Minh MaxX

Worlds

This deck was undefeated at Worlds. It went 8-0 during the swiss rounds and made me finish 2nd out of 269 players after day 1. People clearly were not prepared to play against it. It had a deja vu feeling. The situation was similar with my PE deck last year. This year it's the Runner deck that would carry me far in the top 16 finale. Unfortunately I lost twice with Corp in the top 16. This broken deck didn't get any action at all on Sunday. :(

The old MaxX

I've been iterating through various builds of Anatomy of Anarchy builds since March. First with Quetzal, then with MaxX. I played a different Corp in every tournament since March and but always this runner archetype. I ended in the top 4 of every single one of them. Many of my opponents told me they were terrified of facing me because of this deck. Clearly the deck was very strong and I didn't understand why almost nobody was playing it.

You can see the evolution of the deck over time below:

• July 5th, 3rd at Belgian Nationals: http://www.acoo.net/anr-tournament/608/belgian-nationals
• May 31st, 2nd at Hasselt Regionals: http://www.acoo.net/anr-tournament/515/oberonn-hasselt-regional-
• May 30th, 1st at Den Haag Regionals: http://www.acoo.net/anr-tournament/519/regional-den-haag-netherlands
• May 9th, 4th at Leiden Regionals: http://www.acoo.net/anr-tournament/484/regional-leiden-netherlands
• May 3rd, 4th at Brussels Regionals: http://www.acoo.net/anr-tournament/476/outpost-brussels-regional
• March 15th, 1st at Hasselt SC: Quetzal build similar to Brussels Regionals
• March 14th, 2nd at Kortrijk SC: Quetzal build similar to Brussels Regionals

Wireless Net Pavillon and the new MaxX

When Wireless Net Pavillon was released, it was quickly clear to me that the card is totally broken. The WNP, Data Leak Reversal, Fall Guy combo is super easy to setup and makes resources untrashable. People tried to the combo with all sort of ID across the 3 factions. The consensus emerged that Valencia was the ID to play. Mostly because the bad pub counters All Seeing I I suspect.

I personally didn't like the Valencia build though. Coming from MaxX, having a 50 cards deck and no auto draw felt slow and inconsistant. Updating the old MaxX deck with the new combo made it so much stronger and yields better results than the Valencia in my experience. It was too easy to steamroll the Corp with the new MaxX in my tests. Opponents on jinteki.net often just concede or rage quit mid game. It just felt broken. And with Valencia being the concensus choice, you don't even have to care about All Seeing I.

With Keyhole in the old MaxX, you actually have to pass through R&D ices. It costs 4 credits and 2 MU. And after that you have to get access the agenda in Archives which is tedious with Eater and Jackson Howard. So the old deck had a bunch of important support cards like Parasite, Datasucker, Grimoire to make the runs cheap.

An untrashable DLR, costs 0 credit and 0 MU, ignores the R&D ices. With 5 clicks per turn thanks to Joshua B., it's easy to mill out the Corp before they can score 7 agenda points. So it's not even necessary to access Archives to win. Because you don't have to run to win, the support cards like Parasite, Grimoire, Datasucker are not necessary anymore. That frees a bunch of slots for economy and draw cards to make the setup fast and consistent. Paparrazi is the cherry on the cake. With some effort the Corp can still kill you through Plascrete Carapace. With an untrashable Paparazzi, the risk is zero. Of course the install cost of Paparazzi is 0.

The facts that you don't have to run to win, don't care about MU, don't care about agenda points, can have a bunch of tags with no risk just breaks the fundamental mechanics of the game. Clearly this is broken. The old MaxX was strong but still manageable. The new one is totally unbalanced. DLR decks are there to stay and the Corp meta will have to change to cope with it.

How to play it

The basic idea is to recur Siphon to keep the corp poor. The most important step is to land the first Siphon. Once it's done, it's usually easy to keep the Corp broke. Closing the game by milling the Corp with DLR is then a formality. The deck has a bunch of economy in order to not be dependant on Siphon money. Even if Siphon shows up late or the Corp plays around it by rezzing cards to empty its cash, you still have plenty of money. Siphon is mostly there to keep the Corp poor. You should use it even if the corp has only 1 credit left after rezzing cards during a Siphon run.

Also don't get tagged before having 1-2 WNP and 1-2 Fall Guy unless the Corp is already broke.

Counters

• Protecting HQ with strong ETR ices, Caprice or Crisium Grid.

• The only bad matchup for the old MaxX is actually Blue Sun. Crisium Grid and strong end the run ices like Hive or Curtain Wall make it really hard to land Siphon. Ironically everybody thinks Weyland is bad (it's descent in my opinion) so there was no Blue Sun to be seen at the top tables at Worlds. I haven't played much with the new MaxX against Blue Sun (nobody plays it anymore) but it could be a good counter. With DLR decks taking the top spots at Worlds, this could trigger a Weyland renaissance.

• If Valencia DLR decks keeps being popular, making All Seeing Eye unplayable, Freelancer is the next best counter. HB with Archived Memory and Project Vitruvius to recur Freelancer is probably a good answer that need to be explored.

Cards details

Eater is the icebreaker you want to have asap. Faust and Corroder are hardly used but very useful on some occasions. For instance, when the corp tries to rush agenda behind a single ice, or multiple Wraparound in front of HQ.

Deja Vu and Same Old Thing main purpose is to recur Siphon. But keep a close count of how many has been used or milled by MaxX and don't be too greedy. It's tempting to recure yet another Siphon only to end up being unable to LARLA. Try to keep one recursion card in case LARLA is trashed by MaxX. Be careful with net damage as they might trash LARLA or recursion cards.

Retrieval Run is awesome in this deck. Archives is often left empty or porous. This allows Retrieval Run to get one of the needed icebreaker without wasting a Deja Vu and a lot of tempo.

Utopia Shard is a last minute, untested replacement for Hades Shard before Worlds. Hades Shard is basically useless because it's so easy to mill the Corp. I won only once with agenda points with this deck at Worlds btw. Utopia Shard was supposed to be added protection for Psychographics or meat damage in case Paparazzi doesn't show up. In practice it's almost never necessary so Utopia Shard should be removed.

Imp is badly needed. With the popularity of NEH and HB, I was trashing Pad/Adonis/Eve Campaign and SanSan City Grid all day long. I'm not sure yet how many is the right amount but 2 Imp seems right with the current meta.

Many people asked about DDoS. I initially misread it as "make a run, the Corp can't rez the outer ice during this run" when opening its data pack and ignored it. I also played almost no Netrunner for the past 3 months so I wasn't aware of the card. But it is strong tool to land Siphon or snipe agenda behind single ICE. 1 or 2 DDoS could be added in the deck but more testing is needed.

Credits

• Steven Wooley from Team Covenant for the original Anatomy of Anarchy deck. http://teamcovenant.com/botounami/2014/05/20/anatomy-of-anarchy/

• Eli Mamane (drunkenphysics) for stomping me with his Quetzal Siphon deck on Jinteki.net around February. It made me play the whole archetype this year.

• Addy Zwiebel (BJester) for stomping me with his MaxX Siphon deck at the Leiden Regional. It made me try MaxX instead of Quetzal.

• Gary Bowerbank (Evilgaz) for the deck name (word play on Min-Max).