Karma Police v3.0 (Weyland Edition!)

"This is what you get when you mess with us."

[UPDATE!] Now that the Mumbad cycle is complete and several key cards are legal, it is time to revisit my absurd quest to build an (almost) all operations deck. There have been several changes since the previous version, most notably, a faction switch to Weyland Consortium: Building a Better World as the ID, which gives us access to Government Takeover for even less agenda density, as well as giving us a slew of new useful operations (while still letting us Alliance in Jeeves). Edited and updated explanations and story below:

"For Immediate Release,

Arena Productions, A Weyland Company® [WLND] is pleased to announce its recent acquisition of a controlling stake in Rhapsody Entertainment, the production company founded by Net sensation Miranda Rhapsody.

"This lateral acquisition has the potential to leverage our core competencies in behavioral and motivational programming in a trans-sector synergistic re-scoping of Arena's political and informational messaging arms" says Konstanina Singh, VP of Strategic Media Integration for Arena. "The Rhapsody brand, specifically Ms. Rhapsody's upcoming blockbuster 'Oz: The Rejourneying', along with our assumption of Rhapsody Productions' joint venture with Haas Bioroid's [HABD] Cybernetics Division, will create virtuous fractal growth vectors in our agricultural distribution initiatives as well as our privatized government offerings for debtor nations."

Civilian tours of the sensie-roid production facilities have been discontinued until further notice.

Weyland. Building a Better World."

Do you like instant gratification? Do you find it hard doing things like "installing ice" and "defending servers?" Is what you want out of Netrunner to feel like you're playing a degenerate game of Legacy Magic: The Gathering? Look no further! This deck takes all that messy defense out of the game and let's you focus on what is best in life. To wit, killing the runner out of nowhere after playing 12 cards cards in 1 turn.

This is the THIRD major draft of my second attempt at a Cybernetics Division deck. Turns out I upgraded it so much I ended up in a different faction!

The idea here is simple. Play a million operations to draw cards and quickly create a pile of money (none of which you are likely to spend rezzing ice) and then double Punitive Counterstrike them off the face of the earth. But how does this insane machine work? Let's take a tour...

ID: [UPDATE]:Used to be Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded for small deck size and to start them at effectively -1 HP. However, there are a number of spicy Weyland operations from the second half of the Mumbad cycle, and the good HB operations are low inf enough to allow us to come out ahead on inf by swapping. Plus, BABW really helps us get ahead in the money game given the number of transactions we have.

Deck Size: [UPDATE] I used to run this at the CD 40 card minimum, but have since realized that controlling WHEN they hit that 1 agenda you want them to steal is important. And for that, we want low density, hence we take the standard 49 card size.

Agendas: Since the kill shot is Punitive Counterstrike, we want high value agendas. Government Takeover is hilarious and getting 6 damage per counterstrike is great. It also lets us run a grand total of 5 agendas in our 49. 3 Vanity Project are the next fattest agendas open to us and a single Global Food Initiative rounds out the set. The GFI used to be a The Cleaners, but having GFI means there are SOME situations in which you get a second bite at the apple if you don' kill them on their first steal.

Giant pile of Operations: [UPDATE] This is the core of the deck. Basically all you'll be doing every game is playing operations. The deck is 65.3% operations, which comes in handy with our first, and possibly best one...

Accelerated Diagnostics: This thing is an absolute BEAST. When your deck is 60% operations, you almost always hit at least one, and usually 2, sometimes 3. The Corp's big problem is lack of clicks, especially when our game plan involves killing the runner on a a very specific turn (the one after she steals an agenda) and this allows for big click compression, letting us dig through tons of cards and make tons of money (needed for our kill trace) in a single turn. Uses include: Subliminal Messaging (free click and credit), all the econ and card draw cards (burst money and more fuel after the diagnostics resolves, Consulting (without the extra click!) for Punative or whatever you need), enabling the "plan B" Jackson Shutdown combo, and of course, glory dig for the winning Punitive Counterstrike.

Hedge Fund, Beanstalk Royalties, Restructure, Green Level Clearance, Blue Level Clearance: These are the core of the economic burst economy. The Clearances also have the advantage of drawing us more cards (and Blue Level Clearance cost no clicks instead of two when you play it off Accelerated Diagnostics!). They are all transactions, which really adds up, and helps with hitting breakpoints (Hedge Fund turn 1 gets you to Restructure immediately, eg.).

Subliminal Messaging: Oh man, this little guy is so much better than he seems. In the opening hand it basically means you start the game with 6 credits, which is small, but nice. Any other time, its free credit bump, and when you hit one off of Accelerated Diagnostics, it has the effect of basically making the whole Diagnotics click-free! And then there's the random upside of getting it back if the runner is wise enough to be wary of whatever nonsense you appear to be doing.

Punitive Counterstrike: Since when does Scorched Earth cost only 2 influence? This is the primary win condition of the deck. Two in a turn will usually kill and a single one will sometimes get it done if they've gone down in cards. This is also the primary reason we have all our agenda points condensed into 3, 4 and 9 pointers. Finally, it should be noted that since it is a trace, you need an economic lead on the Runner. Usually this shouldn't be a problem, since they will theoretically have installed some things and you will be doing nothing but drawing cards and making money in the first turn or two.

Election Day: Drawing 5 for 0 credits in-faction is definitely something this deck is interested in doing. And since we are just looking for a specific set of cards, we often don't mind ditching other things in our hand. It is not 100% efficient, since sometimes you have 1 Punitive Counterstrike in your hand and don't want to discard it just to search for more toys. But it certainly helps in a lot of situations, and can even drop agendas into archives if you have Jackson out (or if you only have 1 in hand and want to strategically place it in archives because you are ready for the Counterstrike).

Consulting Visit: Honestly, this is why I switched to Weyland. Since our deck is basically entirely operations, this pulls double duty. First, it is Punitive Counterstrike 4-6, which is huge for consistency. Second, it can fetch anything ELSE we need if we're good on counterstrike. For example, it enables the singleton Snatch and Grab to be something we can consistently find if we need to. Finally, the double cost is defrayed a little by our reliance on Accelerated Diagnostics, which let's us play it for no clicks if we hit it.

Power Shutdown: Since we are already in Weyland, we can toss in Shutdown to enable the old janky Jackson Shutdown combo. To be clear, this is here as a Plan B to the main goal of getting the Punitive Counterstrikes the old fashioned way. But having this as another avenue increases the consistency, plus has incidental value if they are running with only a few things in play and you can manipulate the math to snipe their film critic. As a brief refresher, the combo works like this: With a Jackson Howard in play, you start your turn with Power Shutdown for your entire deck size. You then jackson back Accelerated Diagnostics and 2 Punitive Counterstrike. Click 2, draw the Diagnostics. Click 3, play Accelerated Diagnostics and double Punitive.

ICE

[UPDATE] Wait, what does ICE do again? This is more for show than anything. While the deck really just wants to play solitaire as quickly as possible and then bait the Runner into stealing a fatal Vanity Project, there ARE some very nasty things that can happen early when you have zero ice. I'm looking at YOU Account Syphon and Medium. Not so much because it keeps us poor (we can recover), but because it makes the Runner rich enough to fight our Punitive trace. The Crisium Grids are a nod to stopping run events (and just seem better than any other actual ice we could use in that spot, though this is subject to revision). The Checkpoints basically serves two purposes: First, just the presence of unrezzed ice can direct the runner to the unprotected servers (since our whole goal is to manipulate them into stealing an agenda at the right time). Second, it deters nasty HQ events, as noted. Finally, to the extent that the Runner is willing to face-check it, having them take 3 meat damage is delightful, especially if they happened to steal an agenda on the run.

Snatch and Grab: This is our out to Film Critic, which basically shuts us down. Being able to Consult for this (bonus points if you remember that this is the same terminology used in Necropotence MTG decks from the '90s using Demonic Consultation - same tutoring function too!) is great. Either you kill it, or they take the tag and you pay to kill it. Same for Guru Davinder (also a connection).

Assets: [UPDATE]

Jackson Howard: He's almost always good, but is especially important here as a way to let us manipulate when and which agenda the runner scores. We don't want them stealing until we are ready to kill them. And he helps us speed draw to find our pieces. Also protects us against really bad luck when we draw 2 of our ridiculously small number of agendas. Nothing new here.

Jeeves Model Bioroids: Oh man. Just. So. Good. First off, they don't cost any influence since we are so heavy into HB. But the primary thing here is that an extra click is absurdly useful for a deck that just wants to get as much done in 1 turn in order to put a combo together. And usually, we're just playing 3 operations in a row, making it really easy to trigger. The high trash cost means that the runner may not always be able to immediately just trash them. We don't NEED Jeeves, but he's all upside for us.

General Strategy [salutes]: Make a bunch of money. Draw a bunch of cards (to find Punitive(s)). Then they either hit an agenda in HQ or R&D, or your play and advance one to tempt them. If they are coy about it, then hell, just score the sucker. The main challenge is manipulating the timing of when they hit the agenda, since the super condensed point values mean you don't get a second shot once they steal the first one. If they hit one before you have exactly what you need, you can always try the "glory turn" and try to ride the Accelerated Diagnostics train all the way to combo town (it's an express stop).

There are two main scenarios for flatlining: 1) the runner foolishly ended an agenda-stealing turn with 3 or fewer cards in their hand; 2) they are wise to your shenanigans and stay at 4 until they steal the agenda. In the case of 1), you only need to land a single Punitive (unless they've got a plascrete). In the case of 2), you need to have 2 Punitive OR a Punitive and a Consulting Visit. Or you can just fire Punitive #1 and then Yell "YOLO!" ironically while trying to chain Accelerated Diagnostics. On second thought, never yell "YOLO!" Not even ironically.

So there you have it. Just to be clear, this probably isn't the most consistent deck in the world and it is definitely still a crazy work in progress. So if you're looking for the deck that "totally won firsteenth million'th place at every tournament evarrr", then you may be disappointed. It is, however, hilarious to play, which is my primary goal. I would also LOVE any feedback, suggestions etc on how to hone this madness even further.

So yeah, please let me know what you think of the update. And if you have a chance to give it a try (games are pretty short, I promise :) ) then let me know how it works out.