Bloopin' Bioroids

Satoshi 466

This is a list I've been iterating on for the past week in jnet casuals, with enough success to keep me interested, even against high level players. Someone asked me for a link so I figured I'd post it.

This is the first list I've seen that is combining the Harmonic ice with the LEO Construction: Labor Solutions corp id.


I had this idea after playing a bunch of (fun) games with another LEO list from Denver Megacity, which built on a series of earlier tournament LEO lists.

One thing that stands out is that these lists don't play more than a handful of bioroid ICE -- just Bumi 1.0, Bran 1.0, and Tyr. The LEO ability is primarily fed by Bumi and the Bioroid upgrades, and it might get used on Bran in critical moments.

This turns out to be enough bioroids to make effective use of LEO's ability, and other bioroid ice like Ansel 1.0 are just not good enough to make the cut.

However, my experience with those lists has been that while they can be strong, you live or die by whether you draw enough econ early and find the right ice. I recalled that Wave is one of the few ways to tutor ice, and it occurred to me that the harmonic ice is cheaper across the board.

After thinking more and playing with this list, I think there are a number of reasons why Harmonic ice may be better in the current meta than they were during the Ashes cycle:

  • Cleaver is now banned, which helps Echo greatly. The only fracter which breaks more than one sub per credit is Tremolo, but only in the late game and that card barely sees play. Echo will even become taxing vs. Lobisomem which I do occasionally see on jnet.
  • Wave is more impactful in a generally lower econ environment. Originally, people often complained that "it doesn't do anything" and runners would just let it fire without caring. In my games today, usually runners feel compelled to break it once it's more than 2 or 3 credits. Wave is also a fine thing to throw on top to absorb Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga which is pervasive nowadays.
  • Bloop is still quite expensive for all the popular killers.
  • Opening hands with Echo and Wave are very nice and retain tempo against early aggression. You are typically able and happy to rez both on turn 1, which isn't the case for a lot of corp ice suites today.

LEO's ability helps you overcome some awkwardness of harmonic ice early on:

  • If your scoring remote is Bloop over Echo, then you can't rez Bloop if they run because you don't have a harmonic ice rezzed yet. But if it's Echo over Bloop, then your last ice isn't ending the run. However, if you have a bioroid upgrade in the remote, then you can end the run after e.g. trashing their fracter with Bloop, and then actually keep them out. So, Bloop-on-bottom can work just fine in a scoring remote.

Other cards already in these LEO decks work well with the harmonic ice:

  • Mercia B4LL4RD helps you build up to 3-deep servers without breaking the bank.
  • Vovô Ozetti helps you rez (and re-rez) it all for pennies, or free in the case of Echo and Wave.

Additionally, we are playing Mitra Aman which can do good things with the harmonic ice.

  • You can swap Wave with something from your hand unexpectedly, perhaps another harmonic ice. Then next turn you can reinstall Wave on top, bankhar proofing the server, and if they run it, tutoring another ice, and bumping all the Echo up another time.
  • You can swap in a Bumi 1.0, force them to break it, and then trash it to end the run unexpectedly. This can burn a powerful run event like Finality or prevent a deep dive. You can also swap Bumi 1.0 in from archives this way.
  • You can swap in a Bloop and rigshoot them. I have even flatlined several anarchs who pre-installed Boomerang or Chisel on the second of three ice in a scoring remote, used bankhar to break the outermost and dropped to zero cards, and did not expect a sudden bloop in the middle to deliver a core damage. (This was also discussed in another deck writeup, but that ones was out of Thunderbolt Armaments: Peace Through Power: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/7d789126-7e0d-4d59-bad4-7adea4e05380/spring-loaded-bloops)

Mitra also has a lot of bluffing potential -- the runners don't really know if it's a face-down bioroid, or even an agenda.


In terms of match ups, I don't feel that there is any runner that this list is very weak against.

  • LEO's ability can make it very difficult to land a Deep Dive, which is part of the game plan for a lot of runners.
  • LEO's ability can prevent Transfer of Wealth from landing -- it's almost always good against criminal or Sebastião Souza Pessoa: Activist Organizer to have a Bumi 1.0 over HQ. Unscientifically I'd say that the games where they never land ToW, you win most of, and the games where they somehow get through, you typically lose.
  • Bumi 1.0 does enormous amounts of work against anarch lists on 3x Botulus.
  • Bran can do a lot of work against criminals -- you can force them to break Bumi 1.0 and Bran, then end the run. Then if they try to boomerang Bran the next click and don't break the install sub, you can reinstall Bumi from archives, and then use it to end the run. So this can force runners to break all of the Bran subroutines.
  • LEO's ability can make things challenging for runners on Audrey v2, because when you trash your own bioroids to end the run, the runner doesn't get a counter.
  • You have decent counterplay to Esâ Afontov: Eco-Insurrectionist, despite all your barriers, because the LEO ability can end the run and cancel powerful run events, and Bloop can rigshoot them if they don't respect it. This matchup can be pretty hard though. For the more recent "Catcophany" Esa that don't run Chastushka, I try to keep a Bumi over R&D to burn finality, and create a 3-deep scoring remote with and use Bloop, or Mitra -> Bloop, to trash Begemot and lock them out. The matchup is pretty high variance. If they get lucky sabotages and chain them with Cacophony + Daeg, First Net-Cat then there's just not much you can do. I sometimes try to score a Project Ingatan with 2 counters in this matchup to ensure I don't miss a spin doctor. Slotting Petty Cash might also help a little bit.

The most difficult matchups I've found are LilyPAD Magdalene Keino-Chemutai: Cryptarchitect matchups which manage to set up very fast and get to a strength 5 Echelon before you can score out, and then are able to contest your remote at the end. When they camp the remote, it can weaken you because you don't get to rez echoes and waves over R&D or HQ. Your best lines have to do with making the remote server taxing, leveraging the fact that you have The Holo Man and can score never-advanced 5/3's, and a lot of installables that can bait a run. There's probably an alternative deck using Anoetic Void that would have a more solid end-game against these runners, but at the cost of other matchups.

Another weakness of this list is, against runners who find Curupira early, they can accumulate many cheap counters by breaking Echo, and then use those to bypass Bran 1.0. You should put something over the Echo so they can't just farm counters. It's not something you can't play around but you should be mindful of it. This would be the strongest reason I see to go to 1x Bran instead.


Variations:

I've played a number of slightly different versions of this but ultimately came back to this one. Alternatives I've tried are:

-1 Key Performance Indicators

+1 Mitra Aman

or

-1 Key Performance Indicators, -1 Predictive Planogram

+1 The Holo Man, +1 Petty Cash

Cutting both the planogram and the KPI tends to make my games noticeably poorer and with higher rates of clicking for credits. YMMV

I've also played -1 Key Performance Indicators +1 Mitra Aman, which is also fine. KPI provides a lot of utility for shuffling Salvo Testing back into the deck, or helping you score an agenda from low credit totals.

There's also a version where you replace Salvo Testing with Offworld Office and Stegodon MK IV. However, I've had less success with this -- while in theory Stegodon MK IV should be pretty strong with harmonic ice, what I've found is that a scoring plan using The Holo Man is pretty credit intensive and so derezing things doesn't often feel very good. In games where you are rich this would probably feel amazing though.

I also don't have Flyswatter or Mavirus in this version. This is kind of questionable because these cards can do a lot particularly against Sebastião Souza Pessoa: Activist Organizer, but also against shaper lists which import Fermenter, which is many of them. They are both good and not having either of them seems odd -- on the other hand, I don't feel that the seb matchup or loup matchup is very challenging right now.

I'm pretty convinced that 2 is the right number of Wave to play. Games where I played +1 Wave and -1 Regolith Mining License felt noticeably poorer.

I'd strongly recommend keeping Tranquility Home Grid at 3x, this card is expensive to trash and can easily generate a lot of value. Games where you don't draw it early are generally much more difficult.

I didn't test playing Ablative Barrier in some form -- that card can give you a big boost by recurring a bioroid, or The Holo Man. But it can also be a liability against Curupira.

I also didn't test what happens if you cut Afshar. It's probably not essential but it does feel like a really solid ice for this corp. Might be a crutch though.

Cheers and have fun

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