Hunting Bones (1st at Lockdown 11)

I named this deck after the 2 cards it hates to see, and fortunately it came across neither. Spark Agency seemed like the right call because (a) it was cheap at 2 points, giving me freedom to pick a more expensive runner (the corp bans were much looser than the runner bans, so I wanted a stronger runner), (b) runner bans specifically targeted econ, so an econ denial corp was especially powerful, (c) the corp bans didn't hurt NBN, and actually gave NBN a bit of an edge. Sweeps Week is probably the best burst econ operation behind Hedge Fund, and Hedge Fund is banned. The only banned NBN cards were Daily Quest, Project Beale, and Slot Machine. Only Beale was particularly hurtful, but every corp suffered the same hurt (besides Jinteki...Yagi-Uda still has some work to do).

As a starting point, I used CyberClick's Sparkling Credit Denial: (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/63283/sparkling-credit-denial), but I made several key changes. In the order I made them:

Upgrades: I anticipated a lot of Falsified Credentials and low credit counts, so I didn't think Mumbad Virtual Tour would have the effect I wanted. I did think it was important to have a card that I could install unrezzed, bluff an agenda, and urgently needed to be trashed. I considered MCA Austerity Policy for a little while, but it was too slow, so eventually I landed on SanSan City Grid. The deck is pretty rich, so the cost wasn't too worrisome, and it was a threat that most decks need to trash. The rest of the deck ended up being built around this change.

Agendas: AR-Enhanced Security and Bellona were must includes. AR synergizes with SanSan and provides a threat after the runner gets an Imp or Miss Bones up. If you're successfully denying econ, Bellonae lower the number of available agenda points to 11. I decided I wanted to have 4 two-point agendas rather than 3 three-point agendas (Degree Mill being the only option), so the runner would have to steal 4 agendas if they're giving up on Bellona. Explode-a-palooza synergized with my identity, and Remastered synergized with SanSan. I originally had 3 Remastered to build a train, but it was rare I scored even the first, so I went with 3 explode-a-palooza since at least then I get creds. I absolutely would switch all three explode-a-paloozas for Beales in non-Lockdown play.

The Ads: I wanted 3 CPC/Tiereds to rez at will. Each is likely to earn me at least a couple of credits over the course of a game, and both restrict the runner's play. Despite the fact that it made my deck fail to meet the no-neutrals bonus, I needed PAD Campaigns for the . Marilyn and Wall To Wall were includes because they were assets that could reiterate themselves -- it's especially nice to get a wall to wall as the first asset, as it that makes it 1 cred, 1 card, and a return to HQ to fire Spark again :P.

ICE: Data Wards are great as anti-tag-me ICE. Resistors were a little too avoidable, and taxed nothing unless the runner had at least 3 tags. Tollbooth is great for R&D or Remote, whichever is more worrisome. Data Raven was the weakest of the set, but it combos incredibly well in front of a Data Ward. IP Block and Pop Up are just good, cheap, taxing ICE. An old draft had more ICE, but meetingadjourned (my phenomenal mentor) suggested adding some more ads and tag punishment instead, which definitely worked out. Hunting Grounds messes with this ICE suite, but you at least force the runner to make tough decisions if you stack the ICE on top of each other.

Operations: 3x EW and 3x HHN both cost the runner a lot of money (unless they go tag me, and have to deal with Ward). The Weyland anti-tag package cost too much in terms of influence, so Market Forces (a really clever suggestion by meeting) and Psychographics had to do. I think they were the right set for this tournament, where money was low.

During this tournament, this deck won 3 games, and lost 2 games. The losses were both against Shorty's Gnat deck, once due to bad draw (no ICE until midgame) and once due to Gnat getting spoilers up too early & building too much momentum. The big lessons learned from those games is that tagging is this deck's most powerful tool, and to remember to trash resources. The wins were against Frizzler's Jesminder (early Remastered Addition and a lucky bluff helped), Armin's Quetzal (successfully denied econ for long enough and got Quetzal into tagme quite effectively), and Shorty's Gnat in the finals (everything went right here, I hit the HHN and EW's when I needed to, got to fire both Psychographics and Market forces).

This deck was so much fun to pilot! Thank you CyberClick for providing the inspiration, Meetingadjourned and the IPT team for a lot of support and help in the Netrunner community, Vesper for organizing a wonderful tournament, and everyone who participated for bringing such spicy tech (For those who haven't seen it, Shorty's Gnat deck is phenomenal and makes me think about Bookmark in a new way).