Legality (show more) |
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Standard Ban List 23.09 (latest) |
Standard Ban List 23.08 (active) |
Rotation |
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Deck valid after Sixth Rotation |
I wanted to try something off-beat before finally giving in and playing Mulch/Mawrie/Loup and that's when @Zarbba
's genius breaker-less Akiko "Throw Another Deer on the Barbie" hit the Deck of the Week..
@Zarbba
said in the description that the deck was cool and maybe good and I just want to say I think it's an absolute banger! Finality at home, pre-paid breaking, charging cards, I giggled in excitement reading the list and thinking about all the possible shenanigans.
Normally I like to play decks that have a few exciting cards that people aren't expecting, so I figured why not make that half the deck! After a bit of iterating, this is my take.
tl;dr:
No runner deck did better than 3-1 at the New Year Showdown, so maybe it's even actually kind of OK :D
The main thing we have here is a pool of tricks:
The core plan is accessing a bunch of cards in R&D which is pretty generically good when the Corp meta is so diverse. We also trade off longevity and repeated accesses in order to be able to have the option to threaten any server, at a moments notice, right up until the late game. We do need a lot of draw for this to work, so we also need to be getting the Lat draw as often as possible and digging with Diesel, Dr Nuka, and possibly even Stoneship.
In a typical game we can break ~6-8 ICE encounters, but that's any ICE, which rewrites the Corp's ICE placement equations since now ideally every server has 2-3 layers of cheap ICE. Most Corp decks aren't set up for this and even those that are still need to draw that ICE giving us time to execute our plans.
Most important we need to maximise the quality of our runs.
I think the best way to take advantage of our toys is to be coy about our plans in the early game if our opponent doesn't know our deck. Then when there's probably an agenda in the remote, drop the breakers and go. Bonus points if it's only a Boomerang since we can probably still keep up the charade, potentially getting us another surprise steal.
If our opponent knows what's up then things are trickier. The existence of our breakers means we can use the threat of running to slow down the corp while we get 3x Nyashia up and running and it becomes a mind game of when will they attempt to score out of the remote and can we get past any tricks. This is super matchup dependent, but since the penalty for getting it wrong is high, I think the best option is to really push the threat angle so they use up resources protecting the remote then only make good on the threat if you're absolutely sure you'll get a steal out of it.
Otherwise I think generally the best plan is to make use of early facechecks (we often have little to lose) to get a few peeks at R&D when possible, this often provides useful intel on what ICE may be where so we know better what and when to contest.
Once the remote is looking too expensive then we gotta work out where the Agendas are.. the answer is normally R&D which is nice since we have little HQ pressure. Though, if we think the corp is flooded then Jailbreaking HQ or even just running for single accesses is probably fine in a pinch.
If the agendas are in R&D then it's time to Do The Thing. Hopefully we've nabbed an Agenda or two already since that's going to help put The Math in our favour, but if not then we need ~17 R&D accesses (see this great Metropole Grid video).
While we've been threatening servers we should hopefully have found x2-3 Nyashia; any time using Into the Depths we almost certainly want to pull it. Combined with our 6 sources of Charge, I find most games I'm using (or have the option to use) ~9-12 Nyashia counters + ~2-4 extra accesses off Eru or Jailbreak spread across 3-4 big runs. This nicely works out as ~14-20 accesses meaning we can get a win ~50% of the time just from hitting R&D.
As our number of accesses goes above 17 our win rate rapidly improves (e.g. it's ~75% around 22 accesses), so every little trick we can pull to see more cards is worth it. Run early when the corp might not rez the ICE, let some sub-routines fire to give us some extra reach later, get an early agenda from somewhere, anywhere! The best improvement to the maths is just to have more Agendas in the score area, who knew?
Most games are closed out by playing Eru and looking at 5 cards.
Cards like Anoetic Void and Border Control really eat into our breaking reserve..
R&D triggering traps like Snare!, Nightmare Archive or Behold! are problematic in multiples or with other extra damage effects..
Asset Spam exists..
Fast Advance exists..
Deck is fun to play, Netrunner is great, hope you found something enjoyable here^^
Thanks to @maninthemoon
for running a very fun tournament and all the other people involved that made it great. Also thanks to @holzpubbnsubbe
for bouncing these silly ideas around with me and @mays.leyline
for getting me to join the tournament in the first place, plus both for moral support during^^
9 comments |
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8 Jan 2024
jan tuno
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8 Jan 2024
lif3line
Thanks! You know I've tested this across like 6 IDs and somehow never thought about Aeneas Informant xD Seems like it would also be reasonable in non-asset match-ups too. I will absolutely be trying that out.. |
8 Jan 2024
harmonbee
you're right but I don't like it :P More seriously, congrats on the placement! This looks great, and feels like the sort of deck that should get an exception and be allowed to play Rebirth even though it's no longer in rotation :P |
8 Jan 2024
lif3line
I also wish it wasn't true! Thanks though! I got away with some cheeky plays :D Just don't watch my streamed PD game, I did not get away with drawing all 8 agendas and no Spin Doctors.. Rebirth would be so cool here! But also they should give us special dispensation to play The Console :P |
14 Jan 2024
Zarbba
Waaaah! I'm so pleased to see people still enjoying the shell I helped to create. Really happy to see you find ways to make it more consistent. A lot of people suggested Slap Vandal which I did find pretty helpful in my testing. Did you try that out? |
14 Jan 2024
lif3line
It is an awesome shell, thanks for doing the hard work of coming up with it in the first place! I had Slap Vandal instead of Mayfly for like 50 games, but I think the fact you have to target a specific ICE, so typically want to target a central server + don't want to do it blind made it feel a bit awkward. If I put it on un-rezzed ICE then that ICE would typically just get trashed for something else, but I suppose that's not an awful outcome. Some of this applies to Boomerang, but I think the fact it shuffles back makes a big difference. Still I think it's definitely a reasonable option. You know maybe there's a version of this deck that runs a console plus a couple of Slap Vandals. |
17 Jan 2024
lif3line
Haha thanks, I need people to understand how I feel when I see R+ on the other side of the table.. |
18 Jan 2024
Porkobolo
Marathon can be helpful to find hidden agendas (and like ALL THE TRAPS) in the asset spam MU |
This looks great! Couldn't Aeneas Informant make lots of money from R&D in asset matchups?