Using HB Cards In HB Is Overrated

I've called this deck "NBN's Greatest Hits" and that seems to be a popular title. But at 29 non-HB cards in a 54 card deck, the current name seems apt.

Your win conditions are:

• to fast advance with hard money,
• to Exchange of Information 0 or 2 pointers for 3 or 4 pointers,
• to Punitive Counterstrike the Runner for big steals,
• to just score behind gearchecks quickly,
• or...to just scum it out by triple-clicking for a point on Domestic Sleepers.

That's a lot of ways to get it done.

There's no sugarcoating it: These ice are not great if the Runner gets money going. You really need to do your best to stop that from happening. There's a few ways to do that:

1.) Tax Central attacks: This is Quicksand. The more they grind on Centrals, the fatter Quicksand gets. I've had an Eater paying 7 credits to get a single Keyhole before.

2.) Advanced Assembly Lines versus Temujin: This card is there to waste the Runner's time and money. Ideal hand is 2 ice, AAL, and some extra money. You install AAL and if the Runner drops Temujin, you rez and trigger AAL to put ice on the server they've put Temujin on. This puts the Runner so far behind that it's painful. They now have no money (if they haven't Career Fair'd) and a kinda-useless Temujin. Especially if they're running Paperclip as is all the rage these days.

3.) Hard-Hitting News: You effectively have four of these because Consulting Visit is Alliance, praise be to Damon and Lukas. Drop this early if you have to, because you have two Jacksons and three Archived Memories and two Vitruvius. (This motto goes for a lot of cards in this deck.) Once they're tagged you can All-Seeing I a fat board of resources or you can simply snipe their money with Closed Accounts at your leisure.

Making the Runner poor (or just poor-er) is key, and letting them harass you with Siphon is actually okay. If they float tags to keep you broke, you have Beanstalk to jump you up to a useful amount of credits really fast. Beanstalk > Consulting Visit > Closed Accounts works, and so does click for a credit > Archived Memories > Closed Accounts. Floating tags not so great for the Runner.

It's also perfectly fine of an option to simply quad-click on Jeeves to make four bucks. It's a waste of time and money to kill Jeeves, but he'll sure let you fast-advance if they leave him here. You want to waste the Runner's time and money on pointless things.

...Which is another place AAL comes in. You just drop it there and it's effectively a banked click. They run it, you rez it and make 2 credits and they waste another credit to trash it. It's a big net-swing your way in a close game. They don't run it, it lets you dump an ice out of an overfull hand without taking away your advancement-pressure.

Another dirty use of AAL is to install an Asset over an Agenda the Runner suddenly installed the right breaker to get into your scoring server with. Bonus points if the Asset was Jackson so they can't retrieve it from Archives.

I've been told I'd be poor with this deck, but my average ice rez cost is a big 3.2 credits. You are far from defenseless at low money. Give it a try and see how it works for you, I'm open to suggestions and improvements.