Non-Existent Futures (9th place Store Champs)(Autopsy)

9th place (The Guild House, California) is not particularly impressive, and this deck is seriously flawed. However, I think that there is value to studying messy decks. If all I do is celebrate my decks that managed to assume some form of competence, I'll never learn anything.

For your perusal, I give you essentially two analysis of this deck. In plaintext, the standard description that I had accompanying this deck.

And in italics, a post-tournament dissection, providing a critical eye to the decks problems. An autopsy, if you will.

Store Championship cut to top 4. 4 rounds of swiss, Mr. Fisk here won exactly one game. What a doofus.

Gameplan

Drop some siphons, and run R&D to the ground. Your goal is to keep the corp crippled, so they hemorrhage all of their nice things into archives. All of your tools are focused on returning everything to a very similar state: A broke corporation, struggling to cover key servers. You mill very quickly, and at some point, the corp will have to dedicate ice to archives, when in reality, all you plan to do is burn R&D to the ground.

This plan is solid, and the deck is very talented at dragging the corp through the mud. However, you'll likely begin to notice that the entirety of the deck is focused on kicking them while their down, without many tools to knock them down in the first place.

Siphons alone aren't enough to keep the corporation firmly stuck in a quagmire. If the corporation ever climbs out of the hole, or moves fast enough to avoid getting kicked, this deck falls apart immediately.

Why Fisk?

Because I voted for him, damnit, and he makes me proud to be an American.

Fisk can pretty consistently toss an extra card into the corporation's HQ. In this deck, this is utilized to just flood HQ, and make the corp incapable of dealing with the amount of cards being thrown to them. His ability demands that you are aware of the fact that you may force the corp to draw a card. Use it wisely, and overwhelm them.

Using his ability wisely is an understatement. You only want to trigger this ability when the corporation is incapable of handling the extra card, such as when they're broke, or scoring an agenda on the board with a full hand.

What this essentially tells us is that Fisk's ability is only useful for key moments of the game state, or moving the corporation through the absolutely last cards of the deck. Most people call that a "Win-More"

I know you're all having a good giggle now, at Fisk being considered a win more card, but in this deck, it is only useful if one already has a dominant position. In a deck that already has difficulty getting a hold of things if the corp keeps it together, Fisk doesn't fit in very comfortably.

The core ideas represented by this deck would be better served by Leela who would ultimately accomplish the same idea: An extra card in hand at a very inopportune time.

As a personal note, I find that I often get very tied up in "building to the ID" when in fact, ID choice should be viewed as another deck slot. Sometimes there is room for argument, and sometimes it is a core component of the deck. Blue Sun decks need their ID. This deck does not need Fisk. Learn from my mistakes.

Event Package

A fairly common set of tools at hand. Account Siphon is the beating heart, enabling you to ride roughshod all over the corp. Most of the other choices are subservient to that desire, enabling you to do it as much as possible. Your Déjà Vu also serves as program recursion in a pinch.

The other core here is Fisk Investment Seminar. This card requires very careful timing, and using it when all you need is cards is a dreadful proposition. The card is best played when the corp is unable to handle the stress of a boatload of cards. Often this is when they are broke, but another good time is when they telegraph out an agenda. Your card draw from seminar is often enough to feed a faust run into HQ via Siphon, which will drop another card on them. Your Siphon turns are especially devastating.

The original notes already illustrate the most damning qualities: They all serve siphon, and doing it as frequently as possible. However that statement should be examined.

Consider Emergency Shutdown. If we're attempting to turn off nasty ice stopping out Siphon runs, there is no way we're going to get in the first place to turn off the ice. Drive By is an exception, granting us some ability to scout and blow up remotes, but if there is an agenda we need to stop, it does nothing.

Once the game is able to leave HQ, this deck stumbles. It doesn't have any options to sneak into remotes, beyond brute forcing them. Consider Forged Activation Orders as a reasonable alternative. That card would create a fork between keeping the integrity of a remote ultimately needed to score out and having money to deal with the incoming siphon.

In short, this package enables a vast quantity of account siphons, not quality account siphons. Having all the siphons in the world is of no use if they can't consistently land.

Hardware Package

Box-E buffs up your hand for Faust adventures, provides ample memory for any auxiliary programs, an even serves as really bad flatline defense. This deck usually does one high impact run per turn, so Desperado is not particularly appealing here.

Firstly, the deck should think about whether or not it even needs the memory to function. The games end state was often a Faust, 1 or 2 datasuckers, and whatever icebreaker needed to show up to cover Faust's ass. That's 4 memory.

In a deck that bleeds money to Drug Dealers, 4 credits is a very tall order. The hand size does allow for truly huge Faust runs, but this deck should not be in the position to run on servers that would demand that much.

A deck that is so buried in tags should really consider Plascretes, rather than going in for a half-assed solution to a handful of problems the deck has.

If I was hellbent to stick a console here, I might be inclined to try out Logos instead. The install cost is just as gross, and the hand-size is even more niche, but tutoring up a siphon to turn the screws after a corp just spent creds to score something out may help get the ball back in the runner's court.

Resource Package

A regular DLR suite, nothing to see. Drop as many pieces as needed and start driving the corp down. You may be able to gauge a player's respect for DLR depending on how quickly they try to trash the first one.

Bank Job is the odd duck here, and almost feels like a signature Fisk card. A flooded corp has to do something with those cards, and often, that means naked servers. Bank Job pulls a lot of weight here.

Before I run my mouth, I have to mention that the interactions between Fisk and Bank Job are actually very satisfying. When this deck goes under the scalpel, if my weak heart can't turn Fisk into Leela, I'll be happy to keep those around.

DLR has obviously proven itself to be a competent and terrifying threat, but the decks that dazzled/depressed the world did it by having another threat coupled with the DLR. Valencia created an oppressive atmosphere that demanded the player to both deal with the DLR time bomb, and the fact that she can wriggle herself into most unrezzed servers at will. And those servers will be unrezzed, because you've spent all your cash disarming the nuke on the board.

Note that this deck has no such second pressure. As soon as the mill is dismantled, it shrugs and Levys, or calls it a day. The corp is rarely left feeling as if they made the wrong decision. Rather they feel as if they've weather a violent storm. Sure it was bad, but it's over now.

Drug Dealers leave Fisk in a great position when he's kicking the corporation, but it leaves him in an economic nightmare when it's over. Look at his economy cards: Bank jobs, Siphons and laundry. All of them conditional on squeezing out a run. While Fisk may like beating up on the weak, he can't take what he dishes out.

Icebreaker Suite

Faust pulls all the weight here. His friends are here to help when the corp calls in the specialists to stop him. Problematic ice such as Komainu, Swordsman, and Turing are smoothed out by his buddies, while Faust does the grunt work.

In a credit flush deck, this statement might have a glimmer of truth to it. Faust is great, we're all aware of that, and thank goodness there are cards to reign it in. These icebreakers would help faust, if there was any money at the time. If one of those problem ice got rezzed, it was likely on HQ, to stop the siphon abuse. If we're not siphoning, we're not getting creds. If we're not getting creds, we can't use these non-faust breakers. If we can't use these breakers, we're not siphoning.

And that's the cycle this deck will fall into. The deck needs a tighter focus on skirting around ice, rather than plowing through it, which is an awful idea that takes forever to set-up.

Yet these cards remained, because it was satisfying when Fisk, rich with stolen credits, could drop a mongoose and skip through a Komainu for 2 or 3 credits. But once again, these are a set of cards that only functioned when I was already running away with the game.

The answers to problematic ice for Faust probably don't fall in the icebreaker category.

Program Package

Datasuckers really smooth out a lot of Faust math, and make daunting ice a lot more palatable. Given that when the ball gets rolling you'll be poking centrals fairly frequently, getting a little extra is perfectly reasonable. Sneakdoor enables surprise shutdowns and poking a bloated hand from a new vector.

Sneakdoor is absolutely awful in this deck, and may be the single worst decision in this composition. A hefty install cost is problematic once again due to this decks dedication to "Win-more". Furthermore, it's not even a reasonable alternate avenue, when the deck is already laser focused on turning archives into a server that demands protection anyway.

Due to that very same issue, this means there is no easy server to poke for datasuckers, and rather they are little bonuses to save on handsize. Everyone loves datasuckers, but this deck is going for high impact runs followed by sitting on the DLR button. It may not need to be so sucker crazy.

Conclusion

I'll drop the italics now.

The core problem with this idea was the core idea that led to it's creation. "Let's mill the corp!" It isn't a viable win condition on it's own and this deck leaned far too heavily into that avenue.

Non-Existent Futures was named due to some vague idea of futures being a money thing, and also the future of the deck, and Fisk eliminating it. I'm so clever. It truly is fitting, because it gives a real description of the game after Fisk has had his fun. He has no ability to pull himself back together and contest a remote, or dismantle the game plan after he's been thwarted for a few turns.

Cranking the DLR is fun, but if that's all you can do the corp has no reason to respect you when they break your toys. Fisk needs a way to get back into the game, rather than trying to fit his head through a square hole.

I ultimately think the idea of Fisk DLR has potential. It creates some interesting pressure on the corporation, but there needs to be a plan to shift into once HQ gets covered up, or housed in a Crisium Grid.

There are a lot of directions this deck can take, and that's what I intend to do. I would hate to leave this as a failed experiment, and just write it off as not feasible. Even if it constantly fumbles, we can still learn from it, and ultimately become a better player.

Thanks for sticking around for the read, and I hope you enjoyed an in-depth dive into a deck that won't be remembered for how competent it is. I hope you learned something with me while poking around this corpse.

Because if it stinks, don't just flush it. Think about what you've been eating that made it smell so bad. Change yourself first.

Then flush it, and eat some other Netrunner decks like it to see what upset your stomach.

Nailed that metaphor.