Aumakua's Introduction to Standard

It can be fairly hard to get into Netrunner due to problems finding an appropriate deck. So I decided to make a deck of my own that's suitable for new players who want to dip their toes into Standard, the most widely played format. This deck is straightforward to pilot, and plays "normal Netrunner" in that it wins by getting into servers and stealing agendas, rather than trying to do something weird. It's unlikely to win a tournament, but I tried to make it powerful enough to compete in casual play against other Standard decks (it currently has a 50% win rate in the casual lobby on jinteki.net).

The main idea of the deck is to play Aumakua and Bankroll, then run a lot, primarily on central servers. Eventually, you're hoping to win by amassing 7 agenda points, mostly via random agenda snipes in HQ or R&D. When you find them, Paragon and DreamNet will give you additional benefits from your first successful run each turn, and The Turning Wheel will charge up as you run HQ and R&D, but these are not required to be able to start running; this deck lives on being aggressive. You should primarily focus on HQ; this triggers Silhouette's ID ability, charging Aumakua faster and giving you insight into what the opponent is doing (letting you know which servers you can get into safely if you choose to expose ice, or letting you know which servers are worth running if you choose to expose cards installed within them). Note, however, that it's unwise to run on the last click of your turn unless you know for sure what's in and what's protecting the server you're aiming for; often you need one click left over to recover from surprises.

At some point, the corp is likely to try to stop your Aumakua, probably via purging virus counters. When this happens, ideally you should find a server you can get into (a remote server, Archives, or wherever), and run some more to recharge it. Even if you can't get into any individual server, rezzing ice everywhere will be a large economic hit to the corp, and they'll likely have to let you in somewhere. (It makes sense to aim for the less valuable servers first, meaning that the corp will have to choose between leaving ice unrezzed and letting you charge Aumakua and Bankroll, or else rezzing ice using creds they wanted to save for their more important servers.)

In emergencies, you have various other means to charge Aumakua. Two of the economy cards, Deuces Wild and Falsified Credentials, have expose effects (which charge Aumakua); often, the game-winning agenda run will start with Deuces Wild's "expose and run" effect to put a critical final counter on Aumakua. If you've just been purged and need counters right now (e.g. to get into a remote server with an agenda), Contaminate will charge Aumakua from 0 to 3 strength in a single click. Later in the game, Passport/Breach/Bukhgalter will get you into central servers (although these are typically much less efficient than Aumakua and will probably require trashing a Bankroll).

In addition to a win condition, the other thing a Netrunner deck needs to win is a strong economy. This deck's economy is primarily based around events (Daily Casts is a resource, but it doesn't stick around); the economy is thus bursty and focused on the early game. It's thus important to avoid spending credits unless you have to, or get a larger benefit from them than you spent; ideally you should be spending at most 2-3 on each of your runs (something that the efficiency of Aumakua makes possible), perhaps a little more when recovering from a virus counter purge. Avoid trashing cards unless you really need to, or unless the trash will be a sufficiently large tempo hit to the corp to make up for the hit to yourself; if something is not immediately dangerous it's normally better to let the corp draw/play it and save your money for when it's really needed. Along similar lines, it's best to avoid installing things unless you can make use of them in the near future, or badly need to prevent them getting discarded to hand size or trashed to damage. (Modded can be used to avoid the tempo hit from installing something, although you still might want to hang onto it until you can use it to install something you'll need right away.)

Late in the game, you'll be running out of steam due to the temporary nature of your economy; this is when you make use of your Bankrolls to keep going. (You might need to pop one Bankroll earlier in the game to smooth over a temporary economic drought, but should try to keep at least two back for the endgame.) Typically, you'll get 10-20 from a Bankroll usage, and your last two Bankrolls should therefore be able to tide you over until the game finishes.

Some notes on some of the economy cards: Bravado is ideally used very early in the game (your very first click of the game is a great time to use it), because this allows you to run it into unknown ice while reducing the potential negative consequences (e.g. subroutines like "trash a program" won't matter that early). If you only draw it later in the game, though, it's still very good; you can use it to facecheck if Aumakua is highly charged, or otherwise simply as a boost on a server you know you can get into safely. Dirty Laundry, on the other hand, should be used a little more sparingly; wait until you have a run that you were going to make anyway and that you know will succeed (even with 2 less in your pool), then use Dirty Laundry to get an extra 3 for free while you're making it. (Spending + a card for 3 isn't really worth it; but spending a card for 3 as part of a click you were going to spend anyway is a much better deal.) Falsified Credentials should normally be aimed at a card in a lightly defended server, naming "asset", even if you think it's actually an agenda; if it is an asset you'll get your 4 gain, and if it turns out to be an agenda after all you can go and steal it (making the 1 expenditure minor by comparison). (Of course, you can also aim it at a card whose type you already know, either due to Silhouette or because there are or have been multiple cards in the server and you know that one of the others wasn't an upgrade.) Ice Carver is effectively an economy card; it reduces the number of Aumakua counters you need to get through ice, letting you run earlier, and making it cheaper to use your backup breakers if you need those.

The deck also has some ability to get into scoring servers; this isn't normally how you win, but you may need to do this to prevent the corp winning. Lightly iced remotes are fine to spam runs on purely to charge Aumakua and Bankroll, but when it comes to a more heavily protected remote server, you should typically only run it after using Silhouette and/or Falsified Credentials to verify that there's something worth stealing there. By the time you need to get into a heavily defended server, you should know what most of the ice is, and thus how and whether you can get through and how much it should cost. This is the main purpose of Boomerang; it can get you through problematic pieces of ice like Hortum, Turing and Surveyor that Aumakua finds hard to break. (You can also use it to get into servers to charge Aumakua, but should be sparing with this use, as you might not then have it when you need it.)

In order to actually win, you have HQ Interface to increase your rate of agenda snipes. Film Critic is available to help you survive sniping agendas; many corps will have some way to react to an agenda being stolen, or some way for their agendas to defend themselves, and Film Critic makes it safer to access agendas by removing on-access effects and making it so that you don't actually steal them. Finally, The Turning Wheel will give you one huge multi-access in the late game (assuming you've been running on central servers a lot); this is typically used on R&D the turn before the corp wins, which will often be cheaper than getting into their scoring server). It also acts as a plan B if the corp ices up every server to the extent that running becomes uneconomical; if you can bounce off the outermost ice on HQ or R&D, you can spend a few turns charging it up, then spend all your resources on one huge last multi-access and hope to win that way. (You should typically do this on click 2 of your turn; that allows you to use Film Critic and still gain the agenda points the same turn, and it also gives you time to potentially make a second heroic run onto a scoring server with unknown ice if your multi-access run missed.)