty tight and it only deals with one ice one time, but an interesting idea.