Legitimate Businessmen v2.1

INteresting. How do you fare against shaper who use Lady (wich basically neutralize Hive and can trash your AI-Curtain) and stay ahead of credits with Lucky Find ? Don't you find yourself sweating without Jacson #3 ?

Cerberus "Lady" H1, while a fantastic card - doesn't really neutralize anything here, unless they have the credits behind them to back it up. With Hive - It's mainly just early taxing ICE. The runner would have to use 3/4s of his Lady counters to get by it a single time.

If I didn't get Hive up and running until later - I'd only use it while it'd still eat counters (ie. 3 ETRs). If it was down to 2 or 1 , then I'd bounce it back into hand as is tradition with Blue Sun: Powering the Future.

Lady is a really efficient breaker - but it's just like playing any Oversight AI - you gotta time things out. Only do it when the Runner doesn't have enough money to deal with your threats - OR - if you want to bait them into spending the money on breaking it to establish a scoring window on the following turn. Other times I might bait them with something like Curtain Wall OAI'd with a Grim on top of it to sadden the Runner's day.

When the runner is just doing pure Prepaid VoicePAD Lucky Find economy - No worries - just use a strong diversity of ICE to mess with the runner. They still need to set up tempo turns and all - so it's really no big struggle to out-money them. If you're hungry for coins, just pull for your Adonis Campaign early.

I do not sweat without a 3rd Jackson Howard. Have you been playing with Daily Business Show? 2 and 2 is kind of the new asset suite. I've been doing it in pretty much all of my decks since the card came out. It does a similar job to J-wow, but fills a slightly different niche at the same time. Against Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire I'm not that worried either. I'll Elizabeth Mills down their Aesop's Pawnshop at the opportune moment, and ICE archives reasonably. That generally slows down their economy enough to create large scoring windows.

Thanks for the comments/questions btw! @jeibel

I like the deck! A few degrees of separation from what I'll be taking to a bunch of Store Champs. A few Qs:

-If you're running BP removal anyways, why avoid Hostile Takeover + Archer? archer is such a good piece of ICE.

-Same as above, but with GRNDL over Corporate War.

-Have you tried Changeling? While it does have some anti-synergy with Blue Sun, that STR4 ETR sentry is worth it in a lot of cases. Looking at you, criminals.

-Why no Taurus? As taxing as Grim, often scarier to the runner, and can deal with things other than Plascrete.

Regardless, it's nice to see a lot of the conclusions I've been coming to vindicated in other people's decks. :)

Hope Weyland keeps treating you well.

Thank you for yor answers. I was asking because "Calimsha" Kate is spreading in my meta and i have a really hard time dealing with it with my Blue Sun (a modified Keystone). And during a Noise Match where no Jackson showed up and one was milled, I was sweating knowing Hades Shard could seal the game, and daily business show does not fullfill that role. If one of your 2 Jackson gets milled, you have to fetch the other and "waste" one fo the 6 Jackson Saves Ace.

Do you think killing pawnshop is worth ? Usually Lotus Field is enough to stop Anarchs and score. Anyway, Ash is an interesting approach, I'd say troubleshooter can perform a similar function with less influence (and save Oversighted Curtain Walls / Archers).

I'd like to give this version a try, but i really cannot let go of Weyland ace in the hole Posted Bounty (shhhh don't tell them about it ). Do you think there's a way to fit this in ? Why don't you run it ? Deck Slots? Anyway , thanks for posting , take care

Excellent writeup BTW

(grumble grumble lost a long post and have to re-type it now)

Hello @Thike! Thanks for your comment!

By GRNDL, I assume that you mean Geothermal Fracking, yeah? The main reason why I don't play it is because I'm not really hurting for the money - and because... well.. While I'm okay with taking a bit of Bad Pub, I don't really want to be swimming in it.

My original build on this deck was 100% Bad Pub-free. The main reason why I started taking some is because of the magic that is Elizabeth Mills - and how good I think she'll be once Valencia Estevez: The Angel of Cayambe hits the grid. She's already been fantasitc against Aesop's Pawnshop and Personal Workshop - cranking my win % against Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire by cutting off half of his economy.

Since I can now deal with some though, your comment has made me consider another little change-up. I playtested it tonight and it seemed fairly solid!

• -1 Corporate War
• +2 Hostile Takeover
• -1 Errand Boy
• -2 Grim
• +2 Archer

Having a Hostile Takeover to bring up an Archer is always nice - though mainly I am happy with the card as a way to close out games quickly. Usually, when I win by points, I end up with 8 points, and that lost score can get a little stressful. The amount of Bad Publicity in the deck remains the same - I find 3 BP to be fairly manageable with Elizabeth Mills and her magic if you so choose to clear some of it. Really NAPD Contract is the only thing that wants you to resist Bad Pub - but if you just have the 1 BP, it isn't so bad. If anything an Install-Advance-Advance may fool the runner into thinking it is a Priority Requisition, tricking him into exerting more effort into Stealing it, and (if you're having a good day) being too poor to steal it.

I'm not a huge fan of Changeling in this deck to be honest! I know that @bblum has been using it to good effect - but if I'm going to be playing mean ICE like Grim, Taurus, or Archer - I don't want to encourage the runner to pull out any of his good Killers - or even think that he needs to have a good Killer in the first place (until one hits - but hopefully when it hits, it does a lot of damage)

I used to play Taurus as a one-of in this deck. Taurus is probably the best of the Astrology cycle ICE. The reason why it got cut, is that I went to a non-kill version for a period of time, where pegging off some hardware would be pretty irrelevant to the game state compared to killing a program or just building up a Glacial mountain of ICE. When I decided that Scorched Earth adds enough victory conditions to merit it's space, I started to explore some new directions with the deck (hence why like Elizabeth Mills came in, The Root came out, Adonis Campaign came in, etc.). It might be worth considering slotting a single Taurus back in here, now that it is a kill deck again. That's a good suggestion - one that merits some thought in the near future. :)

Hey @jeibel! Thanks for writing back!

Oh yeah, I think that killing Aesop's Pawnshop is worth it. Often times Noise players go digging for that half the game. Their economy gets pretty ridiculous once the Cacheshop gets going. Keeping them poor makes it hard for them to beat Ash 2X3ZB9CY traces, or otherwise beat your ICE, so it opens up scoring windows for you.

Ash 2X3ZB9CY is certainly worth the slot as well. Once the runner gets by everything, it can cause so much depression on their end being unable to get that Install-Advance-Advance'd agenda because they can't out-pace your gigantic pool of money built up from Blue Sun: Powering the Future shenanigans.. Which ends up being something silly like an NAPD Contract anyway - which they end up being too poor to steal on the 2nd run attempt of the turn. Glorious! Corporate Troubleshooter can be turned off by D4v1d, so it's not really good Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire or protection in general imo!

Keystone is a great approach to Weyland in general. I'm not a huge fan of Midseason Replacements in this deck tbh, just because the trigger points are fewer are farther in-between - but having the Biotic Labored Posted Bounty Scorched Earth kill combo is absolutely brilliant imo! @ItjustgotRielle came up with a truly innovative idea with that deckstyle.

Daily Business Show won't help you as much vs Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire - that is true - but it helps you more against other runners. I guess it really depends on your meta and how much of what is popular. If Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire is affecting you that badly, you could consider just doing pure Jackson Howards and even adding in Interns to get you out of that situation. There are only 2 or 3 people who play any Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire in my meta, so it's not really something that I need to worry all that much about.

I don't think I know the exact deck that Calimsha is playing. Do you have a link to the core concept of it?

The only place I'd consider putting a Posted Bounty in would be with the slot that Corporate War is filling. It's a nice Ace-in-the-hole like you're saying. This deck usually wins by Glacier though. Scorched is kind of an alternate win condition that you can sort of just stumble into. It can turn a complicated game into a simple win with a single Project Atlas - but I'd say that I win by points with this deck somewhere between 66.6-75% of the time and Scorched Earth with the rest. I've just never really had trouble with SEA Source when I want to do kills to need to bring in a Posted Bounty here. I haven't really run into a runner who has been able to out-money me as a Corp here, unless they were able to land a few Account Siphons, which if they're landing those all over the place, you've got more things to worry about here.

Thanks for your answer, i really appreciate the time and effort you put into it. Your points are valid and well reasoned. I'll try and see if it fits me. This is the Kate I hate netrunnerdb.com Cheers

Thanks for the detailed reply. GRNDL was Geothermal, and I totally forgot to mention the one-less-slow-agenda-to-win factor of Hostile Takeover, even though it's something I considered. I recently dropped one of my Posted Bounties for a Hostile Takeover, just for that obnoxious occasion when I have six points and an Atlas token, which seems to happen more than it should.

One more question, now that I've thought about it some more: How do you deal with situations where you'd need to triple Scorched to kill the runner? I find being able to respond to that situation really helpful, but without Posted Bounty, Midseason Replacements, or Data Raven you're left without options to do so. My guess is that the Ash 2X3ZB9CY makes it so you just score out, and I should probably give that card another chance.

@jeibel, ahh ok I see his deck. It looks really strong. I like his inclusion of 3x Stimhack on top of all that money. Against Blue Sun: Powering the Future though, he'd only fire it off once, probably off of a Self-modifying Code run.

I'd say just having your high strength Destroyers out would do the trick, especially if you have them stacked. His only killer is Mimic - and Sharpshooter needs to be timed and have the preparation tools in play to be usable. You can burn off some of the recursion effects on his deck by moving everything around.

Cyber-Cypher can be turned off by Blue Sun: Powering the Future's ability - making him waste his Scavenges or Clone Chips.

For that, I'd consider ICE placement as a part of the trick. Try to get your destroyers as the inner piece of ICE through Blue Sun: Powering the Future's ability. Have him burn off his SMC on Cerberus "Lady" H1 or something like that on the outer layer, then rez your Grim or Archer. Scorched Earth looks like it should be possible here as well.

@Thike in a situation where I'd need to triple Scorched Earth my opponent, say if they installed 2x Plascrete Carapace, yeah, you've got it! I'd drop SE that as a win condition and just move forward with Glacier/Ash 2X3ZB9CY! Hopefully the Runner's tempo was slowed down enough by those installs that it opened up some small windows for me. If the Runner created the condition by just having a single Plascrete Carapace up, and was keeping his handsize up.. I'd probably hang onto it as a win condition so long as I had space in my hand for it.. A lot of runners will drop down to 3 cards in hand eventually - sometimes after a Legwork, Stimhack or The Maker's Eye. That may just be your time to strike!

Totally worth considering finding a slot for Taurus again though. I wouldn't really want to cut any of the ICE that's out to have one in play though. Maybe an Archer could leave so that Taurus can enter. I'm not sure tbh - that'll take a little bit of playtesting. I kind of like having 2 Archers available as it stands.

Oh yeah and @Thike, WRT your Triple Scorched Earth dilemma! @kiv has an interesting solution to that that works well with Executive Boot Camp.

Have a single Snare! in your deck!

Wait for the runner to Legwork or something like that, then just bounce it into hand. If the runner say ran on the last (or even 2nd last) click - odds are that you did enough damage to be able to bring down the Scorched Earth hammer. If it was the last click, just go in for the kill. If it were the 2nd last click, and with the last click they shed the tag - odds are that their handsize is low enough now that the standard SEA Source double Scorched Earth can work again.

I don't find that that level of trickery is required here - but it seems like a very fun and creative solution to a kill problem to me.

Worth remembering a Shaper can often respond by SMC/Clone Chipping a Deus Ex into play if you do that.

Thank you for gracing my deck with you comment @Dydra!

I am sad to report that it is not 17-0 in my local meta. I've played this in 2 different cities and a bunch online... If you include the previous versions and slight tweaks here and there - the win/loss record is probably somewhere around 60-20.