Hurt People Hurt People [2nd, 4th & 15th at Online Showdown]

"Why do serial killers kill?" - Whiteblade111

I am definitely an Elevation Corp doomer.

Before this tournament I would have rather flipped a coin than have to play a corp game, no corp deck that wants to play real Netrunner can win games against Seb (and most of them can't beat Sable either).

Find me 24 hours before the start of the online showdown with no plans of playing in it looking to play an hour of Jnet after work. I want something where the games will be quick and I don't have to think too hard.

5 minutes of semi-random clicking in NRDB later I have basically this list, play 3 games of jnet casual it seems kinda good, play 4 games against other EA Sports players and hey this deck can beat Seb, my faith in life is restored.

davz131 is looking for a deck to play at the showdown and starts making some tweaks, he plays a dozen games whilst I sleep and he likes the list.

I wake up morning of and suggest some untested changes like Hearts and Minds (which was great) and Vera (which did nothing all weekend) and start getting excited.

4 of us register the deck, giddy and with no idea how it would go...

The Gameplan

"Do you know what EAzmari needed? Shell Games!" - EA Sports probably

100% of the wins for this deck were via flatline.

Plan A, combo kill by scoring any of the agendas that give a tag with Touch-ups and send an End of the Line. This combo can be live from turn 2 and means every single-advanced card could represent gg.

Importantly if the runner floats a tag you can do the above combo without scoring the agenda if you have an advance-able card installed.

Plan B, Public Trail + End of the Line backed up with 2 core damage from a Cerebral Overwriter this becomes much more reliable.

Similarly once the core damage has landed The Holo Man into an agenda score also represents an unexpected flatline.

There are even more lines involving scoring Orbital Superiority for damage and taxing cards in hand with Doomscroll but they are more niche.

Results

This deck landed 3 of the 4 of us playing it in the top cut, paired with some pretty disgusting runner decks.

My record with Prav was 7-1 with the only game I lost being to DeeR in the finals playing a borderline unkillable Mags deck.

davz131 record was 5-3 with all three of those loses being incredibly close games to my Reg Hosh, sorry ❤️

Davz was probably playing the best version of this deck with -1 Doomscroll, -1 Vera Ivanovna Shuyskaya, +1 Public Trail, +1 Gaslight.

Nervous Nightjar went 4-1 with a version that cuts a Cerebral for a Byte! (which did win him a game), a Doomscroll for a Funhouse, a Vera for a Touch Ups and 2 YDL for Public Access Plazas.

Fridan went 2-2 having been stream cursed.

Ollie also won the Shoreham CTK going 2-1 with this list.

Conclusions

Is this deck any good?

Honestly, kinda? I was surprised by how quickly and reliably you set up the threats, it works well at low credit totals and has a lot of money and draw.

What would you change?

I think there are lots of angles to explore here..

You could try a version with an actual scoring plan to pull the runner in even more directions.

You could try a version that scores False Lead because you think the current version is too polite.

You could definitely tighten up this current build, some of these cards are yet to prove their worth (looking at you Vera) and we learnt a lot over the weekend.

Doesn't this just die to Stoneship and NFL?

Yeah although I'm not that worried about it. I don't think this deck is enough of a meta force to get people to tech against it and Seb and Sable would really struggle to play the tech.

If you get paired against shaper just try and win on turn 2.

Isn't this just worse than lif3line's Nebula?

Quite Possibly.