It works 4% of the time, everytime (3-1 - 1st Online GNK)

Why Chronos Protocol

This deck was very much a meta shout, that hate cards (No One Home, Caldera, Sports Hopper) that would prevent a combo. In addition, this deck felt it has a good degree of resilience to Apoc and created an unique threat, that can really slow the runner down to play around. Note to play this deck optimally, bring a pen and paper to each match . . .

This deck helped me to my maiden tournament win. Would I play Chronos Protocol again? - Yes, it is an interesting combo deck that can catch people off guide!

Plan

It relies on threatening cards in the runner hand to enable a Neural EMP (optional) / Salem's Hospitality / Complete Image kill combo. Even with the runner on 4 cards, a single Salem and Complete Image fire has a 50% success rate assuming on duplicates in hand. It is worth noting that a Salem trash of I've Had Worse will not trigger that card, a lot of the time the runners will think there is a safe window.

The agenda suite really reinforces that gameplan, by reducing handsize down, getting information on there hand or pulling combination pieces into hand. I ran Bacterial Programming even before the SSL Endorsement ban, it is such a powerful card in this deck of combo deck and the economy really isn’t a problem in this deck.

An early House of Knives score is hugely powerful, and between this and Neural EMP, you should not be worried about early triggers if you suspect key pieces are in hand (i.e. non recoverable runner cards) or to find information out.

The ICE suite falls into 3 categories:

Taxing ICE - Engram Flush, Anansi, Data Loop Information gathering - Engram Flush, Data Loop if hand is known, Slot Machine Nasty facechecks – Saisentan, Anansi, Envelope

Choices of cards

Medical Research Fundraiser – A good economy card, which the negative of giving money to the runner also is mitigated by the fact you are trying to click compress on runner cards rather than out right taxation of credits.

Neural EMP – Personally I like this card, but will eat your trigger on a kill combination turn. I rather use this to poke at there hand to gain information and slow the runner down.

Standard Procedure – Arguably the weakest card, but I had 2 influence free and wanted another card that snooped on the runners hand.

Saisentan / Envelope – Arguably the weakest ICE here, but it does threaten the runner in the early game. Every bit of ICE here has consequences if the runner gets too brave early on.

Voter Intimidation – No One Home / Caldera hate.

Data Loop – While it is tempting to be ‘blinded’ by the Protocol combination, this has a much bigger purpose in this deck. Remember that Complete Image doesn't require agendas to be stolen on the previous turn, only that the runner has 3 agenda points in there area and they made a successful run last turn. This is very important. If the runner wants to poke a central with Data Loop on it, it is likely to take 3 clicks to do the run and get the hand back to 5 cards. The threat of having duplicates in hand and below 5 is pretty significant, which means any bad run (i.e. hitting a Snare) could easily result in a flatline, and this card hugely supports this gameplan.

Thank you

Thank you for Aki for helping me tweak this deck, even though I may have ignored your suggestions on Saisentan and Standard Procedure, although the former did get my a flatline!