Midrange Aesop's (Startup)

This is the Runner I took to the recent Leisure Games Startup GNK alongside Ob. It went 3-1, which was a very pleasant surprise - especially as I only won one Runner game in all of my testing (at 11PM the night before the tourney), and I do not consider myself that competitive of a player. Also I really enjoyed the deck, and managed to get Lat to fire a lot so felt justified in my Shaper mishaps.

The Deck

The deck originally started as an attempt to get Environmental Testing to work - I love Aesop's Pawnshop and am very familiar with the shell so it seemed like a natural pairing. Unfortunately, Environmental Testing is a little bit too slow and expensive, particularly in a format where you can't pull off 3x Aesop's as your economy using cards like Harbinger and Misdirection. I ended up playing Daily Casts instead, which is a notable Good Card™.

It took me a long time to realise that you can't pull off 3x Aesop's in Startup, and after testing a bunch of builds with that problem on Saturday (the day before the tourney), I hadn't won a single Runner game. Even with the Daily Casts swap the deck was still too slow, and by 10:30PM that day I still hadn't won and had to go and print proxies. So, I took out an Aesop's and a few of its targets and replaced them with Creative Commission and Overclock.

It turns out that adding fast cards to your deck makes it faster, and I'd managed to find a nice middle ground between actually being able to have an economy in the early game and being able to set up. I was pretty nervous because of how few wins I'd got in testing, so going 3-1 felt like a miracle. (You'd have thought I'd be good enough at Netrunner after 6+ years of playing for this to no longer feel like a miracle. Unfortunately, I'm not that good! But that's okay, the green cards are my friends.)

I think most of the choices in this deck are pretty standard for an Aesop's toolbox Shaper, but I will still highlight a few.

• In order to shore up Cleaver's weaknesses and put on more early game pressure, I ran Botulus for getting through single-ice servers and dealing with big barriers like Sandstone, and Pelangi for getting through servers with only a single breaker and painting the most awkward ice.
• Imp was probably one of the best cards in the deck and won me multiple games. You can sell it to Aesop's once you're done, bring it back with Simulchip and keep trashing the Corp's stuff.
• My tech cards were Clot (which I installed once but immediately got purged), Paricia (which also won me at least one game) and Pinhole Threading.
• Telework Contract is one of my favourite Shaper economy cards - you can fairly easily dedicate a click per turn to it, and you can sell it to Aesop's when it only has one use left.
• Rezeki is a known Good Card™, but I elected to run two because the MU didn't really work out for running three. I didn't regret only having two on the day.
• Overclock was wonderful - being able to install Self-modifying Code and then grab a breaker with it just using the Overclock credits helped my setup no end.

How'd It Do?

Really well! I'm still honestly surprised given how my testing went, but let's go through the games.

Game 1 (win vs Sophie on BtL): sometimes you just steal six points in two single accesses, and then Deep Dive to get the third. Felt like an extremely cheap win, but that's what happens sometimes (and I still played well enough to get myself into that position). I got to use a Pelangi and Unity to break Pharos at one point, which was nice. If you look at my Corp write-up, you'll see that I paid for this in one of my later Corp games...

Game 2 (win vs Jo on Pravdivost Consulting): I had never played against Pravdivost Consulting before this game, so I'm genuinely proud of how I managed to sightread the matchup. Paricia and Imp were the absolute MVPs of the game, allowing me to trash Vladisibirsk City Grid and the various assets being thrown around. I lost 16c to a Reversed Accounts that was just sat on the table being slowly advanced by Pravdivost, but Aesop's allowed me to very quickly build back up and take control again. I found a few installed agendas, Deep Dive'd for two points and then sniped the winning Beale. I think that game was some of the best Netrunner I've played, so I'll absolutely take that.

Game 3 (win vs Ams on PD): I knew coming into this matchup to expect Hákarl 1.0 and Trieste Model Bioroids, so knew to be a bit careful. My solution to this was to grab an Imp, get into HQ repeatedly for 1c (it was protected by an Echo) and Imp or steal everything of value. I hit a lot of ice so she couldn't build up on HQ either. Shaper can have a little disruption, as a treat.

Game 4 (loss vs Fern on NEH): my economy basically failed to start, which combined with some misplays meant that I had to leave a SanSan City Grid on the board for a little bit too long. I managed to take back some control by Imping Psychographics after a Mutually Assured Destruction and finally trashing the Daily Business Show, but it wasn't enough to stop faer topdecking the final Project Beale she needed to fast advance out. I did have a Clot, but no Simulchip to bring it back out, nor the decoder I needed to make a Deep Dive happen - I had to sell two of them to Aesop's to fix my failing economy early in the game and didn't find the third one in time.

Changes?

Honestly, not sure. I can't promise that the 2x Creative Commission and 2x Overclock split is correct and will require some more testing - maybe fitting in one more of either of those by dropping one other card may help when having trouble setting up. I don't know what you'd drop to do that though - the Euler didn't do much for me on the day so that could be cut (I'm very hesitant to) or you could try it at 46 cards.

The other uncertainty I have is the single Supercorridor - I like it in my Standard Aesop's Lat, but I never installed it during the tournament. It might be better as the third DZMZ Optimizer, or as a fast economy card. I really like Supercorridor, don't get me wrong - it just might be the wrong call when the deck generally needs to go a little faster.

Conclusion

This deck was very fun, but also I already knew that I loved Aesop's and toolbox-style Shaper so it was basically made for me. (Which is convenient given that I made the deck!) I'm also glad that I included those fast economy cards to help setup speed, because they really, really helped. I'll definitely experiment with more Midnight Sun cards when I get a chance though - it was a bit sad that my only Midnight Sun card was a Pinhole Threading, but maybe I'll build boat deck at some point.

Huge thanks to Tamijo for running such a great and friendly tourney! (I will treasure the Afshar alt-arts and Sanjay's Creative Commissions forever, because I am a die-hard Shaper and Weyland player.)