Netherworld Games . Madison, WI . 1/23/2016

Maximum Cakes: Faust Rising

This deck is a meld of two very successful archetypes. It's a reg ex deck with very few frills; L4J you might say. Reg Ass is another name for it. But its also a WildFaust deck. I'm just going to call it Blueberry Pancakes because that's what I had for breakfast (And also, it runs pancakes). Once again, I welcome any names you have for it.

This deck has extremely strong card advantage. The deck just really sings with a wyldside in play. You don't take a -2 cred loss from drug dealer, and you're up 3 cards every turn. It does mean that the 2x Levy is mandatory, especially if the game is going to go long. And that means you're in a perfect position to play and take advantage of the most broken card in netrunner: faust.

That's good news, because I hear red cards are the best cards. Playing anything other than Anarch just doesn't make a ton of sense right now. Best mutliaccess. Best breakers. Best economy. Best card access. Best disruption. So that's what's in this deck.

Best Multiaccess

Medium + Nerve Agent // Demo Run - Medium is pretty obvious, but nerve agent is much maligned. People have been running Medium forever, but Nerve lets you hit HQ reasonably enough to make accesses valuable. The Demo Run can be used to clear the kill out of a Weyland hand. Or it can be used allow a deeper dig on R&D on that turn you're pressuring the corp to clear. Since you're running a deck with SoT, you may also get to do this more than once a game. While you're susceptible to CVS, no other multi access has the potential to dig as deap or worry a corp as much, and it comes in at a low price no matter which option you're picking.

Best Breakers

Faust

Gets through all but 2 ice. Pretty cheap to install. Turns your massive card advantage into credit free runs. Probably belongs on the MWL list if not an outright ban. The card is extremely strong allowing you to halt rush in its tracks and stay pretty competitive into the midgame, which is where most faust decks either run out of strength or become extremely reliant on ice destruction.

D4v1d

I only have 1, but you can recur if you need to. I think going up to 2 is fine, probably even correct. The major point is that the high strength ice you typically go up against are breakable at again a very low credit cost. Probably the best card (maybe it was NEH?) out of Lunar. So far we're paying 0 aside from install costs to access almost any server constructable. And remember, we're starting off at 8 cards on an average turn. So, that's enough to get in through 3 ice.

Corroder/Mimic/Yog.0

The regular breaker suite. Cheapest set of cards to get through most ice. Mimic is splashed into nearly every deck. Yog used to be. Corroder as well was only ever challenged by Lady. If these cards are weak at anything its high strength stuff, but often you can pay 0-3 to get through any single ice, especially in a meta with stronger influence limits that limits "best of" ice suites. But we can fill the high strength gap with D4v1d and a few tricks.

Net Ready Eyes/Ice Carver/Data Sucker

These three cards fix any problems we may have had. Sucker and Net Ready are the best options, but with one or both carver makes D4v1d a little irrelevant. It's why I'm on only one at the moment. But anything 5 strength can be handled with the regular suite and faust gets a pretty good discount when combining any 2.

Playing the Suite

That about wraps up the breaking suite. It's pretty familiar by this point. Half of it won worlds. Its won multiple regionals. And, you have the ability to flow from the Wyld-Faust breaking to a more stable economy based suite that can generally get through everything. The trick is only to install what you need. Faust is the primary breaker. You get it down quickly and you can get in anywhere. Corroder or Mimic, sometimes D4 are usually next. Pressure with faust and find the weak point. Don't just access to access, though. Don't spend down recklessly unless you're pretty sure it's a do or die situation. It's extremely easy to use up every card in the deck and have nothing left. So, use faust conservatively until you have to be reckless and support it with the other breakers as you find and have the opportunity to install them.

Corroder should almost always come down for raparound. Mimic if you've seen a 3 str sentries or suspect swordsman. Yog.0 only if you must, Faust is usually your code gate breaker.

Best Economy

Career Fair into Casts/Liberated is pretty good money. Once you have liberated down, you're usually good for the rest of the game. And you don't need much of it since faust is largely taking care of ice without you having to spend money. Gamble + Dirty Laundry will smooth you out the rest of the way.

The truth is that the 1st time through the deck the potential to be poor isn't all that low. But with faust you don't necessarily need a lot of money. The second time through though and if you can at any point land a liberated, you'll have taken most of the non-econ stuff out of the deck, so your deck will be more potent and you'll make more money regularly, which late game is largely what you want.

All of this is nice, but the truth is the best economy is not needing one. Once again. Faust solves our problems.

Best Card Access

Wyldside + Chronotype + I've Had Worse + MaxX

I don't think there's much to talk about here. 3 cards a turn sounds crazy, but its what makes faust work. The combo of IHW being both faust booster & meat protection makes it really good. Inject takes second place for being cut. It was a 3 of and then a 2 of. I learned pretty early that inject was the best way to run out of cards, so it got cut to emphasize the L4J breaker suite.

Deja Vu/Levy/SoT allow you to double up on a lot of your disruption and provide redundancy for when maxx ditches something. Largely though if something goes to the bin, you should let it lie and get it after Levying. Chronotype is maybe the only thing you really want to grab back as 4 clicks gets you back to a position where you can grow your econ and board position again.

Best Disruption

3x Parasite 1x of each cutlery 1x Demo Run 3x Faust

Faust is extremely disrupting, it means most ice can't stop you. Parasite helps keep things in check. SoT recuring cutlery helps you melt down servers and take out the larger ice without waiting.

Again, most of these are well understood. The trick to cutlery is not to hold onto them. Discard them to faust if you need to get in. You'll know the moment when its perfect to use one, where its not an interuption and barely disrupts your economy. When taking out a dataraven will let you get a QPM, or something else. Demo Run while helping keep your multi access on strong also is needed to wipe a hand of biotic labors or kill conditions or to keep powerful ice on top of R&D from getting played.

Tournament Results

The deck went 5/6 on the day. It lost a game to a lateral gagarin deck by milling most of its econ and me the pilot wasting too much time on remotes when I probably could have won on R&D or HQ. Also, don't demo run from 4 credits to 2 when the only card in hand is an NAPD. Aside from that one really poorly played game, I managed to knock out CalimSync (top seed), Blue Sun Kill, NEH Fastro, Haarp Tag n Psycho, and Argus. Most games were won with few points actually scored by the corp, several were shutouts.

Enjoy. People who tell you not to play wyldside in MaxX are wrong. Enjoy the deck. Eat some blue berry pancakes: breakfast of champions.