1st Place at NZ Wellington Regionals 2016: I prefer coffee..

Seriously, who has pancakes in the morning? it's so much of a bother, I don't have time for that stuff!

So I've been playing Whizzard for as long as I've been playing Netrunner (so hipster) and am one of the party that couldn't be happier both about the ID and faction's recent presence in the competitive scene, and the attention given to some of what it's been using with the MWL.

Am overjoyed to achieve some success in lil 'ol New Zealand with my own brew, going 6-0 (alongside a net-damage Palana) so will share the general plan with this amazing community. Do note that Blood Money was not legal for the event, we were all following MWL 1.1 legality, and that this is only the first, hopefully of many, write-ups I've put together, so please do critique.

The basic concept is that of the multitude of 'dumblefork' Whizzards running around, that utilize the ability of Whizzard to pressure open assets, the advantage of the Anarchs to disrupt the permanence of ice by trashing with parasites and a few cutlery, compounded with the insane draw engine of wyldside and adjusted chronotype draw and FAUST (Mephistoles) to better enable said cutlery, pressure early game and be a jerk in general. Here we have one crucial difference: that last detail.

I was expecting some amount of Controlling the Message or Neh/SYNC/Haarp style packing kill and/or other painful tag punishment, so I didn't want to rely heavily on a resource engine that had a the chance of crashing in any such matchup, and instead packed the prepaid event-reliant engine to maintain cards and credits to some degree while keeping the heart of the deck... And Vigil. SO! about all the interesting card choices and influence expenditure.

CARDS:

HARDWARE:

Vigil: Believe it or not, perhaps the star of the deck, while prepaid is clear with the advantages provided, Vigil's benefit is a subtle win-win. It's cheap to install at two credits, and provides just one of those all-important memory units to Anarchs, which is fine. But the ability, in the most positive light, reads as: "half of wyldside+pancakes" (which cost 3 to install... each... don't provide memory... and are relatively vulnerable resources,) which is clearly amazing, but on the condition that the corp is at their maximum hand size. The thing about corp hand size is that it constantly has to go up with compulsory draws, so Vigil is guaranteed its best case scenario most turns the corp attempts to start or finish a score, Jackson-filters or rezzes their Sensie Actors Union. Which on the flipside, means every turn the corp is not doing those things, the hit rate of agendas in HQ subtly increases, both because there are less cards, and because an agenda is not being forced through. Further, With Astro knocked down to 1 per deck, one of Turntable's most contributive function is reduced, so other options are once again more deserving of attention. TL;DR: draw cards for cheap, or more average points in HQ, on one card, apply pressure appropriately.

Sports Hopper: this is a pair as well as the I've had worses to completely shore up the butcher and equivalent rush matchups, while providing valuable draw against everyone else and link until used. This helps again a small number of HB Ice (Viper, Ichis) but most against NBN, which is very trace heavy these days, and the extra discount when the trace fires can help with one more medium dig, one more CtM tag.

Archives Interface: Simply a slot to fight primarily Industrial Genomics and their shocks, but also any pesky assets or operations that would be better off gone (Museums & Jacksons, 24/7s & Hard-Hitting, Subliminal & Psychographics, Scorch and Traffic Accident.)

EVENTS:

I've had Worse/Inject: These are your draw, it is ideal to have at least one prepaid to start the game even if just for these, they will find your other prepaids, Vigil and actual economy events for you for nothing or for profit.

Employee Strike: If you haven't heard, Corps LOVE their identity boxes. The ideal is to keep one of these up against SYNC, ETF, Palana, Blue Sun, Gagarin, CtM, the list is almost as long as the number of different corps in the meta. This card would be at 3 with the high expectation of CTM, which is very harsh to a Whizzard trashing their open assets every turn, but testing showed it was persistent enough at staying in play against the relevant styles of the deck that the influence could be freed up.

Same Old Thing/Déjà Vu/Retrieval Run: The first two both serve a similar role, yet deja vu gets discounted with prepaids and can collect two of the 6 virus' the deck is inevitably going to trash by constantly injecting or actually installing parasites. Retrieval run serves as a more efficient way to reinstall D4v1d, Faust after face-planting Swordsman without Mimic, or play Yog.0 for less if there are enough sorry code gates on the board. Same Old thing continues to make the cut for still working with prepaids for the event they do play, and the fact they can, be used to play one of the others again to recur other things. ( Install Same Old Thing, Same Old Thing to Déjà Vu I've Had Worse to hand is not as much of a joke as it might sound.)

PROGRAMS:

Corroder: It breaks down Wraparound, which I didn't want to lock me out just because they had one early and I only had one fracter to dig into.

Mimic: it is worth considering swapping the 2nd Corroder into a Mimic instead, as Mimic answers both Swordsman and Architect, both strong contenders to slow the Whiz down. I opted to risk it being buried in deck as Swordsman does very little alone, can be answered with Parasites and Faust can be recurred. And breaking Architect would simply have to be tolerated, though a Datasucker counter certainly helps.

Yog.0: It went on the MWL for a reason, and I still find myself running at least one of it so long as the other breakers are being catered for, as it breaks so many code gates for 0, most notable is its solution to central-server Turing, as well as Quandries, Enigmas, and even Pop-ups, before considering having Datasucker counters.

D4v1D: Again on the MWL for good reason, this thing needs SOMETHING done to it, but to repeat the message: it kills Blue Suns's Oversight-ed Curtain Wall, it breaks remote Turings, it breaks Tollbooth without money, it breaks resistor after NBN forces tag-me down your throat at 5-6 points stolen. It does a lot of work for a non-icebreaker and makes it very hard to excuse having at least one.

Faust: Did you notice that the other 'breakers' are all just answers to things that answer Faust? Because Faust is notorious for answering EVERYTHING ELSE with a card or four. Only two copies in the deck because of the redundancy and the sufficiency of recursion in the events. In the long term it isn't impossible to forgo it entirely and rely on the Anarch fixed breaker suite plus parasite memory slot.

Medium: A pair of these with the Déjà Vus is all an anarch deck needs to pull one out to close the game once the corp is at a disadvantage, clearing a line to R'n'D and hammering it can be worth 7(8) points in two turns.

Resource?: Political Operative: The last Influence taken from the possible extra Employee Strike, Parasite, Faust or D4v1d as a silver bullet that work's with Whizzard to answer any Ash, Caprice, Sanburg, Jackson or Off the Grid that are stealing tempo in the game, the only other resource and Faust fodder in any tag-heavy matchup.

No Clone Chip: This'l be hard to swallow: we don't need it. Okay without the MWL you can bet this would be making the slot or two it deserves, but when we're making money by investing in events, this card becomes an odd duck that is played as hardware that installs a program - it doesn't mesh with the prepaying. Outside of the programs and maybe a Sports Hopper everything needs to be a good event or work with a good event to get enough value to keep up with a corp. With the breaking plan, three influence is too expensive to improve it somewhat and I'd sooner slot more Retrieval Run.

In broad terms, the overall plan is to kill ice and assets while pressurring remotes (faust > many gearchecks) HQ ( see: Vigil incentives,) and archives (Datasucker, Retreival Run) without losing too much tempo until an opportunity to menace R&D with Medium occurs, at which point dig until victory.

Keep starting hand by prioritizing Prepaid > Vigil > Employee Strike > Money, in that order. Draw a lot unless Vigil's active and the corp is asking for runs, and otherwise respond directly to corp activity.