Haarpsichord Studios Presents

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13 Reasons Why Not

This deck goes from zero to 7 points by scoring one big agenda.

It has about a 2 out of 3 win rate on Jinteki.net. But most losses are because I played horribly. Almost all of the games are fun and close. Many times I either lose one turn away from winning, or I snatch a win out of nowhere when the runner had 6 points and thought they had it wrapped up.

Leela gives me trouble, as well as anything that can trash ice or other normally non-trashable cards. Aggressive players can be rough too.

But most runners are chill. If you play this deck at a leisurely pace, runners tend to spend their sweet time building their big beautiful rigs. It’s kind of fun to watch.

Don’t panic the runner by scoring anything early. Just let them think there's no need to rush. Get some credits, ice up the centrals a little bit, and then work on advancing them.

The economy is pretty good. I rarely have to click for credits. Medical Research Fundraiser is excellent in this deck because we don’t really care if the runner has money. Biased Reporting is fun to play, especially against Hayley. I love forcing runners to make difficult decisions.

When you draw Data Ravens, put them first on R&D, then Archives, then HQ. This makes Quantum Predictive Model really difficult for the runner to steal (unless you install it, but why would you do that?), and instead surprise score it for you.

Build up most of your protection on HQ, because the thing that will screw up your end game the most is the runner thinking HQ is the easiest place to score.

When you have Ice Wall or Searchlight out, start advancing them whenever you can. Spread those tokens around though, so the runner doesn’t start questioning them. 6 tokens here and 7 tokens there looks way less threatening than 13 on one card.

When you have 13 total tokens on your ice, it’s all about getting two Project Beale and a Red Planet Couriers in your hand, with 5 credits in your pocket.

The end game plan is to lay out two Beales, unadvanced, with no protection. The runner will only be able to score one. Then RPC will move all 13 tokens to Beales, making it worth 7 points. Bam, instant win.

If you don’t have the cards you need yet, and you have two The Future is Now, let the runner have one and score the other and grab the card you need.

Digital Rights Management is great for this deck. If you have RPC but need a Beales, then one credit and DRM lets you find and install it. Since it shows the agenda to the runner, don’t use this unless you have another DRM or Beales in your hand and a click left.

If you go straight for the goal this isn’t a very interactive deck, unless the runner figures out what’s going on and has a means to throw a monkey wrench in it. Then it gets very interesting. It's generally about trying to keep the runner out of HQ by distracting them with more easily gained agenda. Award Bait is my favorite for this since it gets you closer to your goal for free.

But if you aren’t all goal focused, there are also a couple of fun traps you can set. The first one is to throw Quantum Predictive Models into archives as soon as you get them (after its protected with a Data Raven). If you can get them to take the bait, the runner will score all of them for you.

Also, while I like to keep News Teams in HQ to dissuade runs there, it’s more fun to throw all three in archives. One run to archives means they’re making a choice between 6 tags or -3 points. Even though this deck doesn't have tag punishing cards, runners are afraid of keeping tags right now so they usually take the negative points. And if they don’t, the News Teams stay there, and the runner is unlikely to return. And if you can manage to have your three QPMs there too, that’s a 6 point swing in one trap! I haven't pulled that off yet.

If you get a False Lead scored, keep it for the end game to keep the runner from having enough clicks to get tricky. If you score two of them, you can forfeit them to get two turns in a row, basically locking up your end game!

Try to get the runner to steal 15 Minutes early in the game, and forget about it until things get close. That’s saved me so many times.

If the runner gets 5 points, the plan of laying down two Beales has to be abandoned (unless reshuffling the 15 Minutes is an option). If the runner doesn’t know about your Beales, you can get usually away with installing it along with two other agenda. They’re all greedy little criminals at heart, so they can rarely stop themselves from stealing the first agenda they see. Hopefully you’ve noticed a pattern in their runs and you can make sure Beales isn’t the first one they access. In my experience most runners go for the middle card after a triple install.

If you end up with Red Courier and your two Beales but you only have 7 to 11 advancement tokens out there, don’t wait. Install both Beales and get enough points to get ahead. The last few points are easy. Because once you’re ahead in points, it’s hard not to win. Every time you get two 3/1 agendas in your hand, install both. One for greedy little runner, one for you. Haarpsicord makes sure the runner politely eats what you offer him slowly.

Hippo can be a bit of a pain. If you see Hippo don't rez your advanced ice.

Be careful going for the win when the runner has a way of trashing non-trashable cards, because they’ll score one Beale and put the other in your archives. Good luck after that. Hopefully you have a Preemptive Action and still have time to draw it.

If you find yourself against Leela, don’t advance your ice until its rezzed. And the end game with her kind of requires you to install three Beales, or use the double False Lead trick! Leela is a pain in the ass. So is Alice! Ugh. Ice up archives asap with her.

When this deck wins, most runners laugh. Some get pissed, which I kind of get. I generally don't gravitate to these kinds of decks. But when I saw that no one had yet posted a deck on Netrunnerdb that contained both RPC and Beale, I had to try to make a playable deck. Its fun and easy to play. If you play it right it wins more often than it loses, but it’d be awesome if one of you whizkids turned this into something truly competitive!

Have fun!