Bioroid Shooting Gallery

Thesreyn 42

I was tinkering with building a new corp deck and decided to fiddle around with the idea of a heavy tagging deck in NBN. What I came up with was the idea of throwing in a chunk of absolutely horrendous to deal with ICE, then using Shoot The Moon to get them up and running quickly.

This obviously necessitated that I get a number of tags onto the Runner. It didn't have to be many, because even just one or two of the nasty ICE would be a strong deterrent and give me a good scoring window. At first I started with NBN ICE - of which there are plenty of nice ones - but then I thought about what's utterly terrifying to face down as the Runner: Big Bioroids.

After fiddling with 3 x Janus 1.0 in NBN Making News, and doing a bit of goldfishing, what I found was that I could not reliably ensure a Shoot The Moon, I didn't have the influence to run Oversight AI, and Bioroid Efficiency Research was too niche with only 3 Bioroid in the deck.

That's when I came up with the idea of using Custom Biotics. I get a chunk of extra influence but lose the ability to run Jinteki cards. Given that I only wanted NBN and Weyland, this seemed fine. What you see is what I've settled on without having been able to test it.

The general idea of the deck is this:

  • Early big ICE lets us set up or provides scoring windows
  • Shoot The Moon early for one or two ICE is fine, later for more is even better
  • Bioroid Efficiency Research means that even if they break the subs, the ICE stays around for us to Shoot The Moon
  • Make getting into servers SO unappealing that the runner can barely consider it
  • If the Runner wants in, they're going to be spending huge amounts of money or clicks, and likely some Brain Damage
  • Win in one of three ways: Score out because they can't get in, Punitive them after they've run through the severely punishing ICE, or kill them with Private Security Force

Things I'm not sure about:

  • Big Brother. I need to get a tag on them, and can do so with Data Raven and Ichi, but I'm still not sure about this card. SEA Source grants me guaranteed tags, but Big Brother lets me run huge Shoot the Moons
  • Midseason Replacements. This card would be baller in this deck, but it's so influence heavy at 4
  • Hunter and/or Draco. These could be more useful than IQ. I'm considering Hunter as a means of getting tags more easily, but I also like the idea of Eli and IQ for early run deterrence if I don't get to cheat in a big ICE
  • Economy. It seems somewhat fragile, but we are hopefully running cheap enough for it to work. Maybe Eve Campaign instead because it costs more to trash? Or even Pad Campaign.
  • Green Level Clearance. It's there because it provides a good little boost of money and cycles itself, hopefully letting us find a means to cheat in big ICE or other cards we need.

Please shoot me your feedback, I'd love to hear it!

3 comments
24 Apr 2015 beladee

I like the idea, though you're right that the economy is fragile. I really don't think it's a good idea to add more operations or assets though, because Accelerated Beta Test can be such a kick in the pants to the runner if you snag a sweet Janus 1.0 or Wotan off of it.

24 Apr 2015 hbarsquared

It seems too risky to have your entire strategy revolve around the runner getting tagged during a run and not clearing. I'd replace the Punitive Counterstrikes with SEA Sources. That way you can SEA -> Big Brother. Then they'll either clear all 3 (big tempo swing) or go tag-me.

25 Apr 2015 Thesreyn

Thanks for the feedback hbarsquared :) you raise some good points. My hope was that with the Data Ravens, I wouldn't need to run SEA Source, as I could use the power counter to simply give them a tag on my turn. But I haven't had a chance to test the deck yet, and what you're saying may simply be true and I need to have a reliable way to tag them.

I like that you bring up the tempo swing or them deciding to go tag-me, both of which are good for this deck, and not something I had considered. Thanks!