Diofork v1

AKA the same Surfer Laamb Knife Spam archetype you've all probably seen already, but out of a different ID from normal. Shell was shamelessly stolen from https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/52668/kid-running-with-knives.

So, what does this deck do? Your goal is to throw more knives at the corp than they can possibly deal with, probably while muttering "muda muda muda" under your breath. Completely disassemble their remote. Get into HQ every turn and trash their combo pieces. Lock R&D, either through repeated running or though The Maker's Eye recursion. Once you have the rig and econ engine up, the only way this deck loses is through traps.

How do we do all this? The basic function of all Surfer Laamb Knife Spam decks is pretty much the same: 1. Make one run per turn, in which you use Laamb to turn the first ice into a barrier. 2. Use Surfer to shift that ice all the way to the base of the server. 3. Actually break the ice with a secondary breaker. 4. If this was a Knifed run, the ice is then trashed. Now, you might think that only half your runs can be Knifed runs: first you run to get them to rez the ice, then on the next turn you play Knifed to trash it. However, it's a lot better than that. After all, let's say a remote has 3 ice. First you make a normal run on the remote, and surf the outer ice to the inner position. The next time you want to run the remote, you play Knifed. Since there is already a rezzed ice on the server, an ice will be trashed no matter what, barring special circumstances (e.g. a Batty fire). Thus the corp will almost always rez the newly outermost ice, especially if it's cheaper than the already rezzed ice. If they do this, that after that ice is trashed, there will still be a rezzed ice protecting the server! This will remain the case until that first ice is finally trashed. Thus, situations where it is disadvantageous to play Knifed are actually in the vast minority!

Once you played as many Knifed as you can, draw your entire deck as fast as possible. Then play Labor Rights for 3 Knifed. Then do it 2 more times. Then play Levy AR Lab Access to get even econ cards, Patchwork fuel, and of course, a new supply of knives. Then do it again, if there's anything left standing.

So, what makes this deck different from other decks of the same archetype? The answer lies in the choice of secondary breaker. If you look at the decklist that inspired this one, you'll see that the secondary breaker used there was Morning Star, which has since rotated out of Standard format. When seeking out alternatives, I realized: what's better than breaking ice for 1 credit? Breaking ice for 0 credits! With Yusuf as my secondary breaker, there is no need to spend any money breaking ice aside from the 2 credit Laamb fee. At this point, the change in ID became obvious, as did the inclusion of 3x Virus Breeding Grounds. The virus counters they provide are more than enough to break 1 ice per turn with Yusuf, so you'll want to be frequently checking out HQ and R&D to see if you can find anything juicy to trash with your ID. It also makes the IG matchup hilarious.

Next let's talk about the econ package. Patchwork is quite possibly the best console in Anarch, maybe even in the whole card pool. It's like having 2x Prepaid VoicePad, except it works for everything, and not just events. The numbers on it are very similar to those of Zer0, and that card got banned! (Although, to be fair, Zer0 was banned for a specific interaction and not for its efficiency.) Moreover, this deck has enough draw in it (39 cards worth!) to ensure that you always have fuel for it. If you get it in your starting hand, then by the time you draw through your deck (and you will) you'll be sitting on top of a pile of money big enough to easily surf through the tallest of Jinja servers.

So, when I built this deck and tested it a few times, I thought I'd come up with some new and innovative take on a popular archetype. And then I realized: I just built Dumblefork, but with rotated cards swapped for their modern equivalents. Instead of the Pancakengine, I'm running 9 much less efficient draw cards. (Wow, imagine if Wyldside and Patchwork had existed together. Now that would be economy.) Instead of Faust, I'm running Laamb, the best "AI" available to us today. Khumalo is even analogous to Whizzard! With 3x Virus Breeding Ground installed, you have a drip 3 that you can use to trash things. I guess it takes someone better at the game than me to come up with real innovation here.

As you can see from the title, this is the first version of this deck. There are definitely some things I'm not sure about, not least of which is the 1 free influence. Other things:

Stimhack: It seems somewhat heretical not to include 1 copy. There are definitely a few games where it's saved me. However, most of the time I've only played it in games where I was far behind economically, games I've ended up losing. Maybe if I used the card slot for something better I wouldn't ever be in the position to need it?

Progenitor: This is my tech card for Jinteki glacier. Normally, this type of deck can only break one non-barrier ice per turn. This makes it impossible to get into remotes of RP or Mti Mwekundu. It also means you can easily foiled by Nisei tokens, Aginfusion, Bio Vault, etc. Progenitor is one solution for getting around this problem. If you host Yusuf on a Progenitor, you can now install 2 copies of Laamb. Hopefully you'll never find yourself in a situation where you wish you could install 3. If anyone can come up with a better solution though, I'd be happy to hear it.

Of course, I'm never too disappointed drawing either of the above. After all, with Patchwork, there is no such thing as a dead card.