I thought False Flag SYNC was a good idea

And boy was I wrong.

I'm recording this for posterity; when toying around with a new idea I like to do sets of 20 test games to see what happens. This one resulted in getting hosed 20 times straight. This isn't the original decklist, just the most recent, as I've been tinkering with it back and forth. The most notable change has been droppping HHN for SEA to allow a same turn Exchange of Information. I still don't know if it was a good idea, but the deck frankly has bigger problems. One of these might be my nigh-chronic inability to get max value Standard Procedures.

The idea:

False Flag is a win/win in a remote: if the runner contests it behind taxing NBN ice they're open to a slew of punishment.

The reality:

Right now between Val, MaXx, new Diversion of Funds Criminals, Nexus, Maxwell James, endless Imp builds, and lots of people rightly experimenting with Zer0 + Clan Vengeance decks (allowing the runner to be in a bad state but not threatened by punitive Operations) this list just simply doesn't work.

In addition, whilst it is possible to get the points or tags off False Flag, the cost of doing so ruins your game, and the chance never seems to come up when you're ready to try and win. It's 9 clicks and 9 credits. To threaten tag punishment (before ice is factored in) you typically need at least 2 tags from it, which is 4 advancement counters. That's 5 clicks and 4 creds. After that level of investment, your ability to follow up with Operations becomes compromised, and this is a losing move.

Further more, False Flag just isn't a great thing to try and threaten with in this deck. There are two paths I can see. Firstly IAA, AAA, AA, flip and score. Thankfully I've never seen a PolOp when doing this, but that's still three full turns. You're likely discarding useful cards, and from experience maybe getting a little flooded. Personally I'd rather just score the real agendas so the Runner can't steal them. The second path is to slowly advance it as a threat and play useful cards you draw whilst doing so. That looks somewhat like IAA, AA (play a card), AA (play a card), A (flip & score) (play a card). Given that the False Flag takes up your remote, this is even worse for agenda flood and typically tempo loss. Both of these paths take a long time. If the Runner gets wind that it might be a False Flag play you're giving them a lot of time to dismantle your investment. A plan I had was to try and make it look like a greedy overadvanced Beale, but I think even without any prior knowledge of False Flag being in the deck the numbers and line of play would just look far too suspicious. I was using Psychographics in a previous incarnation (might have helped speed it up, didn't), but it's another layer of timing management and ultimately flawed.

Tl;dr: this plan ain't great, and I can't even say that it's fun right now. Maybe one day in a sort of completely open meta post-Netrunner it might be interesting.

Changes:

-The deck can actually force the Runner into having two tags on your turn, even with SEA over HHN. However Boom's never been there when needed. Either -1 Boom and +1 something else or +1 Boom and -1 False Flag.

-Enforcing Loyalty was Hunting Grounds spice, but the deck can't pay for two big traces and it's always been a dead draw anyway. To boot, I never saw Hunting Grounds, but did see a lot of bypass and Maxwell.

-An Archived Memories would be nice, even if it would get trashed by current Runner decks.

-QPMs would be nice as easier EoI options, but I don't feel the deck tags reliably enough.

-Some sort of plan to get the online community to play a bit more Shaper and a bit less Link.