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 Fifth Rotation |
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 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.
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.
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.
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.)
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