-Obligatory Meme Section

-Card Choices

• 3 Account Siphon - I firmly believe that three account siphon is the way to go, especially in a world with Aaron Marron. It provides a massive tempo swing, and can swell your credit pool to unreasonable level.

• 1 Employee Strike - Employee Strike is massively important in today's meta. This could easily be two, if you cut the Eden Shard. (Which I probably would unless you expect to face several CI matches on the day.

• 1 Information Sifting - Another CI tech card, but it's not useless in other matchups. I think that this should have probably been a Legwork.

• 1 Forger - Forger is really good in the matchups where you need it, and to hold you over until you draw into your Şifr. The matchups that you need Forger, you won't really need Şifr, and vice-versa.

• 1 Şifr - This card synergizes very well with the breaking and entering suite. Being able to break essentially any ice while staying card neutral and netting credits. It also makes Faust even better in the deck, allowing you to get very aggressive early, while keeping your economy strong. I only included one in the deck, because it really shines later in the game, and you will without a doubt draw through your whole deck at least once.

• 2 Aaron Marron - Enough said, really. This card is bonkers in this deck, allowing you to siphon aggressively and use Faust in emergency situations.

• 1 Eden Shard - This is 100% a flex slot. It was included because I wanted to keep game against CI, which was useless on the day. This should probably be another Employee Strike, or any other good one influence card.

• 1 Faust - Amazing to deal with Mother Goddess, as well as early gear check ice. Allows you to stay aggressive when you get Sifr and really capitalize on the essentially free breaks.

• 1 Keyhole - I chose to go with Keyhole over Medium after a lot of serious thought. I felt that Keyhole was better against NBN decks, or anything running Sensie; as well as providing consistent R&D pressure, without the need to make several consecutive runs to build up Medium counters. Keyhole is always powerful, if you've got the spare MU. Which this deck does. It also provides additional utility against combo-oriented decks, by disrupting the pieces they can assemble. Luckily I was able to dodge the PU matchup, as this is usually terrible against it due to Hostile Infrastructure.

Everything else is fairly standard Geist Fare, and I don't feel like it needs to be included. If you have any questions about card choices, feel free to leave a comment.

-Playstyle

This deck plays much like any other Geist Deck; install cards to build your rig, threaten accesses starting on turn one. Use Aaron Marron and Account Siphon to break the corp and to not allow them to progress on their game plan. The deck can be slow, but if you play smart, you will create massive windows for you to set up the rest of your kit. I would say that this is the "Tempo-Control" runner deck, punishing any mistakes the corp makes, forcing them to choose between multiple bad options, and then punishing them for it anyways.

An early Aaron Marron is very important to get the deck up to speed. I generally will let the corp score the first Agenda in the game, unless an obvious situation presents itself. Try to save your breakers for when it is most damaging to the corp. Remember, they don't win the game until they hit 7 points. Getting fast counters on Aaron will massively shift the game into your favor. The flexibility is absolutely insane.

Regarding Şifr, it is great to get early against some decks; namely Weyland. However, it isn't very important in the early game against decks that aim to go a little faster and lighter on ICE. Your breaking and entering suite can handle any ice that gets encountered in the early game without assistance; but you haven't lived until you've broken a Fairchild 3.0 with a single Crowbar installed and de-rezzed it with a Crescentus to net 4 credits and two cards, while causing the corp to have wasted 6 credits. The feeling is awesome!

-Tournament Writeup

-Round 1

-CTM

I feel like this deck has a great CTM matchup and it really shined in this game. Keyhole was an all-star, coming down early and undoing all of the work that Sensie had done. I was able to get some good siphons off, and it really caused me to snowball into the win.

-Round 2

-AoT

This deck has a good ETF matchup and I feel like it carries over into this matchup as well. An early employee strike and siphons kept ICE de-rezzed and allowed me to control the pace of the game. The deck is scary, and can absolutely snowball out of my control if I allow the corp's ability to fire even once. The value generated is insane, over the course of a match. Thankfully, they weren't able to find a Crisium Grid in time, allowing me to land all of my siphons.

-Round 3

-ETF

I got a great start in round three, getting all of my tech trades online within the first three or four turns. This really let me get out of hand when Aaron Marron started getting counters, allowing me to quickly lock the game out in my favor and Keyhole my way to Victory.

-Winners Semifinals

-ETF

I kept a sub-optimal hand this time and quickly got outpaced by the amazing ETF economy. Took me a long time to find my Tech Traders, and Aaron Marron. I made a foolish decision to get aggressive too early and blanked a Temujin Contract on an R&D that I couldn't easily break through. I believe that decision single handedly cost me the game. However, towards the end of the game, I was clawing my way back and had it not ended when it did, I may have made a come back.

-Finals

-ETF

This game was an absolute slug-fest. I started strong as in my round three match, and got up to 6 points fairly quickly. I controlled the pace of the game and kept my opponent low on credits for as long as possible. Eventually, after going through my deck twice while searching for agendas, I made the grave mistake of making a Keyhole run, with four cards left in R&D, instead of running HQ where I should have known there were Agendas. We were both on 6 points, and if I hadn't made this mistake, I would have very likely won this match.

Thanks!

I want to give a shout out to everyone at The Deep's SC for having me and giving me some rough competition! I look forward to coming up there for your Regional! Special thanks to my lovely fiance who puts up with me blathering on about Netrunner literally all day every day. You're the best! Thanks to Lance and Cody for helping me test and tune this deck into what it is. You guys rock!