[Startup] NBN: Reality Plus (3-0 at Ysengrin's August SU)

This is the decklist I used at Ysengrin’s August 2021 Startup tournament. Note that the card choices and reasoning are from the perspective of someone with very little experience. This was a really fun first Netrunner tournament for me and I would encourage everyone to give it a try if Startup interests you.

Generally the game plan is to use Sprint and Spin Doctors to filter out excess agendas while setting up a Daily Quest as quickly as possible. Building up a server behind just enough taxing ICE to keep the runner poor or make it impossible to run through Anoetic Void multiple times is ultimately how you’re going to score; there are no tricks here, no SanSans, no Biotics, no Psycographics, it’s almost too fair until you get Anoetic Void down. Overall the deck has felt pretty good, though I have had a game or two where I had fatally little economy. Aside from Daily Quest, you only have your Hedge Funds and Planograms to go on unless they are running through a Funhouse turn after turn. Protect your Daily Quests like you would an agenda if you can, but don’t be afraid to throw one behind a Ping on turn 1 and dare them to have a fracter. You really want to win before the late game, you are not glacier. What you do have is fairly cheap, taxing ICE that you can score behind early before playing your Anoetic Voids and trying to close the game.

The tags are mostly a tax, not a game plan. You gain a couple of credits or cards, and the runner spends a click and two credits clearing it. Over the course of the game it provides a nice bit of incremental advantage. There is some punishment in the form of Retribution, and your Planograms and F2Ps get better (arguably in the case of F2P, with something like Bukhgalter it costs 4 credits to get through tagged or not), but mostly they just provide additional value to the other cards. Free Pings, Funhouse drawing you 2 cards, upping the tempo on Tomorrow’s Headline. I did not include a cheeky Psychographics. In my (limited) experience, people generally don’t go tag me, so it’s often a dead draw. What I’ve enjoyed about the deck is that I don’t care if they stay tagged or not. I’ve already gotten the value, and I feel like committing more to punishing tags beyond the Retributions might dilute the deck. It would give the deck more reach though when combined with Project Beale and make running through Funhouse the second time a turn a riskier proposition, so it’s in my short stack of things to consider, but I am generally happy with tags being economy and not a victory condition.

One trick I like to use is double advancing any agenda when you don’t think they can access and score a Bellona. The runner will often not run a double advanced agenda if they can’t access it with 5 credits. Not only does this make the agendas safer, but you can also use it with Tomorrow’s Headline to advance and score, giving you 2 clicks where the runner has a tag for Retributions or Planograms. So don’t be afraid to double advance your Offworld Office if it makes sense.

Overall, I got 12 Reality Plus triggers over the course of the tournament across 39 turns, which comes out to some combination of 0.62 credits or cards per turn. It felt fine but not spectacular, although it being what you need between credits and cards and not just one or the other is good enough to be worth a small hit on the per turn average, unlike some IDs where it’s only credits. I do find though that I choose credits the majority of the time, and that could either be poor decision making or an indication that the economy needs some improvement.

I made the influence decisions based on a couple of things. I included Retribution because if they do keep tags, it can be game deciding, especially if they are running only one of each breaker, and it does provide some incentive to clear tags which increases the economic benefit from giving the runner a tag beyond your ID ability. Retribution is also a great way to destroy hardware, so it could be used to destroy the singleton Lucky Charm a lot of runners use, or blow up their Pennyshaver if they’ve discarded the second. I did a 2/1 split of Anoetic Void and Manegarm Skunkworks because Void is the better card, but I wanted to include both for the dream server. Lastly, Sprint was the best 1 influence card I could find, and gives some agenda filtering and card draw. It’s possible cutting a Skunkworks and a Sprint for another Void is correct after playing the deck a bit, seeing as Anoetic Void is insane. If I did this, I would look for another economy card, Regolith Mining License perhaps. That one is short lived enough to be put into your scoring server, but it is very click intensive to clear.

The agenda suite is pretty standard. I like Offworld Office over Cyberdex Sandbox simply because I haven’t run into a great deal of viruses, and Office makes more money until you score the second Cyberdex (and while I’m OK with scoring two 4/2s, I’d rather score one, a Bellona, and a 3/2). Cyberdex does increase the efficiency of 3 clicks for credits turns since you can purge for 4, but those turns never feel good even then. Part of me thinks replacing one of the 2 pointers with a Bellona might actually be correct. It would put the deck at the upper end of the number of agenda points, but Bellona is so much better than the other agendas it may be worth it. I also really liked Project Beale. I gained an appreciation for its versatility as a 3/2 or 5/3 during the tournament. I’m not sure I’d want to remove one of the other agendas for a third one because it doesn’t provide any tempo, but I’d be tempted.

In summation, the changes I would consider trying are cutting one ICE (likely one F2P) for a Regolith Mining License or some other economy card to make the deck slightly more consistent in terms of credits. I don’t feel like it needs much, maybe one or two economy slots. Alternatively (or additionally) cutting Sprint and Manegarm Skunkworks for Anoetic Void and Regolith Mining License, or possibly slotting in a Psychographics. I’d also be interested in trying a third Bellona over one Offworld Office and/or replacing an Offworld Office with a third Project Beale, but I would likely only do that if I added another economy card as well.

Below are the links to the replays from the tournament (shared with permission from my opponents), and a link to YsengrinSC’s stream with a timestamp for when the deck was featured.

Round 2 vs. Ibrande (Zahya Sadeghi) - https://www.jinteki.net/replay/831de6ec-20dc-4d7a-9100-556ecc0c47fa

Round 4 vs. DeGeneralBFM (Steve Cambridge) - https://www.jinteki.net/replay/7e56d035-d57d-4221-b307-8afa3bb29b00

Round 6 vs. Wentagon (Lat) - https://www.jinteki.net/replay/d881951d-57d9-4bf1-8ef2-a3f4f5463380

YsengrinSC’s Twitch VOD https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1111093341?t=67m20s (Round 2)