Worlds 2014, 2nd place

You can see the deck in action here with great commentary from Team Covenant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCjs7yDs62g

This deck is built to beat Near-Earth Hub. It basically punishes decks with naked remote servers with Bank Job, John Masanori and Security Testing. 3 credits + 1 card for 1 click is like having Magnum Opus and Professional contact combined. It generates a lot of credit early to trash the assets and put early pressure. At Worlds it went 4-1 against NEH. The only defeat was actually due to time running out while behind in agenda point (9 minutes left in the round when the game started)

The tradeoff is that it performs poorly against decks with no remotes or heavily guarded remotes (eg. Cerebral Imaging) as the naked remote punishment cards are useless and there is no long game economy. Given the large presence of NEH, I was not too worried.

This build also wins easily against PE Cambridge style thanks to Feedback Filters, Security Testing, John Masanori and Mr. Li. The goal is to generate a lot of money and dig for Feedback Filter.

Against Replicating Perfection, it’s not great but still ok. This build can still put a lot of early pressure and hopefully score enough agenda before RP is able to build an economy.

Economy

Let’s compare some alternatives.

• The benchmark is Sure Gamble providing 4 burst credits.
• Lucky Find provides 6 burst credits - 1 click = 5 burst credits at the cost of 2 influence
• Daily Cast provides 5 credits overs 4 turns
• Armitage Codebusting provides 12 credit - 1 install cost - 6 clicks = 5 credits on a flexible schedule.
• Magnum Opus costs 5 and each click provides 1 extra credit. It means a runner has to use it at least 11 times to be better than Armitage Codebusting. Magnum Opus is good for late game economy at the cost of an early tempo hit, 2 MU and 2 influence.
• Bank Job provides 8 credits - 1 install cost - 1 click for the run = 6 burst credits. With Desperado it’s 7 credits. It’s the best deal if there is a naked remote.

Since NEH. PE and RP tends to have unprotected remote servers, I decided to go for Daily Casts and Bank job for maximum credit in early and mid game.

Card choices

Medium is awesome and put a lot of pressure on R&D. It also punishes decks with light or porous ICE (eg. NEH). Often the Corp will have a scoring window but have to skip it to purge viruses as 5+ accesses might just finish the game. It definitely worth the 2 extra influence compared to 2 R&D Interface.

Since Architect is there, Mimic is a must. It replaces the 3rd faerie.

Passport is surprisingly good. Most of the time you just want to access R&D for Medium or HQ for Siphon.

I'm not totally satisfied with Yog but don't know what to do. I tried Zu Keymaster and Atman but wasn't totally satisfied and they are expensive in influence.

I would also swap the 2nd Passport for a 3rd Special Order.