Tin Foil Hat (Pretty Darn Good on Jnet)

Card draw simulator
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Quacktapus 287

They reprogram your brain as you sleep!

The family from Signs wearing tin foil hats

I think people are underestimating the combo between Reeducation and Neurospike. Yes, Reeducation doesn't protect itself like City Works Project or Obokata Protocol, but it only takes one Neurospike to flatline the runner, and the runner can't play around the kill with a single T400 Memory Diamond.

I originally tried the combo in Acme Consulting: The Truth You Need, since you can't break Data Ward with a single Boomerang. It was fun, but pretty one-dimensional. If you didn't draw your combo pieces in the right order, the runner could set up their money and breakers, and suddenly you were just playing a bad glacier deck.

Inspired by Bridgeman's writeup for Aggressive SYNC! I decided to try a rushy SYNC build with Hard-Hitting News to punish early runs. And it's the most fun I've had playing Corp, possibly ever? HHN and Neuro form a perfect fork. If the runner contests your rush, you tag them and blow up their house. If they sit back and build up their economy, you Reeducate them to death. Ostensibly you can also score out to win, but I've never needed to. The moment you score Reeducation, you usually win on the spot.

Both combos are amazingly consistent. Rashida Jaheem, Spin Doctor, and Predictive Planogram draw you a bajillion cards, and Consulting Visit finds whatever kill card you need. With just 6 agendas in a 44 card deck, you're unlikely to flood out.

I've also been pleasantly surprised to find that Reeducation isn't terrible on its own. When you're going this fast, forcing the runner to waste a turn clicking back to full handsize is a big deal. Meanwhile, you get to set up your hand with whatever you need to keep pushing, whether that's ICE, money, or the next agenda. I haven't pulled this off yet, but I can't wait to score Reeducation with two clicks left and discover that the redraw trigger has given me the Consulting Visit I need to end the game.

This deck isn't the most powerful thing you can do in Standard right now, and the ICE suite probably needs improvement. But until Jnet players start respecting Reeducation, I'm going to keep using satellites to reprogram brains.

2 comments
5 May 2021 Jai

Are you still on this deck? I've been on a NBN: Reality Plus version of this deck with 3x Economic Warfare, and it's been doing excellently for me as well. Been wanting to squeeze some NGO Fronts in there as well, but #slots, and probably a little too click-intensive for a deck that wants to spend a lot of time drawing anyway.

Speaking of click intensive, I find by far the hardest part of piloting the deck is the massive telegraph you wave over the remote when you IAA into AA on the next turn setting up for Visit->Spike. How have you found the score patterns to be like?

5 May 2021 Quacktapus

I actually haven't played this deck much recently because I was winning too much and it felt mean--though I think that's more to do with the Corp/Runner imbalance these days and the surprise factor of Reeducation into Neurospike, which probably won't be surprise runners for much longer. It's too good!

Reality Plus makes a ton of sense since both credits and cards help you go faster. I'm sticking to SYNC out of stubbornness, and I'm probably wrong. The one advantage SYNC has is in a REALLY short game, since it takes several turns and several runs for R+'s ability to pay out.

Yeah, advancing an agenda to 3 or 4 advancements feels real obvious. I'm sure in a tournament setting Runners will immediately try to contest that. This list tries to counteract that by getting 2 ETR ICE of different types over the scoring remote and hoping the runner doesn't have AI. That's why I'm not playing taxing ICE like Funhouse or Authenticator that are normally great in SYNC. I want to force the runner to contest before they've found and installed their breakers. And hopefully, if they DO find those breakers and get it, it'll cost them enough tempo that HHN will finish the job.