[Startup Liberation] Piranhas

Summary

Make card advantage a real thing in Netrunner! In Liberation we get quite some new synergies for having cards in HQ:

• Piranhas chomping down cards, 6-str ETR enabled by...
• A new 3-point Kingmaking + Superconducting Hub combo to increase hand size.
• Your Digital Life: more cards more credits.

The Holo Man is the star of the 3+3+1 point scoring plan, enabling never-advance 5/3 and fast-advance 3/1 agendas. One can use Snare! to protect him too!

Deck idea

Against the runner:

• Piranhas incentivizes enlarging card differential with ICE, notably achieved with our sentries Phoneutria and our NBN: Reality Plus ability, slowing the runner down with draws and/or de-tagging.
• Funhouse + B-1001 to stop critical runs.
• Snare! surprise damage and protecting The Holo Man.

For the econ to support our costly ICE and advancements:

• Your Digital Life naturally pairs with hand size/draw shenanigans.
• Many force-tag ICE to enable our ID ability.
• Lots of card draw (Spin Doctor, Predictive Planogram, NBN: Reality Plus, Kingmaking etc.) to maintain card advantage.
• No Oppo Research because it's too expensive, despite us getting to threat 3 quickly with our scoring patterns.

Piloting the deck

Build 2 remotes, one for scoring and another for Janaína “JK” Dumont Kindelán early, which will be replaced with B-1001 or Holo-Snare later.

To make full use of Your Digital Life, it's not uncommon to overdraw. If a YDL is in hand, it might be worth it to draw 2 cards with R+ or pop a Predictive Planogram. Don't be afraid to discard an Oracle Thinktank early if econ is scarce.

This deck taxes clicks more effectively than credits, so while rezzing a Piranhas for a tag may sound nice, a bad pub is usually acceptable to take too. There is no need to chase building a Ping->Piranhas remote just to avoid bad pubs.

Some thoughts regarding matchups:

• Sebastião Souza Pessoa: Activist Organizer has a great late-game engine, but to get there he has to concede an R+ trigger every time his ID fires, making your early game really strong. Consider racing it out, e.g. take bad publicities instead of removing tags for Piranhas, as tag removal slows down Seb considerably. Along the same line, Funhouse is solid on archives to slow down Privileged Access by one more tag.

• 2-program Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman has really efficient Icebreakers, but relatively high-variance early if Spark doesn't hit/isn't drawn. Go fast with The Holo Man and hunt for non-ICE defenses Manegarm Skunkworks and B-1001. Use tags to slow down the runner if possible and threaten Retribution.

• The Holo Man is very good against Hermes, being very click-efficient with advancements, leaving you clicks to re-install defenses.

• Piranhas is great against most decoders but weak against Botulus.

• Expect AirbladeX (JSRF Ed.) to soak up net damage as well as Funhouse tags.

• Use Phoneutria to punish Criminal bypasses, and B-1001 to terminate Jeitinho questing.

• Consider housing Spin Doctor in the second remote against Cataloguer, which can cancel out an R&D re-ordering attempt between the runner's clicks!