Visage Theory / doubles + Power Nap

Hi there,

I am a long time Chaos Theory player. Always loved the Oracle May / Events variant, though it has lacked in power recently. You can find the deck I used to play here:

http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/14510/ct-oracle-may

The general idea has always been to play Oracle May ASAP, mulligan for her if necessary, and then use her ability and call only events. Among these instant-effect cards there are doubles which fuel Power Nap - the best economy card in the deck.

What is strong about the old variant:

It's quick to setup, often surprises opponents with a Test Run into Femme Fatal.

1. Lots of money due to Oracle May's amazing click compression.
2. Efficient breakers.
3. Really fun to play.

Unfortunately, the deck has also several weaknesses:

1. It's inconsistent. If you do not get Oracle May or Hostage in your opening hand, you pretty much have to mulligan. Then, if these cards are still not there, you need to get lucky.
2. Since your whole game relies on Oracle May, the events are less than impressive on their own. Sure, you can get a lucky Test Run -> Scavenge combo, but without early Oracle May on the table there is no late game.
3. The powerhorse (or rather powerwoman) of the deck hates your breakers. If you keep on drawing them via her ability, they get trashed because you always call events. This makes the deck even less consistent, because there are only 3 Test Runs to bring your breakers back on the table.
4. The deck is weak to double Scorched Earth, mainly because Plascrete Carapace is not an event card.
5. Big Sentries empty your bank in no time due to Femme's high +1 strength cost.

Now, how to fix this? First of all, the deck must be consistent. In order to achieve that, we need to drop the card that makes it so fun to play - Oracle May. I decided to substitute her with Symmetrical Visage, a resource similar in function but weaker as far as raw power level is concerned. This achieved three goals:

1. Increased consistency.
2. Allowed to play more non-event cards.
3. Freed up 4 influence.

Thanks to Symmetrical Visage the deck no longer struggles with discarding its own breakers and still provides the necessary click compression. What is more, the additional influence allows for the import of two I've Had Worse copies, which protect against damage and draw cards.

I also decided on including Magnum Opus, as it is a decent late game economy option and possible Test Run target. In order to be able to play this program two copies of the best Shaper console have to be slotted it - Astrolabe is present and still great against asset oriented decks.

Why no Comet? Simply put, I do not find the card that great even in a deck filled with events. This console actually increases randomness because most of the cards in this deck are parts of small combos or are viable only in certain situations, like Eureka, Scavenge, Test Run, Maker's Eye, Indexing, and Power Nap... even Maker's Eye falls into this category. Thus, when testing Comet I often found myself in a situation when I wasted the bonus click it generated, because playing events available at the moment made no sense. Sure, the console is awesome when it works. But IMO it does not warrant the high install cost.

Have fun and let me know what you think about this build.