NotAgainf: The Tier 0 Corp (1st @ NYC Districts)

I strongly believe this to be a tier 0 deck in this meta. I have a grand total of 3 losses with this in 70-ish games. Chonky Seal & Baserton won 2 districts/regionals with different variations of this which I feel are very different decks despite small differences.

How did we get here?

NANPC Philly last year, I was looking for a corp after reg PD and thought "Why spend 4 inf on Anoetic Void when I can spend 6 inf on Manegarm Skunkworks" and play Ag instead. It is relatively similar in terms of scoring behind ice and offers more protection for centrals as well as Nisei counters. So I took Sokka's Ag, slapped in some manegarms, cut BCs (more on that later) and sent it. To no one's surprise, it did fairly well, losing only one game day of.

I played it on and off until worlds, but with trickshot and crew decks around, I wasn't very confident in other decks. Crew also hurt that version significantly, almost an autolose. Expecting more Lat than crew, the former which I felt I was favored into, I took a similar but much worse list (see: Hyoubu Precog Manifold and Helheim Servers) to worlds, got paired into crew all day and had a miserable time. I put Ag away for good that weekend.

February this year, I was bored of corps, none of them were feeling fun to play and those that did would autolose to some particular kind of runner (see: Mulch). I had played too much facet ob, with a mix of rigshooter thrown in and was bored. EAzmari while strong on paper, is something I find the most boring to play corp side. That left me with NEH and hoping to dodge mulch and people who know how to play into wide decks. But then Council DMed me and dropped Empress Ag in my lap, claiming it doesn't die to crew but dies to Aesops Lat.

I tried it out for a bit and it did in fact, not die to crew. I found this to be because of the number of ice in the deck more so than the existence of Hammers. I took the shell put in a couple manegarms and it felt much better into Lat. Although I felt it was still missing something. I did not like scoring 3 massive agendas to win. It took forever and I did not want to go to time or have agendas pile up in centrals during the final push, opening myself up to a loss. One thing was clear though, challenging the remote was impossible there. So, why not just score one agenda and win?

Enter Clearinghouse. Augustus lied to everyone. Clearinghouse is absolutely amazing here. Cutting sisyphus for nisei also made sense with that, which is also significantly easier to score. But then the question is, why 54 and not 49? Wouldn't the latter let you combo out faster? Ideally yes, but I felt that would hurt the matchups where I need to durdle (crim, crew, virus heavy stuff, times when I draw like dogshit). Staying at 19 ice seemed ideal enough for me to be able to defend centrals with lightly defended remotes and be okay with losing some to crew. Playing a 2nd nisei is a big bonus too.

How to Corp?

I'm going to go over some general corp building and strategies. Sharks can skip over to the card choices section.

The first thing a lot of people get wrong is presenting forks. I've seen a lot of people wondering why they cannot win any corp games while having their entire gameplan revolve around jamming agenda behind one big server and that's it. You need to force the runner to spend their resources on stuff that doesn't matter as much. It can be tags, net damage, credits spending running other servers, something. But you need to build those situations (or do some skateboarding).

Ice placement is very important. It didn't seem like it was very important, but playing this for a month straight really showed me why it is. Putting hard ETRs on the remote is generally good. Although, this deck turns that philosophy around as you want Vampy or Anansi on remotes to charge your Anoetics. Equally important, is knowing when to rez ice. Most people would see: oh cool an Anansi is going to fire fully if i rez, sick, now I'm broke for 2 turns. You can almost always let singles through on centrals. A lot of the times, you only need one ice rezzed as Ag. Anything else, random singles, they're all going to that one server. It's often better than rezzing whatever you have installed.

It's also important to know the matchups where you need to start slower or need to rush out before a doomrig is assembled. Usually, this would be a question answered during deckbuilding as much as knowing the matchup (Ex: slow down against crims, virus & crew decks, esa, sometimes Kit). The early game is all about trading tempo in various forms while also building your board state and progressing towards your wincon. Knowing what is beneficial for the runner to check safely will help a lot in understanding what your next move should be. If you let the Lat player sit and build a rig, it will be your doom. Make them run somehow.

Identifying scoring windows is also key. This is tied into presenting forks. Let them steal an agenda if it would run them out of credits if you have another one to push. Create your own windows instead of hoping the runner will simply not run your remote. You also need to control where the agendas are. Knowing which server you will lose out from and committing extra ice there early on or as you see agendas will decrease your losses.

Card Choices

• The first thing someone will scream at is that I cut Brans for Boto. Bran is great but it was important to free up influence for Clearinghouse. I genuinely haven't felt the loss of Bran at all having played this deck so much.
• It has to be either 2 Clearinghouse or none. You cannot do one as it just becomes unreliable, pushing it to the point of being "some card that you'll see and it'll do nothing.
• The Urtica Cipher was a 2nd Mavirus but I put it in because a lot of people knew my gameplan beforehand so I needed a bargaining chip.
• I went down to 19 ice, but I think 20 is the ideal spot. This is for the crew matchup but also Mavirus counts towards an ice slot in this matchup, so a 2nd mav will for all purposes be a fair call.
• We are playing 3x of every good ice, the Attini is in because I simply ran out of good ice. 2 Sadaka are also mandatory as hitting twinning and DJ is important to shut down entire decks as well as eating up a crew one way or the other.
• I continue to believe every ice is a Border Control in this deck, so you do not need to import it. "But what if you got 2 ETR triggers a turn?" To that I'll say, "What if you place your ice better"?
• You can play Sisyphus over Nisei and trim it down to 49, as both Baserton & Seal did, but I prefer 54 personally as it allows me to decide my own pace, have more ice to throw around and also have an extra Nisei to score if needed. Plus, if you can't find some crucial card, just feed/score a Bacterial Programming.

How to play this deck

If you opened with a rashida or charlotte, we are jamming in the remote (unless against crim). If you did not, ice up centrals and work towards drawing them while assembling the remote of skunkvoid. Ideally you do not want to install one of them by themselves, but both at a time. If they waste pinholes this early on, its fine. Late game, you need to ensure you keep one unrezzed ice on all centrals to stuff pinhole and one on the remote to stuff Light the Fire!. Once you're foolproof, you can start jamming the Clearinghouse or agenda. Notably, you can jam the Clearinghouse with minimal defences, you don't need the full clown car as if the runner trashes it, they gain nothing but a major loss to resources, while you can continue jamming afterwards.

One thing to note is to not tunnel vision on the kill plan. This deck is fully capable of scoring out and should the situation arise, you should push to do so as all agendas move you forward simply by their score effects.

Idk what more to tell you, deck just wins. Shoutout cado for running a great event, gg,gg, SCRUBS, Boston/NE meta. I continue to have the curse of buses fucking me over for a 3rd time for NYC netrunner business.