Hayleykana v0.5

ID choices:

• This deck originally started off in Chaos Theory, on the basis that a smaller deck plus drawing furiously with ProCo would make it quicker and less economically painful to assemble the combo. I’ve also tested it in Hayley, which may be a stronger version because of her click compression and space for more tech cards. Both decks are currently around a 40-45% win rate in Jinteki.net casual.

• I put this together for a jank tournament but was gently advised it might be too oppressive for what’s meant to be a fun day, so I’m also developing an Anarch version in Quetzal that has a similar core approach, but breaks ice and has many more fun cards.

• I need to acknowledge laneford and vapo who suggested using Virus Breeding Ground instead of the clunky and limited Scavenge/Surge combo for loading up Hivemind and although I hadn’t seen it before starting on this adventure, https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/14677/can-o-whupass and the many other decks in the Hivemind/Chakana genre

How this deck works:

• Slow down the corp’s scoring plan by installing Hivemind on Progenitor and two Chakanas. Load up Hivemind from your Virus Breeding Grounds. Wait for the inevitable pause on Jinteki.net while the Corp tries to work out why they can’t score their agenda (bonus points if you get a plaintive “I think there might be a bug …”).

• Relieve their confusion by simply taking the agenda away by playing Corporate Scandal and Blackmailing the remote.

• Use Deep Thought to monitor what goes into their hand, and to snipe agendas from R&D, again using Corporate Scandal with Blackmail.

• Sigh heavily if you see an NBN or Jinteki ID.

Strategy:

• Never keep an hand with Chakana unless it’s accompanied by Hivemind, Progenitor, and Virus Breeding Ground. Even if your opening hand is Progenitor, Hivemind, Chakana and 2x VBG or VBG and 2x Chakana, you can’t inconvenience the corp until at least their fourth turn.

• Against rushy decks mulligan for Corporate Scandal and Blackmail in order to prevent early ABT fires or simply scoring out before you can get Chakana set up and are in a position where you are forced to Blackmail anything that goes in the remote rather than controlling the corp’s scoring plan. Exposing your plan very early does carry risk against Weyland though, who have the ability to rez ice through Executive Boot Camp or Oversight AI in faction, and if they’re running these, will immediately aim to disrupt you. (See the unanswerable problems section below).

• Even if the corp manages to rez ice on R&D and it’s dead to you, always install Deep Thought. Knowing what they’ve got in hand is a big help.

• Against NBN, particularly NEH or CtM, you’ll want to see NACH early (see discussion of tech slots below).

• Jinteki trap or kill decks present a particular problem because they will frequently pre-advance cards that aren’t necessarily agendas, which means Chakana is potentially giving them more ways to out-mindgame you. In these matchups your priority is to preserve your recursion by getting a couple of Same Old Things on the board so you can Levy as soon as it gets trashed from your hand or your deck (and it will). House of Knives counters are a huge risk as they will likely take out your Scandals and Blackmails, so you want to prevent early scores, but in trying to find those you may well hit other cards and lose these pieces. You will likely be better off getting Deep Thought online over Chakana, allowing you to run only when necessary. Under no circumstances install any R&D multi-access against these decks if you suspect Snares, Shocks, Neural EMPs, and when there are House of Knives counters online.

• RP gets a special mention because it puts enormous pressure on you when trying to snipe the remote. Play Corporate Scandal, pick a central to bounce off (ideally Archives because you never want to let them rez ice on R&D or HQ), install Councilman if you suspect Caprice, and then Blackmail. If you don’t have all three of these in hand on the turn before the corp installs and advances, you may need to let an agenda go, and if it’s a Nisei Mk II you’re in a bit of trouble.

• Anything lateral is a giant pain because you either sacrifice setting up your board state to check for agendas, or let agendas slip past while you build. I have no good answer to this.

Tech slots are:

• NACH: to avoid Breaking News into Closed Accounts, All-Seeing I, or simply trashing your ProCo or other useful resource.

• Film Critic: mainly here as a support card to keep our NACH online, however it is also useful for guaranteeing a Future Perfect steal from a Deep Thought R&D snipe. Also remains useful in avoiding Midseasons, or keeping Blackmails or Corporate Scandals in hand when stealing Fetal AIs.

• Councilman: a very versatile card in this deck. It can prevent CVS purges and also deal with defensive upgrades, the biggest threats being Caprice, and after that, Ash. However the corp can easily play round Councilman by pre-rezzing their upgrades: therefore you should try to keep him in hand until you are ready to run the remote. This is essential in Jinteki matchups, particularly the slower builds, and I would prefer to have two of these.

• Plascrete Carapace: Buys you time vs suspected meat damage decks, although two would be better given the prevalence of Boom!

• Sacrificial Construct: protects your Progenitor/Hivemind from Power Shutdown or Best Defence shenanigans.

Potential flex slots:

• 3x RDI are great for pressuring the corp into reinforcing R&D over the remote (not that we care about the number of ice installed anywhere). However in practice we generally only run when there’s an agenda on top, and as they tend to build up in hand when Chakana is online, in my view they are not essential.

• 3x Modded become unnecessary if you drop more than 1 RDI.

• These could become a second Councilman, an additional NACH, or a couple of Kati Jones, as once you’re set up there is very little to do but make money and wait to take an agenda.

• There is currently a spare influence. This could be a cheeky Investigative Journalism to make the bad publicity more permanent. Alternatively 3 Corporate Scandal could become 2 Scandal and 2 Clone Chips in case of program trashes. I haven’t tested these.

Unanswerable problems:

• Many decks are running Ark Lockdown as an answer to Parasite, breaker or Blackmail recursion.

• Early Biotic ABT.

• Rezzed ice anywhere that can’t be clicked through. I used to run an emergency Crypsis for these scenarios, but it’s so expensive that it I found it just dragged out the game rather than providing a chance to win.