Apex Hyperdriver - King of Servers 2015

This is the decklist that was designed by me an piloted by @dtelad11 at the 2015 King of Servers. Here is what El-ad has to say:

During Worlds 2015, the Android: Netrunner Pro-Circuit (ANRPC) held the "King of Servers", a team tournament with a cool format: four players per team, one of each Corp faction, one of each Runner faction, plus one allowed duplicate Runner faction of a different identity. As far as I could see, most teams went with Kate, Andromeda or Leela, Noise, and Valencia.

What's the fun in that?! To my teammates' chagrin I decided on Apex. Fortunately, Chris Hinkes (aka @ZeromusPE, aka the person who submitted this deck to NRDB) had this finely tuned contraption available. Chris is a super creative deck designer with infinite patience. He is willing to lose thousands of games while slowly iterating toward the ideal build. After GenCon (and the release of Apex) he spent a month of his life doing nothing but tune this deck. NOTHING. All I had to do is sleeve it up and win some games.

Enough with the chit chat. When Chris initially handed me the list he said that he's not a fan of it because it's "boring". You just "sit there", install your stuff, playing solitaire, preparing to Apocalypse. Yawn. I'm an impatient bastard and I play impatient Netrunner. I do not prepare, plan in advance, or think. I am a mindless virus bent on destruction, and I am here to apocalypse. When piloting Apex, I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't breath -- I apocalypse!! ("Apocalypse!!" is the verb form of Apocalypse). Then I do it again. Heck, I do it a third time if necessary. Single accesses on HQ and R&D are fine when the Corp has no ice left, no econ left, and no hope left.

Smash your opponent's hopes and dreams. Winning will come later. Apocalypse.

Let's talk about card choices.

Economy: Sure Gamble, Dirty Laundry, and Day Job are exactly enough to set up. Breaking ice costs you nothing and you don't pay to trash assets, with the possible exception of Jackson Howard or Caprice Nisei. Oftentimes a turn 1 Day Job would be the only economy you need. Your real economy card is Apocalypse, saving you hundreds of credits by trashing ice and assets.

Rig: The ideal rig is Heartbeat, Brain Cage (which you do not take the brain damage for, prevent with Heartbeat), and Faust. Click to draw or Quality Time to fill your hand, and your access options are wide. You might want to install Endless Hunger for Wraparound, Eli 1.0, or to Prey an Enigma, but otherwise try to avoid it. Crescentus is your anti-Architect tool: as a rule of thumb, you don't care if they trigger Architect (or Crick) cause all that junk will go away anyway. On the Apocalypse turn you want Crescentus to flip that Architect and send it to archives along with the rest of its mortal kin. Your real rig is Apocalypse, saving you the need to mess around with pesky icebreakers.

Shenanigans: Prey gets rid of Enigma and a few other annoying pieces of Ice (such as Pup, Pop-up Window, Tsurugi, or Turing on a central). Hunting Grounds is there for Tollbooth, though don't feel ashamed to stop the encounter trigger on Pop-up Window. The trash ability is useful if they have tons of end-the-run (Weyland?), or if they're trying to kill you. Another nice trick is to Hunting Grounds, see Faust or Endless Hunger, trash them, and then return them with Clone Chip. Speaking of which, Clone Chip often saves you a click on the Apocalypse turn, you can do fun stuff like break Enigma with Faust, then overwrite Faust with Endless Hunger (or, alternatively, get Hunger and eat Faust to break an end-the-run). Clone Chip also helps recover post-Apocalypse. With that said, your real shenanigen is Apocalypse.

Hyperdriver: I learned to stop worrying and love the Hyperdriver. Six influence is expensive for our beloved protagonist AI/virus/monstrosity but it's a worthy investment. Hyperdriver lets you click through Bioroids or Turing on the Apocalypse turn, allows you to ignore an Enigma, or you can use the clicks to install Faust or Endless hunger (or both!) when necessary. Importantly, Hyperdrivers allows you to float tags, because after you Apocalypse you can use the spare clicks to install a new Heartbeat (instead of dying). Heck, I once activated Hyperdriver in order to Day Job and have three clicks left (in order to install Faust, run, steal NAPD). Your real Hyperdriver is Apocalypse, because, ah ... nevermind.

Apocalypse: Just do it. You do not need to hit much in order to unsettle the Corp. If you see an easy window to Apocalypse, even if you just hit a couple of pieces of ice and some assets, do it. Your deck is well-prepared for the reset; theirs is not. Also, here's a dirty secret -- once you apocalypse, doing it again is much easier. The Corp will have less ice to defend the centrals, less money to rez it with, and less assets to draw attention. Most importantly, you put the fear of the Apocalypse in them, because, of course, your real Apocalypse is ...I'll shut up now.

Wasteland: This deck is missing one of the Apex cards, which is surprising given how tight the mini-factions are. The reason Wasteland is absent is because you don't trash your stuff that much. Prey and Endless Hunger are invaluable but you use them infrequently, so you will rarely proc the credit.

Match-ups! Any deck that is trying to kill you is easy game. Mulligan, draw, and Quality Time until you get your Heartbeat, use the Apex ability and Hunting Grounds to set up a buffer, and get your hand size to eight. Most meat damage players will just give up (though I will admit that a Titan player killed me using five Snares, I did misplay by not checking HQ for agendas). Personal Evolution or other net-damage based decks cannot handle Heartbeat and Apocalypse. You just laugh as you eat their three-advanced Overwriters and four-advanced Junebugs, HAHA! I took close to twenty net damage in one memorable PE game. Then apocalypsed all of their well-laid plans in another.

(Likewise, any deck that is going horizontal, though Turtlebacks NEH might be too fast. More on that later.)

Glacier is more problematic. You need to hit their centrals so they do not lock you out for the Apocalypse. Ignore the remote and get ready to smash their board when they install-advance (or install-advance-advance). Life could become tricky if they Caprice a central, but then Faust + huge hand size + Hyperdriver should get you into the remote (you might need to Prey a Turing in advance, which is horrendously expensive). Crisium Grid is another problem, you are very light on funds so getting into the central and trashing it might be problematic but necessary. Feel free to facecheck a lot, and remember that if the last ice you hit does silly stuff like trash programs or deal net damage, just forget about it -- it will go away soon.

Fast advance is the trickiest of them all. They're fast (it's in the name!). Biotic Labor is a menace, and they draw a lot so they will find their Architect. You will notice that the deck list has 2x Infiltration, I wish these were 2x Traffic Jam. Oftentimes I would apocalypse and then they would train anyway, Traffic Jam might help with that. You want to apocalypse as soon as they have 4-5 cards on the table (any combination of assets and ice), especially if there is one or more SanSan.

I had a blast playing Apex at the FFG Icebreaker tournament and at King of Servers. I think that it has a lot of potential: Apocalypse, Heartbeat, and Endless Hunger are three extremely powerful cards. It also leads to really fun showmanship, people would often stop by to watch and wonder whether this is the turn when I apocalypse (my opponents shared that warm fuzzy anticipation as well). As Mumbad rolls around (and brings The Turning Wheel) I hope to look into this deck and refine it further.