-- Firstly, if you'd like a deep dive video on this deck, I have one up on my channel. Enjoy! --

This is a World Tree Arissana deck. World Tree is unarguably one of the coolest Netrunner cards, but it unfortunately hasn't seen much play since Kabonesa Wu was banned out (as a result of the World Tree...) almost exactly one year go. Check out DeeR's list to see what that used to look like.

I spent an afternoon stream trying out some more ambitious Arissana deck ideas, and World Tree was quickly a chat favourite. After putting together a clumsy pile of cards, it was clear that there was something there. A fair bit of offline tuning later, this is where I ended up. I think it's quite neat.

There were three main tenets behind this deck:

• Play World Tree consistently and do massive value crimes.
• Use World Tree to tutor the un-tutorable, allowing us to consistently produce powerful high-influence engine pieces.
• Ensure that Arissana's textbox does something for us.

This is how it works:

The Game Plan

To pilot the deck, you want to stick to a simple three step process:

Step 1: Set Up

Perhaps a bit counterintuitively, we don't want to smash down a World Tree on turn one. While the World Tree Wu decks of yore were able to generate large amounts of forward momentum by quickly treeing programs into other programs, we get most of our early game value by treeing nearly spent nearly spent resources into fresh resources. Therefore, our first couple of turns should be spent setting up our value resources, establishing our economy and card draw, and poking servers to force some rezzes. It's just normal Netrunner.

Step 2: The World Tree

Once we have a Daily Casts with two credits left, or an Earthrise Hotel with its final power counter, this is when we want to drop the World Tree and start "treeing". Notably, this deck has three copies of World Tree and three copies of Self-modifying Code, which gives us six shots at finding our early World Tree. While I wouldn't hard mulligan for the World Tree itself, with six 'successes' in our deck of sixty cards, we should have an above 50% chance of finding our World Tree (or SMC) as soon as we've drawn two cards beyond our opening hand (We hit 70% after emptying a Dr. Nuka or Earthrise Hotel). Remember that you can use Arissana's ability to clicklessly install a Self-modifying Code mid-run and crack it to grab the Tree (an Overclock definitely helps). And now we're off to races.

Step 3: Pop Off

We now want to be largely running once per turn, to ensure that we're treeing our installed stuff into fresher stuff. As mentioned in step one, this will often start by trading out a resource on its last legs into a fresh resource. Our first target is often to pull a Class Act for the burst of cards, and the ongoing ability to filter our draw. From there, we'll tree card draw resources into other card draw resources, economy into economy, or whatever else your board state requires. We will definitely be treeing programs (and some hardware) based on the needs of the board state, but you often start out by simply upcycling our resources.

The Cards

Resources

• The Class Act - I underestimated how fantastic this card is alongside World Tree. While five influence is definitely a lot, we are consistently installing it (for one credit, mind you) around turn three or four. From then on, the filtered card draw ensures that we keep our ideal World Tree targets safe in our deck, and we only draw our operations, hardware, and trojans. Why install an Earthrise Hotel from hand for a click and four credits, when we can spend no clicks and one credit treeing it in from the bottom of the deck?

• The Ephemeral Value Assets - Daily Casts, Earthrise, Nuka, and Telework are all similar ideas. We extract as much value off of them without destroying them, and then tree them into the next reasonable target. A full World Tree chain installs a single Daily Casts for a click and three credits, and then gains eighteen credits (and another World Tree install) over the next nine turns.

• Urban Art Vernissage - With World Tree, we are looking to be running at least once every turn, so why not splash out some cheap trojans and get some credits to help build our board? This is not often a card I'll aggressively use World Tree to find, but a nice target to end a World Tree chain. We'll gladly install this from hand in the early to mid game.

• The Artist - I don't think The Artist is a great card, but for one credit tree'd out of our deck, it's fine. This is the quintessential 'chain ender' target, and something to seek out once you've exhausted all of your other more ephemeral resources.

Hardware

• Knobkierie - One of the very unique properites of World Tree, is that it is a hardware tutor. That's incredibly rare in Netrunner, and allows us to consistently pull together some ambitious out of faction engines while only spending the minimum amount of influence on singletons. While the three virus MU will eventually be valuable, Knobkierie is another perfect reason to be running once per turn. Remember that as long as you trigger World Tree before Knobkierie during a successful run, you can still use Knobkierie to put a virus counter on the freshly tree'd card.

• Simulchip - It's Simulchip. It's great. It's core to Shaper nonsense, and allows us to tree away programs at super low costs. Feel free to discard expensive programs from your early hands, knowing you can bring them back later.

• The MU Cards - We need a lot of MU (World Tree does take up two MU, and our console isn't helping us on that front), so we have a full set of DZMZ Optimizers and two Cyberdelias. The DZMZ's are nice for early setup, and work really well alongside Arissana spamming out Slap Vandals. The Cyberdelias are fantastic long lasting econ options once we're ready to break, and once again work well with the one run per turn. Treeing a DZMZ into a Cyberdelia makes sense in the late game, but just make sure you don't go under MU for the tiny moment in which the DZMZ disappears. I think there may be an argument to run a third Cyberdelia.

(I cackled recently rereading DeeR's seminal World Tree Wu deck writeup, which contains the line, "Andrej gave Cyberdelia a hard time during our game...". Sorry Dee. I've clearly come around. :p )

As a note, while it's not particularly common to World Tree your hardware, you can do so in a pinch. This is important if you're looking for the singleton Knobkierie, or if you really need to grab some MU or a Simulchip.

The Events

I have nothing really to say here. They all do exactly what you think they do. Overclock is notably super flexible with Arissana's ability.

The Programs

With twenty programs, it's easiest to compartmentalize them into a couple categories:

The Trojans

We're playing Arissana, so we're likely going to be playing some Trojans.

• Slap Vandal - We have a full set of Slap Vandals, which allow us to exert some early pressure without having to expend a lot of credits. This slows Corporations down, which is great, because we scale really well into the late game. Once we have begun to set up, feel free to tree the remaining Vandals into permanent breakers, or whatever programs the board requires.

• Kyuban and Pichação - We have singletons of each of these programs, and they are flexible pieces that accentuate our pressure and our once-per-turn running. Kyuban is worth keeping around into the mid-to-late game to generate cheap runs once our breakers are setup, and Pichação is a fantastic closer alongside Conduit for the six+ click R&D barrage.

The Breaker Suite

Our breaker suite is super standard in regard to Shaper mid-game engines. We have Cleaver, Buzzsaw, and Echelon, with the support of a K2CP Turbine. All of these programs cost three to four credits, so they World Tree really nicely. With World Tree, we don't have to pay five or six credits producing our breakers with Self-modifying Code, but rather we spend zero or one credits by Arissana-ing out our SMC and treeing it into whatever we need. Feel free to play a second Turbine or a Takobi if you think your meta requires it.

The Virus Package

• Imp - This is the final main piece of our Knobkierie virus engine. This deck doesn't have a lot of multi-access, and so we inherently don't exert a lot of pressure on the Corporation. This is where the endless Imp comes in, and really puts the Corp on the clock. The Corp can no longer leave HQ poorly iced, and no matter where we make our once-per-turn run, we'redoing some damage. It gives us teeth into assets, combo decks, and fast advance. We're a Virus Anarch now.

• Pelangi - I honestly think this card can probably be cut. It gives you some nice flexibility with Arissana's ability at instant speed, but I found myself relying more on Slap Vandals in a pinch. It's endless with Knobkierie, but still might not be necessary. I'd recommend trying out a cheeky Cordyceps in this slot.

• Aumakua - I abstractly really liked the idea of Aumakua - it's a "free" program from World Tree, and gives value to every once-per-turn run the Tree demands. While there's some obvious anti-synergy with Imp (but great synergy with Knobkierie), it's another one-stop pressure solution to put the Corp on the clock. While I think Aumakua is fine, despite the abundance of Mavirii, I have some suggestions for this final one influence flex slot.

• Conduit - This is our multi-access. When we're ready to pivot and close the game from R&D, Conduit smashes in from the top rope with World Tree (remember that you won't be able to see extra cards on that run, but a freshly tree'd Conduit will at least gain a virus counter for the future). With Knobkierie and Pichação, you can see a lot of cards much faster than the Corporation may expect.

The Other Programs

• Self-modifying Code - This card is quite important in finding our early World Tree, but remains flexible throughout the rest of the game. We often use Arissana's ability to install an SMC clicklessly mid-run, and then instead of spending the two credit premium plus install costs, we just tree the SMC into whatever program we want.

• Paricia - It's great against assets (which we have Imp for as well). Grab it if you need it, and tree it if you don't.

Other Cards You Should Consider

For that last influence slot (which is currently Aumakua), I'd highly recommend trying out Hush or a DJ Fenris. Hush naturally works great as a trojan alongside Ari, and has a lot of utility against NBN and Weyland decks. DJ Fenris coming down for free with the tree is also fantastic, and gives us mid to late game value with Steve Cambridge, or some aggressive card draw and economy pairing Imp with Loup.

Closing Notes

Overall, I found the World Tree shell in Arissana to be much more robust than I expected, and leaves a lot of room for creativity in deckbuilding. While our goal to play splashy high-power high-influence cards worked out, there's definitely an argument to play something more conventional. Two MU and free card draw from LilyPAD can't be bad.

But don't let that stop you throwing around some wild influence. Here's an entirely untested version with Maw that might work out just as well. Would you feel better paying four influence for Masterwork (v37) in Shaper if you could get it consistently with the Tree? Probably, yeah.

Also, shout-out to @Cannister for the deck name!

Again, I have a thorough video up where I go through the deck and jam some games.

Thanks again for reading, and happy treeing. Cheers!