Spark City Surveillance - King of Servers 2015

That game against Alex on the stream was an absolute bloodbath. This looks like great fun, the synergy between City Surveillance and Spark is a really nice spot. Can't wait to give it a try!

I'll have to look for the Kate game, because the Noise game was vile. Really looking forward to taking this out for a spin.

Interesting list. It would seem that closed accounts would have a natural home in the deck. Perhaps -1 RA, +1 CA. I'm sure you've tried CA, why did you swap it out?

Does City Surv really do that much work? I love the synergy of this idea, I won't lie...but damn...don't ya need at least a Data Raven or something for guaranteed tagging? :)

I'm only seeing following punishment 4 tags: Resistor (can pay through trace) Info Overload (potentially devestating if run and not parasited) The All Seeing I (Effective vs some, but not all, decks)

So, City Surveillance has some synergy in the deck, but nothing very "pow". Reversed Accounts > Closed Accounts (tags come later, I think?). No psycho, etc. Having played, is the threat of CS enough that people try to pay into it, or is the small % of tag punishment simply sufficient. Or are resources common enough?

The real threat to me is the advert drain and potential for winning ash traces. Thoughts? Am I reading this deck correctly?

Very interested in picking it up and playing it.

I have so much love for this deck. Great seeing it play on camera.

now this is pretty cool. I would love to see tech startup here, to go tech startup->IAA fire reversed accounts.

The eve could be something like student loans or encryption protocol.

wow this is the first Spark list I actually want to try. I will probably remove the All Seeings for Breaker Bay Grid to help Surveillance rezzes as I don't think All Seeing is required for my LGS

Man, I remember playing you in Seattle at PAX with this. I had NO IDEA what to do. It was amazing =) Grats on dong so well at the KOS tourney!

I love you for realizing my dream of a City Surveillance Spark deck!

I must be being totally thick here - but then as much as I love Netrunner I've still a lot to learn about spotting combos - but exactly what is the synergy I'm missing here with City Surveillance? All I'm seeing is a 5/3 ratio asset that's not difficult to trash that simply taxes the runner a buck each turn. Commonly I see Runners with a ton of money anyway.

With Spark it's very easy to run the runner right down on cash. If they're low, they might even dump their money on their turn into a clone chip or whatever in order to stop you taking it. In these situations you can easily hit the runner with a guaranteed tag, and keep them poor as they click up for money to remove it, or just drain them of yet another credit each turn.

so I tried to play this with a psychographics and a beale instead of the two breakings news. Bluffing breaking news and going IAA->closed accounts/all-seeing I is a pretty strong play but I'm not sure how often we can do this. It could win games against runner with very high econ.

I slotted in student loans and in one game it completly shut down a silhouette because she basically couldn't even play inside job or siphon anymore.

Resistor is a great card and the best thing about this is the zero rez cost. Still, I put in a wraparound as AI hate.

A single sansan city grid is also great in here.

never mind my last comment, we NEED breaking news to deal with ressource heavy runners like sunny.

I'm going to add a more detailed writeup today.

Sorry, can any one explain "the great synergy between City Surveillance and Spark" ?

I tried to explain this in my comment above; basically, with Spark it's easy to get the runner way down on credits, often down to zero. In fact, the runner will often drain their own credits into installs during their turn to avoid the spark tax, as they know you are less likely to rez adverts in that situation.

It's a perfect opportunity to hit them with City Surveillance. If you've done your job right, the runner is really poor. They're left with a constant drip of credits away, they have to constantly click tags away, or they float them and run into your tag punishment.

I tried to run this strategy out of New Angeles Sol: Your News, Predictive Algorithm, and RSVP with a little splash of Ash and Red Herrings.

This deck does it so much better. I still really want to include a Predictive Algorithm but there is literally NO ROOM TOO MANY GOOD CARDS.

You need 2x The All-Seeing I to find it. Reversed Accounts is a powerhouse here to close gaps. And anyone with a heart cannot remove the City Surv.

I didn't see anyone else bring this up, but...doesn't Whizzard put at least a slight damper on this deck?

@esutter479 Probably. Every deck has a weakness.

Played a couple of casual games with this last night. The hilarity level and potential for mindgames are both very high.

The Eve seems kind of close on the include. One nice thing about it is having some high rez assets does let you duck early siphons, which are going to happen in an ice-light deck. I feel like maybe there is something else better than Special Offer because, as you say, it's just not that great.

I have to attest that this deck is bloody 'annoying'. Has 3 matches with Spark Agency. My first match using Fisk that is build for agenda flooding and Gang Sign assault resulted in me getting creamed. I can get my economic engine going when my Kati is trashed due to a well-timed scoring of Breaking News. I don't have enough credit to get my rig as this deck slowed my tempo.

However, I had better chance with my Pancake Noise. Because of some Ice with strength zero, I can killed it with Parasite. But later at the end, my friend playing this deck rezzed two City Surveillance. Urgh! Fortunately I was able to have credit to pay in order to avoid tag courtesy of Aesop. At the end, I think my friend already has 4 points and I have 5. I only have 1 Rolodex, 1 Medium with 2 virus tokens, 1 Grimoire, and 1 Aesop on the board. I was low on economy and I don't have any good target to be pawned in order to avoid tag and avoid losing my Aesop. If was forced to pawn my Grimoire, pay to avoid deck tag from City Surveillance and have money to go through a Pop-Up Window protecting R&D and manage to dig for another 2 agenda. That was a close game.

It seems like Breaker Bay Grid would be a home run here. Reasons for not including it?

@podoboyz99 No reason! (Probably didn't think of it.) Seems like a great idea. =-)

Is the 1x [Eve Campaign] really worth the 3 influence?

@wompa164 Probably not.

This is a great deck, had a lot of fun with it!

What I didn't like, though, was the lack of ETR. While you can keep their credit pool low, they can still scrap one or two credits to throw a Maker's Eye in R&D because Turnpike has very little stopping power. This forces you to dedicate the only Tollbooth you'll draw on R&D and rely on Ash for the remote which is shaky.

So what I did was:

-1 Eve Campaign -3 Turnpike +1 Tollbooth +3 Viper

This solved the problem outright though it's heavy on the Code Gate side and Gordian Blade makes Tollbooth much less powerful than it should. Still, I think it's a step in the right direction :)

@Erik_Twice I totally like your suggestion in putting the Viper in. However, I would also recommend players to consider including 1 copy of Crisium Grid. This can be helpful in addressing the problems of The Maker's Eye and Account Siphon.

Just from my observation, I think even with Gordian Blade, it will still be very taxing for the Runner to break the ice - pay 3 upon encounter and then pay 4 to increase strength and break subroutine.

Nevertheless, Tollbooth is definitely a good ice to include but I am not sure whether having 3 copies will be helpful. I don't to have situations when I am stuck with this expensive ice before I gain momentum in my economy. Only further playtesting will answer this concern.

I'm not sure hard End The Run is necessary on R&D. You're taxing them pretty good. But Resistor is much better than Turnpike for stopping them.

I have big concerns about the City surveillance strategy. If the runners economy is strong enough he can afford to pay the advertisement credits and doesn't have to go tag me. City surveillance, information overload and the resistors become dead cards then. City surveillance costs 5!!! for an effect on the runner which is not that strong. Maybe I haven't played enough against Spark or my Noise deck is specialy strong against it but at the moment I can't share the big Spark hype at all.

I think you should man up and play Rebranding Team over NAPD.

After finally playing a really close deck than this one, I can say that this is my favourite corp deck I ever played. Amazingly fun this one. Thanks.

I've never lost to this build and have no idea why it got such glory, it is a fun deck not a real competitive deck. It bears one 'small' defect - counts on runner to run....but we live in 2015 WNP era ..

cheers

Yeah, but... Two ASI and an I/O?

I think more tag punishment is a good call in the deck anyway tbh, would love to see Psycho and Beale in there for when the runner really starts piling on tags.

I have this deck a soon and my opponent played Hacktivist Meeting on the first turn or so and it really wrecked the asset based econ. I couldn't find my AstroScript Pilot Program or Breaking News to score easily.

@Zeromus in your writeup for your turn one, do you mean to rez the pad campaign on your own turn rather than theirs?

@razortoy Yes. Then you can rez another one on their turn.

That's what I thought but you had before the end of their turn Rez the pad campaign so I wasn't sure if you were describing the first 2 turns of play. Thanks for the clarification!

So, I ran this deck last night at the regular game night and won both of my games. It was super fun to play and I will definitely be running it for quite a while! First game was against a pretty brutal Faust Edward Kim: Humanity's Hammer deck that smashed me before. I was able to keep him out of my scoring server with just a Pop-up Window to score 2 NAPD Contracts which was pretty awesome with some judicious use of timed rezzing and then when he finally spent some time getting some money I dropped Tollbooth outside of the Pop-up Window and was able to score it out over 3 turns. Information Overload shut Faust down over R&D once he was at 5 tags (I waited to rez it and gave him a couple of accesses before hand) and that was pretty awesome. It was a really effective and he never had enough money to remove the tags either.

Second game was a real test against prepaid Kate, and I was worried due to her money. I also got a win there, but it was much more grindy, and Closed AccountsThe All-Seeing I was the real star of the show in this game. Kate got out a Plascrete Carapace turn 1 so wasn't worried about the nonexistent meat damage and kept an early tag, I did an install advance advance, then next turn did another double advance and clicked out 16 credits from him and had my scoring server behind 2 toll booths so was able to score out a Global Food Initiative and then one turn a Breaking News over the next 3 turns for the win. All in all it was a very fun deck to play, and a very unexpected style out of NBN - great innovation thanks!

@razortoy Awesome. Thanks for the tale. =-)

Any consideration to Pachinko or Gutenburg?

@striker511 Tried Pachinko. Didn't like it. I prefer Turnpike over Gutenburg. Taxing even if they go tag-me.