Purple Pail (5th/6th Place US Nationals)

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squash957 574

Hey everyone,

So after a lot of waffling as to whether I should post this list, I've made up my mind and done this little write up. I was a bit motivated after seeing all the European HB lists that did well at their Nationals, since I feel like I made some drastically different choices given a similar archetype. If I went in depth about every card choice this post would be obnoxiously long (it still is), so anything I don't cover please ask about in the comments.

The primary route to victory for this deck is to put SanSan behind some decent ICE and start slamming points on the board before your opponent can deal with it. Since many decks have good FA counters, do not be afraid to utilize the full power of HB Never Advance to sneak agendas out. We exist in a meta where Runners are predominantly late game behemoths, so it is in your best interest to get out of the game as soon as you can. I also want to be perfectly clear that I don't think this deck is amazing. It's what works for me in a meta that I find incredibly difficult for my play style.

Name: The nickname of "The Shovel" that Timothy Bunn and Steven Wooley gave me has pretty much solidified amongst my playgroup. I actually kinda like it now. I figured a shovel needs a pail to do all that digging. Har har har. I know.

Agendas: The only conversation to have here is on 1x Chronos and 1x Pet Project. Both are brilliant in this deck against different decks and at different times. I don't think I have to elaborate on how much Chronos helps against Maxx or Kate or anyone playing Clot. The truth is that Director Haas usually does more work for me. I'll sometimes score it as the first agenda on a SanSan to pull back something like Adonis-Breaker Bay Grid-Ash/ICE. Any time I can pull back BBG + Adonis, it's a nightmare for the Runner to have to go deal with. A lot of the times they let me have the 12 credits... Move over Weyland Economy Agendas.

Assets: Daily Business Show does absolutely monstrous work in this deck. There are a lot of moving pieces. Only 8 economy cards means that sometimes drawing manually can be painfully slow. I play 9 different assets/upgrades/operations (not to mention ICE) that are more or less useful as the game progresses and being able to sift through that is a godsend. Dropping to 2 Jackson has been a non issue outside of the Noise match-up. Even there we have an Archived Memory as a pseudo third Jackson.

Upgrades: You can TOTALLY play Breaker Bay Grid and SanSan City Grid in the same deck. I promise. It works fine. This deck wants to set up multiple remotes anyway. Waiting for Adonis to trickle out of your primary remote to start scoring is sometimes too slow and sometimes too obvious. Put the SanSan in the other server. Or Rez all the upgrades for free with BBG and THEN put SanSan in the server (trashing BBG of course). Both BBG and SanSan are simply powerhouse cards in HB and well worth a bit of awkwardness in utilization.

Operations: Not much to say here. Biotic Labor is the Fast Advance trick most neutered by Clot (by a mile), so there is only room for 1 at best. Archived Memories is an amazing card.

ICE: Building an ICE suite is my favorite part of building a Netrunner deck. It's the first and last thing I think of when theory crafting and it's bloody difficult right now. Nothing feels useful across the board anymore. Nothing feels incredibly taxing to the top tier runners. So what did I do? I played some weird stuff.

My basic logic with the NEXT suite was as follows: "Since all ICE is pretty flimsy right now, I might as well play something that at least has a chance of being strong in the late game." It turns out that the psychological advantage of playing NEXT is as good as the ICE itself. Remotes go uncontested far more than against a traditional ICE suite, which means BBG/Adonis, DBS, and Agendas sometimes go completely unmolested for turns at a time. Of course this also means that I never get more than 4 pieces of NEXT ICE rezzed. An Anarch dominant meta is a problem given how much parasite recursion is abound, but the NEXT ICE doesn't fare much worse than anything else I've tried in that regard. You just have to be more aggressive against Anarchs, challenging their ability to find/recur a Parasite on call. Just because they can eventually drop 8 or 9 Parasites, doesn't mean they can do it on the next turn.

I play IQ over Turing because it's increased usefulness on Centrals, and because David absolutely neuters Turing. Ichi 1.0 feels as soft as it's ever felt in HB right now. I think it's great just about everywhere BESIDES HB, in fact. Ichi 2.0 on the other hand did a ton of work against players with 1.0 on the mind. Often times it doesn't get rezzed, but it is routinely more useful than NEXT Gold at the same price point. I'm still playing 1 NEXT Gold, because sometimes people get greedy.

For those wondering, the deck went 5-2 in Swiss and 1-1 in Top Cut. The losses were to 1 PPVP Kate with Clot (which it also beat in Cut) and 2 Noise with Faust. This deck has no answer for Faust Noise. It does fine against Faustzal and has a good shot against just about any other Anarch deck with Faust, but it just capitulates to Faust Noise. I'm not sure how to address this issue exactly, so buyer beware.

If you're still with me, thanks for reading! I did infinitely better than I expected at Nationals, which is a testament to luck more than anything else. I think this list is more of a proof of concept than a top tier deck. If anyone gleans something useful from my odd choices, then it will be worth me posting it!

I want to give a big shout-out to the entire Kansas City Netrunner crew, which keeps this game endlessly fun. Also a warm thank you to all the Netrunners that made GenCon a wholly incredible and enjoyable experience!

17 comments
19 Aug 2015 Kevoun

It seems like Mother Goddess is the swing slot, have you considered something like Corporate Troubleshooter? If you're challenging Clot and Parasite recursion already could you challenge d4v1d/Faust with Turing and Troubleshooter? Then Faust is matching your credits with cards.

19 Aug 2015 squash957

@Kevoun

Corporate Troubleshooter came in and out of the list at various stages. Sometimes it's amazing: boosting ICE strength even by 1 or 2 can prevent it's destruction via parasite. Most times, it just means trading credits with the Runner (boosting Bronze when Gordian is on the table) or worse. I found it to be less consistently effective than the second Ash.

I'm incredibly conflicted on Mother Goddess in this deck. On the one hand it's a liability at 4 strength and the cost:tax ratio is pretty bad against almost any breaker suite. On the other hand it is a durable source of the NEXT subtype, making even the first Bronze much more difficult to parasite (difficult meaning that it doesn't immediately die with Grimoire on the board). It also has been rather effective early protecting remotes when little or no other ICE has been rezzed.

The main problem with Faust in Noise is R&D runs with Medium that I just cannot slow down. Tollbooth is the only card in the deck that really achieves this, and as a 1 of it's hard to consistently find. Turing on R&D is more cute than good against this I fear. As another 1 of it will probably be difficult to find as well. For the record, I've been tinkering with a HB Glacier list with more slots available and both Corporate Troubleshooter and Turing are in there. I'm already at what I think is the minimum ICE I can safely play, which is why I mainly do ICE vs ICE comparisons and Upgrade vs Upgrade rather than considering cutting Goddess for Troubleshooter.

19 Aug 2015 jmbostwick

A weird thought vs. Faust: What about Will-o'-the-Wisp? Putting Faust on the bottom of the Runner's deck should slow them down meaningfully (especially as most Noise decklists I've seen don't use any tutoring or deck shuffling). Sure they'll draw into another one, or pull one out of Archives, but the tempo hit should give you enough time to wipe counters and maybe find a new piece of ice or two to toss on R&D. It's also rarely seen, so it might catch the Runner off-guard.

19 Aug 2015 cwoac

Rather than Corporate Troubleshooter, what about Experiential Data? Cheaper, boosts multiple ice and persists (assuming you threw their calculations off enough to keep them out) to give an extra turn vs. parasite.

19 Aug 2015 RepoRogue

Will-o'-The-Wisp also works well with Breaker Bay Grid

19 Aug 2015 squash957

@jmbostwick

Will-o' is a solid idea, thanks! My gut reaction is that it will fill a similar role as Corporate Troubleshooter in that it will be amazing sometimes and neigh upon useless others. Will-o' suffers mostly by not having any ability to stop the run in the first place, making it extremely weak in remotes. The 1 trash cost is also painful. I have enough cards to bait the Never Advance play, but I'll give it a try sometime!

@cwoac

Experiential Data is actually really cute. I'm still not sure it beats out Ash in this deck, but I'm definitely going to play around with it and see. This is a card I completely glossed over. Thanks!

@RepoRogue

It does in theory, I agree. The problem is that I will likely want Will-o'-the-Wisp on a central rather than a remote, and I rarely have the luxury of placing a BBG on a central. With only 2 copies in the deck, the first one always goes into a remote and the second is often buried/trashed out of R&D. It's still a valid point though, thanks!

19 Aug 2015 vampire0

Looks a lot like the deck that @kevingoes was running last fall in the Atlanta area. Did well for him there as well.

19 Aug 2015 RepoRogue

I've got to disagree with you about Will-o'-the-Wisp on remotes, at least in this deck. If you have Ash and the Wisp on a remote together, then as long as you can win the trace you can force them to run again without one of their key breakers. If might not work out in practice, but I think it's worth a try.

19 Aug 2015 thrazznos

@squash957 I Have found Interns to be fantastic with the NEXT ICE compared to archived memories, because I often find myself reinstalling Silver's from the bin that the runner trashed earlier in the game, and it saves on install cost. In the Noise Matchup, I honestly feel like Ichi is one of the most powerful cards. Even knocking out an early datasucker is huge, because Noise uses his cards on the table as his economy.

Your HB decks have always inspired me in the past, thanks for sharing your valuable experiences!

19 Aug 2015 squash957

@RepoRogue

There is certainly synergy in the remote if you can get both Ash and Will-o'-the-Wisp to fire, but I'm not sure I can fit enough copies of both to make that a reasonable expectation. I agree though that it's worth a try.

@thrazznos

Thanks so much for your kind words! It's really nice to hear that my ramblings might be helpful to someone haha.

Interns certainly makes sense in a deck with NEXT ICE, but I rarely find myself using my Archived Memories on a Silver or Bronze. It's predominantly the Assets/Upgrades. I also dislike giving my opponent perfect information as to what I am installing. With Archived, even when I'm making an obvious play to install what I just brought back to HQ, I shuffle my hand before installing. It at least gives me the option to do something cheeky. Information is power and often worth a credit or two.

My meta has a lot of Noise with Atman, so Ichi 1.0 hasn't shown much promise for me against him. It's just another 4 strength ICE that isn't really cost effective to rez. This may very well be a play style thing, but Ichi 1.0 hasn't destroyed anything meaningful in my HB decks for months and months. It simply never hits, and the taxing effect isn't significant enough to rez if it's not doing it's primary job as a destroyer. I may slot 1 back in to see how it does against Faust, since the rez cost is a bit easier to bear than Ichi 2.0.

20 Aug 2015 Abstract

@squash957

I've been playing something similar, I'll definitely try out some of your changes. I've found Ichi 1.0 to be fairly taxing on the average game, and I agree that Director Haas' Pet Project is great. I've gotten mild use out of Will-o'-the-Wisp before: kills criminals, slows down anarchs a little, does almost nothing against shapers, I found. This is looking ahead a bit, but have you tried out or thought about Team Sponsorship at all?

Thanks for posting, I've always enjoyed watching your games whenever I can find them, congratulations on doing so well!

20 Aug 2015 sruman

Thanks for the great write-up. Always been a fan of HB and good to see it doing well. Looking over the list, even with cheap ice in general, it seems to be quite money light, especially if ash is to be anything beyond the 4-credit tax. Am I mis-judging the power of the 8 money cards plus ID ability?

20 Aug 2015 squash957

@Abstract

I haven't tried out Team Sponsorship, but my gut says it's going to consistently be that "50th best card" that gets cut when tightening up a list. It definitely has promise to make SanSan chaining agendas even more devastating for the Corp, but I'm not sure that's what I need more of. It's interesting that I'm in the minority that doesn't like Ichi 1.0 right now, but that's one of the things I love about this game. The way in which we use cards is just as important as the numbers printed on them. Thanks for your comment!

Also, the Team Covenant guys did catch a few of my GenCon games on video, but none with this deck unfortunately. Also the games are goofy so don't expect too much haha.

@sruman

I think you're spot on to ask whether the 8 econ cards are sufficient in this deck. It is undoubtedly a tight economic package. It think it works for me, because I am not afraid to click for credits and am very proactive at getting Adonis going. I also cannot emphasize enough how filthy good Adonis + BBG is. That being said, season to your liking. I know amazing HB players who do better than me with more econ, so don't be afraid to add some. I hope that answered your question (let me know if it didn't) and thanks for asking!

20 Aug 2015 Leviathan

Great write up! I haven't had the chance to play against you myself, but as a top-tier out of towner in our humble Tulsa meta it's always great to see you show up.

Keep shovelin'! :D

20 Aug 2015 squash957

@Leviathan

Thanks a lot! I'm trying to mobilize some of the KC crew to invade your Monthly Tournament over Labor Day Weekend, so maybe we'll get a chance to play then.

20 Aug 2015 Leviathan

@squash957 Excellent! I won the monthly tourney this month so maybe I'll finally be at the big boy's table next time with you, haha.

27 Aug 2015 wittela

How do you deal with Film Critic? It neutralizes NAPD Contract. Have you considered substituting Corporate War for NAPD or adding Corporate Town?