Backdoor Bandit v2

mtblocks 1

Changes for v2: Notoriety included, Daily casts included, Levy removed, Planned Assault removed. Other numbers shuffled around to bring the deck back to 45 cards.

So, improved win-cons and economy, with reduced countermeasures to damage attrition. Just need to play much more carefully against Jinteki, and get that Alias out before they can trash it.

Premise: a high pressure deck that punishes slow playing Corps while carrying tools to surprise fast-plays. Also contains a fair bit of versatility in run events in case of metashifts.

Features:

  • 45-card deck: The original build for this was a 40-42 card deck sans Knight, and stripping back some run events with a Planned Assault for those desperate searches. After a few playtests I've found that Same Old Thing offers a better effect (multiple uses of any event as per situation) and synergises well with the heavy deck drawing to get to my breakers. In my opinion the decreased reliability in draw is outweighed by having those few extra cards for emergencies and replay power.
  • Central-server run-power: Alias/Breach/Passport offer extremely cheap access into all of the central servers, pressuring the corp to invest into heavy ICE protection for these. With this deck, this usually means that the first agenda scoring event by the corp is protected by a single Barrier ICE, which is very easy to blindside with Inside Job. Adding in Keyhole and Legwork offers the pressure probing you need to get the Corp to feel the heat, with the former also offerring some protection against rude-dude-Jinteki trap decks.
  • Remote Server exposing + indirect accessing: Inside Job, as mentioned above, is the early game tool for accessing agenda attempts. I have yet to run into a corp player that, after seeing my central-only breakers and/or keyhole, has protected their first agenda with more than a single piece of ice. Once you swipe that first agenda though, it becomes necessarity to be able to threaten Quest Completed at any given moment. Silhouette: Stealth Operative's innate means that the first run on HQ can show you the red or green light on whether to commit to the Quest run, so it's important to use Feint whenever the Corp installs something into their most protected remote.
  • Run-economy: Doppelgänger, Security Testing and John Masanori do great work together, as long as you make the runs successful (which, given you will be running a lot on the same servers you should rarely be surprised by tough ICE).
  • Damage protection: Keyhole and Levy AR Lab Access for Jinteki net damage rudeness, and Crash Space to stamp out Weyland meat damage attempts. Unfortunately no brain damage prevention, but as long as you run smart (i.e. first click) HB Ice can be exposed safely without much surprise brain damage.

Strengths:

  • Punishes unprepared agenda attempts
  • Destroys trap decks
  • Does well against multiple remote-server decks (thin ICE on centrals is great)
  • Keyhole is nice against Jinteki

Weaknesses:

  • NBN Fast Advance: in theory, this is a horrible match up. This deck needs to hover around 10 credits to be threatening, and needing to trash SanSan Grids or eating Closed Accounts to the face forces you to spend two turns at least recovering, meaning two turns without exposing cards, getting money with Security Testing or getting card draw with John Masanori. In practice, stealing out the first Astroscript sees the Corp to hold his Exodia combo in his hand, ripe for a Legwork. Still, a bad match-up in my opinion.
  • Glacier ICE decks: usually HB decks, so the best way I have found to attack these is to just run first click to try and expose as much ICE as possible and keep the Corp poor. Unfortunately if you let the Corp build a 4 ICE unrezzed central server you're going to have a bad time. Would like some help with this matchup if anyone has any ideas - I have little clue how to attack it.
  • Installed Card Destruction: Power Shutdown does heinous things to me, and because you're running so often it's always a threat. The worst thing is, short of Levy you have little way of combatting the threat.

Questionable Deck Additions:

  • Crash Space: I prefer Crash Space over Plastic Carapace in this instance. It's cheaper, gives you recurring creds to expel any tags incurred, and it still saves you from a double Scorched assuming you end your turn with 5 cards in hand (or, if you manage to have two Crash Spaces out, it revokes the danger of death from double Scorched).
  • Executive Wiretaps: This card annoys me being in the deck, however when I took it out the only thing I wanted was to know whether or not to Legwork. So reluctantly I placed it back in the deck, but just one copy to get me out of dodge. Still have yet to use it in a game - test or tournament.
  • Knight: it offers some insurance against not having all of my breakers out, as well as pressuring the corp into having two pieces of ICE to protect vital servers. However I'm constantly tossing up between Knight and Cypsis - the AI breaker rarely sees any action in most of my games period, but it's an insurance that has saved me a couple of times.
  • Armitage Codebusting: Given my usage of Armitage I feel like it could be swapped with something that doesn't require 7 clicks to install + farm. Something like a Kati Jones or another operation. I don't enjoy the risk with Kati in this deck though, with possible tags from John and the constant threat of Sea Source.
  • Prepaid VoicePAD: A card that is nice to have when you get it early game, but near useless end game. I feel like I could swap it for some regular economy but so far have landed at least one pretty early on in the game, making this event-laden deck just that little bit sweeter.

Feedback encouraged.

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