[Project CROW - 1] Getting to know the basics

Project CROW

This deck is part of the Project CROW mini-campaign for beginners familiar with System Core 2019. It is meant as a glimpse into current competitive Standard decks. The campaign starts off with a match of Reina Roja vs. NBN: Making News and progresses in 4 Steps to the classic Valencia Estevez vs. NBN: Controlling the Message matchup and introduces and discusses the use of new cards step by step. The final decks are the winning Corporation of Worlds 2018 and an adjusted version of the winning Runner deck of the Taunton Regional 2019.

If you are confused by the name, there is a great meme in the netrunner community around the Corp deck. And if you have feedback regarding these decks, feel free to contact me on Slack!

Decklists

Corp 1: Hard-Hitting times Runner 1: Getting to know the basics

Corp 2: Recursion is everything Runner 2: I can make news as well

Corp 3: Enter the Bankers! Runner 3: There has been a t e r r i b l e accident

Corp 4: Final stop: AMERICA CtM Runner 4: Final stop: FREDPI-ish Val

Overview lists by @presheaf:

These great lists show you what cards to put in and out for every game transition: Corp overview, Runner overview

Common part

Coming out of the SC19 meta, one of the central cards that is introduced in this step is Hard-Hitting News (HHN in short). This is the central card in the matchup and what the whole game will revolve around.

Let's take it apart: HHN only triggers if a run has been made in the previous turn, so the Runner controls this part of the card. This means as the Runner try to only run if you've got sufficient money or know for sure they do not have a HHN in hand. For what amount of money the Runner should have, there are two limits. If they are above 8c, they can in any case remove all 4 tags the card gives them. Since the card is a terminal, the Corp cannot use the fact that the Runner is tagged until their next turn, so if you can clear all 4 tags, you're fine. This may still leave the Runner behind broken economically. The second level is if the Runner has a similar or larger credit total than the Corp. Since the card costs 3 to play, is a trace[4], the Runner has 1 link, and Making News typically has 2 recurring credits, the Runner cannot get hit, if they have 2 more credits than the Corp. Even if only a few credits shy, it rarely is advantageous for the Corp to go down to 0 credits just to land those 4 tags, if the Runner is able to remove them next turn anyways.

Another new card is Rashida Jaheem, which is a good tempo card for the Corp. They will typically install it in the scoring remote and it draws them cards and gives them credits to boost them in their game plan.

Runner part

This is a rather straight-forward Anarch build that is the backbone of many competitive decks. The faction has some great draw cards and can leverage this to draw into their good money cards. This deck even imports Diesel to generate a bit more draw and fuel a rather aggressive deck. The economy comes from a variety of money cards, with Daily Casts being a new card outside of the SC19 card pool. Get them all out cheaply with Patchwork and Career Fair and keep your credit total up. As already stated, HHN is a threat that is best countered by having money.

As for your breakers, this deck includes the conspiracy breaker suite of Paperclip, Black Orchestra and MKUltra, which was introduced in the Flashpoint cycle. These breakers can be discarded into your Heap (and can even make you some money off of Patchwork while doing so). When you're encountering a piece of ice, you can install the corresponding breaker directly out of your heap and then proceed to break the subroutines. As a downside, these breakers are not the most efficient ones. Especially MKUltra is awful against the ICE that the Corp deck is running, costing 6c to break both Data Raven and Hunter without your Ice Carver. You can consider not installing it at all until you find your Ice Carver and just paying the trace on Data Raven, but keep in mind that Making News can boost the trace.

Using these sub-optimal breakers is fine though, because it enables you to play one of the best draw cards in the game: Inject. This card throws your heap breakers into your heap, while giving you all the rest that you draw. Together with Patchwork and Career Fair you have got strong tools to deal with these huge bursts of card draw and get set up quickly.

Your game plan is to dig through your deck quickly and make money until you have found all the breakers that you need. The Corp deck uses Daily Business Show (DBS in short) to keep HQ clean. There are two ways to deal with this. If you're ahead in economy, you can try to trash them as soon as you see them. Keep in mind though that this might make you too poor to contest their scoring remote or even worse, get you in range of HHN. If you do this, the Corp will sooner or later have a number of Agendas in HQ and you can use Legwork to get them efficently. If you're even further ahead, you can also consider trashing their PAD Campaigns as well, to keep them poor.

If you cannot contest their assets, you will have to focus on their scoring remote and R&D. Use The Maker's Eye to fish for agendas in R&D and keep enough money to be able to run their scoring remote. With Ash 2X3ZB9CY and Red Herrings it might as well be that you'll have to run it twice to get to the agenda.

There might come a point, where you have to make an essential run (e.g., because they just installed and double advanced something in the remote), but drop below a safe amount of money doing so. Don't be afraid to get hit by HHN. At this point, you can "go tag-me" (keep the tags). If you do, their Data Ravens and Hunters are blank now. Just take more tags and go for good central accesses and try to win before they punish you for keeping those tags around.

And one final thing: You can use Stimhacks liberally. This Corp deck is designed to lead up to the Controlling the Message matchup, which does typically not run any damage cards, so you can assume that there are no Snare! or similar damage cards in the Corp deck.