Snitches Get Riches (Blackguard Nasir)

PS shoutout to @Whrrrrr's Social Silhouette, where I got the Blackguard-Snitch-Social Engineering Combo from, and @ExplodyCat's Transcendence, which gave me some good ideas about how Nasir works.

@DrunkenGineer Aw yeah! This is brilliant! Glad I could inspire you to make a deck 100x better than mine. :P And it must be said that @ExplodyCat is a mad deckbuilding genius and a hell of a player. His advice is always extremely insightful and informed.

I love that you can just Test Run or SMC your Snitch to get it out reliably. No way around the console delay though. As soon as there is a hardware search card, every Blackguard deck will want it. Anyway, this looks great and I will give it a try even though Nasir feels super janky to me.

Love it, fantastic and fun idea to bring blackguard + snitch to the party!

Love the deck idea!

On Archer: I'm not sure how viable "if you can pour money into an Atman before the encounter" really is, since having that kind of cash before a run 2 (SMC) + 3 (ATMAN cost) + 6 (Atman at 6 for Archer) is not common with Nasir. Not impossible, by any means, and Workshop helps.

Is there any way to meld this deck with one of the Magnum Opus Nasir decks floating around? Seems like a match made in heaven. Space is tight, but maybe Rook isn't necessary if your plan is Snitch + Blackguard? And don't get me wrong, the first thing I did with Nasir was jam Rooks and run poor. ;)

Also, what do you think about -1 Rook and +1 Yog.0. Half the influence (so you can add another Femme or Sucker) and it's more consistent than Rook on beating NBN annoyances. Not sure what else you'd take out for that second card, but you'll think of something ;)

The key is having Snitch and Blackguard to avoid credit resets when they'd be inconvenient. These two let you build up your credit pool while remaining aggressive and denying the corp creds thanks to ice rez costs. You can profit even without encountering thanks to Social Engineering, and then you can blow all your money before continuing an encounter when you're happy with the ice rez payoff.

Rook is absolutely crucial against corps with cheap ice. Data Mine, Paper Wall, Pop-Up Window, Pup, and Yagura all have more subroutines than their rez cost, so they can't be broken with an Atman on a reset unless you have a recurring credit (all sources of which besides Toolbox are a bit inconvenient) or a Rook. Snitch lets you minimize the number of times that you get hard etr'd by a popup, and Rook lets you get through when you can't afford to spend the click to run again. Not to mention, it pays for itself the first time you Snitch something in its server :)

@DrunkenGineer Just curious if you missed having recurring credits on playtest.

@CJFM Archer: yeah, the assumption is that you're not running totally poor, so you can afford to stock up on credits when the corp decides to rez. Or more likely, your already-set-up Atman4 with two Datasucker tokens lets you blow all your credits on the workshop and get through.

MO: I have no idea how much of the deck would need to change, but it almost certainly would work. I think ProCo is the better option, because this deck wants to get a lot of things into play (which necessitates drawing more) and it tends to be less broke than most Nasir builds.

Yog: Even with all the Yog hate out there nowadays, it could definitely work. But the cheap code gates that Yog hits are permanently dealt with by a Test Run parasite, which also kills off weak sentries and barriers.

Playtesting: I'm a much better deckbuilder than player, so I don't trust anything about how well the deck performs based on how I play it. I can see dropping Rook for some Cyberfeeders, or adding Omni-Drive/Cloak, but I really expect that Net Celebrity will slot in perfectly when currents become a thing.

@DrunkenGineer I agree with you on ProCons. I think that's exactly what this deck wants to do.

Omni/Cloak: I wouldn't do this in this build. You're more safe than sorry with Blackguard/Snitch, it's a matter of just getting it out fast: this deck is going to love Trade-in. :)

As for playtesting, I'm sure you're just being modest. Post about how it performs!

@CJFM I have a confession to make: I'm really bad at actually playing netrunner. And I'm much more interested in deckbuilding than playing. So I don't actually play much, on OCTGN or in person, and even if I did, the results would not reflect on the quality of the deck. Honestly, I haven't actually gotten around to playing this yet.

I like a lot the idea of the deck...but how do you get Blackguard on the table? It costs a lot, and you have sustained economy (but no burst one). You run against all face down ice spending all credits in the workshop?

Exactly! Ice are your economy during the early game, then once your rig gets set up thanks to Personal Workshop and credit resets, you can use Blackguard and Snitch to decide whether you want more credit resets or to sit on your pile of cash. Once you start running out of things to pour money into, Nasir's ability becomes a drawback that keeps you broke, and this deck lets you turn it off when you want.

I like this deck idea. I'm going to take it for a spin and see how it works and where it needs adjustment :D

What's your answer to traces? It seems to me that it's prone to midseasons and seasorce tags which opens up scorch/psycho windows

@mauxfire I'm not 100% sure. Once Blackguard and Snitch are online, you can force the rez on each ice you encounter and jack out to avoid losing all your credits. It'll be click-intensive, but at least you won't be broke. That's really your only defense against a corp that's stockpiling money for a massive Sea Source or Midseasons. Plascrete is backup against Scorch, but there's not much you can do against Midseasons other than not going broke to steal an agenda.

@mauxfire Keeping a loaded Kati is really your backup if you need to go broke stealing an agenda. She really should be a 3-of, but I had no idea what to cut for her (ProCo needs to be out earlier than her, so it's a 3-of despite multiples of each being useless). Now that I think about it, test out -1 Quality Time +1 Kati Jones if you're getting Midseasonsed to death.

So things I learned playing this deck:

It gets in when you don't think it can. Face checking ice before snitch black guard combo is fine while you're setting up.

If you don't get the blackguard snitch combo it doesn't perform as well. Making it a bit inconsistent.

It's really hard to trash things. I put an imp in and it does some serious work against the meta today. Lots of installed assets to get rid of and this deck is built for recursion already.

Kati is your most important resource. Having a place to park money in case you steal an agenda and are worried about seasorce/midseason. Get it out as early as possible.

I really enjoy the play style of this deck. It's really weird and throws the corp off. I had one rage quit and won about 70% of the games I played. I wound up going down a rabbit hole with him because I loved the drip I got off dailies. So I put in 3 dyson mem chips, 3 under world contacts. Then I found I had so much MU and money that I switched gordian out for ZU and put in overminds. Tried a deep red rook knight overmind version, but it didnt work as well because the corp had control of my credits. But the snitch black guard overmind was pretty solid.

@mauxfire that's what I'm finding as well. 1x Overmind at least for Nasir really helps him out in a pinch. It's better than Yog.0 for him because it costs 1 less cred and is no influence).

The biggest thing I've found playing this deck is I want things to dump credits into, which is where this deck excels. Normally a thing like Professional Contacts is to expensive to actually play, but with Nesir if I'm sitting on 4 credits I usually click the buck to get it out knowing that I run more efficiently with an empty pool than a full one.

For me Torch is an auto include because it's still efficient on memory and is a hugely efficient breaker. Once I get my breakers out I want to be as efficient as possible (so Battering Ram is also good) because my money is now sort of unreliable. The strength to me in Nesir is getting everything out and then having a big efficient rig, and with Blackguard/Snitch you can avoid a moneypocalypse. Torch, Battering Ram and Femme mean I can deal with most of anything. I do want another Sentry Breaker though.

@mauxfire Wow, thank you for the writeup!

I would have hoped the deck could function as a regular PW Nasir deck without the Blackguard Snitch combo. Would you make any changes, or would you just recommend mulliganing hard for Blackguard/Quality Time?

What did you take out for Imp? Rook?

I definitely agree, Kati not being a 3-of was 100% an oversight on my part.

I'm really digging Dyson-Underworld too, but I didn't even consider it in Nasir. I'm gonna have to check that out. I just love my Atman, I have no idea how I'll be able to give that up for Overmind.

Also, thank you for playtesting! This deck was built almost entirely on theory, so I'm really happy to see that it holds up in practice too. What does your version of this deck look like now?

@Protagonist Have you tried Pipeline? Though it's expensive, it's another credit sink that keeps its strength for the rest of the run.

I'm just waiting for First Contact to drop so you can have a BlacKat/Refractor/Dagger rig with Cloak, Ghost Runner, and stealth hardware support.

@mauxfire (and @CJFM, if you took the deck for a spin too), I have a few more questions.

Did Social Engineering pan out during testing?

Did you find that there were any particular corp matchups that this deck did really poorly against?

Was NAPD as much trouble as it normally is for Nasir?

Did you try adding in HQ multi-access or Stimhack, or were they never something you felt like the deck needed?

Social Engineering was an absolute blast to play. On turns where I could click with ProCon for bucks and cards, install something big, then take a run at a server that had something unrezzed and go see what I can find. It basically guarantees a no-rez, and that can be powerful. It essentially turns on his ability late game when the corp wants to rez lots of powerful ice in your face. Even an Eli for 8 bucks is a great deal for you. It also allows you to Facecheck late game when you've got a new piece of ice waiting on your target.

NAPD is a giant pain for this deck, as you typically get in at just under the wire, with only a few bucks remaining. Things like Fetals are a pain too, and Jinteki is just a bad matchup in general. If you can't facecheck and keep the corp honest early game then Nasir is essentially a blank ID box runner who occasionally loses the passwords to his accounts.

I thought about putting in some Nerve Agents to see if I could put some more pressure on the corps, but now I think I want to try him with a couple of Eschers. That should allow us to "turn on" his ID ability again in the late game.

In my testing, this deck hits the wall bad when you just can't get in somewhere. In one game, I was too poor to click out the breaker I needed and my opponent scored three agendas (and since he was Jinteki: Replicating Perfection played all the things) and I was behind from then on. RP is a serious problem for this deck if you let them get established, as you don't have the free bucks like Whizzard: Master Gamer to get rid of all their stuff and can't put reliable efficient pressure like other runners.

The games that I won I got through early game pressure and then built off that. When you can force the Corp to continually let you get out more toys than he has by making him rez ice (or hitting a Social Engineering) then you win. Think of him like a reverse Iain Stirling: Retired Spook; when you are winning he gives you bucks, but if you fall behind you get left behind very quickly.

Oh and a pox on Pup. Hate that card.

@DrunkenGineer, I've not played this exact version yet, but here are some of my impressions from playing Nasir in general. You've seen my Celebrity build, and I've been testing it against a few different archetypes. My Nasir seems to do well against slower or 'safe' decks, like RP, Tennin, HB, and even some NBN versions that play the shell game, but he's pretty vulnerable to NBN Midseasons and GNDL Supermodernism. His worst matchup is, far and away, Supermodernism. There is simply little you can do to beat the SEA Source trace. You have to just hope that you have enough Plascretes out and play extra safe. Nasir hates Ice Wall, but he has Femme and parasite as options.

A note on the RP matchup. I'm not sure about this particular build, but Celebrity variant can get set up fast and start running quicker against RP because of the lower cost hardware and programs. My testing echoes your thoughts that he tends to be a reverse Ian Stirling, running early and aggressively, you're probably doing well, but sit back too long and you can be left behind.

A quick comment on your breakers. I really like the suite in general. I think relying on Femme as your main sentry breaker is good in a deck like this when you can Snitch and jack out, but in mine, I need Datasucker/Mimic up early and I need to stay aggressive.

On NAPD, basically, I either have the money to run that server late game (with all ice rezzed (or a Femme ready to go), or I just go elsewhere and let the corp waste two turns scoring it. Sometimes, you just can't get it, and that's the sad fact of Nasir's design. BUT you have RDI, and ways to punish the corp for spending that turn. Instead of worrying about them wasting 2 turns and getting 2 points, try throwing them off balance by digging RnD or by pressuring HQ. Have to adapt against NAPD.

Reasons I don't play Social Engineering. If you don't have a Workshop out, it's pretty useless, and dictates your first click (I prefer to ProCon click one, if possible. Drawing before action is always preferable.). I also haven't had much of a problem with my economy, so having the extra cash right before Encounter wouldn't really help (also, I'm not powering out a Blackguard, so your mileage may vary). Also, since you're Blackguarding, I'd probably play a one-off Infiltration for value. It's been stellar for me, and saved my hide more than once.

Escher is very, very scary. Corps do not usually see it coming, and many will leave HQ the most undefended, meaning you should have no problem getting in. I've done some tweaking of my Celebrity deck to include one Escher (I'll post it soon). Of all the events they've printed, Escher is probably the most suitable for Nasir's style of play, and I think it will eventually fit as a one-off (at least) in most Nasir decks, going forward.

I would take Rook out. I love it, don't get me wrong, but you don't NEED it. It doesn't advance your plan, it just slows your plan down and makes you richer (which is always in flux for Nasir). You already basically Account Siphon the corp whenever they rez (or when you expose) ICE, so more is really not necessary. I like Nerve Agent quite a lot, but I'd probably use a one-off Legwork instead. Your Nasir build is slower and will probably run once a turn (maybe twice if lucky), so you'll have more success with a surgical HQ strike than you will repetitive HQ runs with a Nerve Agent.

ProCon and Kati are amazing with Nasir. You're right that Nasir is very close to a Criminal in style, and because of that he needs to see lots of cards over the course of the game and he needs click-efficiency. Oh, in all honesty, you should consider swapping the Daily Casts for Ghost Runners. They've been fan-fucking-tastic for me.

I agree on Pup. Parasite the shit out of it and put it out of its misery.

One final comment on something @mauxfire mentioned above: don't bother playing Underworld Contacts in this deck. It's a 2 card combo that might net you six or seven credits over the course of the game, essentially, the same as a Lucky Find. This is a sentiment that Sasha Friedman echoed in the Team Covenant interview after winning Tulsa regionals: you can't make your deck better by playing bad cards.

@CJFM Once again, thank you for your comments. One suggestion I'd make in regards to Midseasons/GRNDL (or really any corp that likes keeping combo pieces in hand) is Demolition Run in conjunction with HQ multi-access. It's expensive influence-wise, but knocking that Sea Source or Midseasons out of their hand is much lighter on your non-existent wallet than trying to fight the trace. As for everything else, I have nothing to add.