The Legend of Adam 13

I'm publishing the final version of my Adam deck mostly for posterity's sake, as I believe the release of Escalation and the ramifications of having a fourth directive to choose from will change the nature of deck building for this faction a great deal. It has been a wild ride though, all the threats I've had to tech against and the iterative economy packages slowly dragging me to a place of better understanding regarding the nature of our plucky bioroid. Or at least, his nature during the dark times... When 'directive' was a curse word.

Enough with the fluff. I wanted to make a solid, consistent, take all comers Adam deck, and I wanted to pay credits to do it. Those were my only real formative guidelines, and this is what I ended up with. It's a long read, and it's mostly just personal observations from a fairly unaccomplished player who decided to cut his teeth on the 'training wheels' runner. As such a lot of this will sound obvious to the veteran, but I hope enlightening to those interested in building a vocabulary to help them explore the game and understand deck archetypes.

This deck is designed to follow Adam's original prescribed turn rhythm (run, dump cards, draw), and thrive in these conditions. Like all the mini-factions that exacerbate major faction strengths, Adam could be considered the 'Super Criminal', who starts the game with his win on the board, and simply cannot help himself but pressure early. As a result, there are some obvious run economy pieces here, and some less-than-obvious run economy pieces too.

Working with ABR is an absolute bear, but once you place your hypothetical click value at 2 credits, things start making a lot more sense. Adam can break any subroutine in the game for ~4c. That's actually pretty awful. Never forget that. If you spend your whole game clicking through gear check ICE you will lose, because you won't notice how much potential money the corp is taxing you with every forced run. ABR is only not awful, in fact, when the ICE is face down, or when the ICE is pretty big. Fortunately, those two conditions are met quite frequently. For everything else, we have cheap breakers, and when I say cheap I mean the cheapest. These shitty breakers are economy cards in disguise.

Breaker Suite:

The problems are manifold. No in faction breaking, tutoring, or recursion. You're a criminal, but you get shaper program economy for free. ABR is a jealous master who won't let you install before you break yourself serving him. You can spend just as much influence trying to find your powerful singletons, or you can flood your hands with the lowest costed programs you don't mind telegraphing your plays with on your last click. You can't afford to bait out all the world's Enigmas with your face, just to 'punish' them with a crippling tempo hit!

Understand that this little doggie isn't being installed for the privilege of breaking a DNA tracker for some ungodly number... You ABR that. No, you put down ZU so you can ABR a quandary for 3 credits less. This emphasis on breaker density and early pressure is crucial. With Brain Chip you either snowball your Criminal early game to victory... Or you don't. Put the breakers down now, and give yourself that chance.

TL;DR, breakers are cheap and plentiful so you can play them early, and supplement them later with Adam's MU, suckers, and threaders. ABR is your safety net and your big ICE sniper. If you play green or purple, odds are it's an e3 matchup.

Economy Package:

A wise man (well, a wise malevolent digital entity) once told me to beware any card costing 2 or more influence. Each one comes with the hidden cost of one more garbage neutral slot in your deck. There is a whole mess of nice neutral cards that like Adam and are not garbage, but I can attest that I've gotten nothing but positive results from thinning my influence out and picking cheap, powerful, out of faction cards to fan the flames. There's not much to say about this sort of economy package, except put it down. You will be happy with the results.

Much of the board state struggle in this game consists of building an engine to let you escape the pitiful click to card to credit conversion ratio printed on your actions card. Adam gets help with the clicks and cards bit. Now you just need a few good ways to give yourself the credits bit. With constant draw and constant pressure, I found that 2 was a passable number for Temujins. You'd never object to more, but spending influence on breaker density wins games.

TL;DR, make ABR's forced run valuable to you. If you have a red or yellow matchup, consider mulling hard for Public Sympathy and Dr. Lovegood.

Card Choices:

Career Fair - Empties your hand and gives you the best neutral economy pieces in the game for free. It's not an Easy Mark, it's way better.

Stimhack - You want more of these if you live in a big glacier meta. The ability to first click run a server the corp doesn't know you can get into is priceless, and wins games. Adam doesn't care about brain damage. Seriously, check that advanced overwriter and steal the agenda next to it. You will NOT NOTICE. You are just about the only runner who won't.

e3 Feedback Implants and ZU.13 Key Master - have both already been touched on, but there's 8 influence in these guys for a reason. Adam has a bit of a code gate problem, but fortunately many Corps have a bit of a code gate problem too.

Street Peddler - I'm just going to try to list all the ways this little kid helps you, and I will likely miss many:

1. Installs a breaker on your first click run.
2. Installs Cast and Hotel at the beginning of your turn.
3. Installs a Contract for 4 clicks of juicy dinero. Or a Sucker I guess. Wheel? Fuck it.
4. Digs into your deck like a Diesel and throws out all the extra Sympathies and Lovegoods you don't want.
5. Installs that Lovegood you didn't want to need so bad so you can shut off the ABR valve instantly. Thanks, kid.
6. Installs NACH when HHN happens so you can purse your lips at the corp player and judge his character.
7. Saves you a credit, sure, why not.

This card practically is the deck. You can and should drop a Wheel for the third one, but I always seem to find the kids I need in testing quick enough.

Dr. Lovegood - While we're making lists, here are some uncommon applications of the good Doctor that will win you games:

1. Turn off NACH when you attack a scoring remote, or HQ, or have a loaded Turning Wheel.
2. Turn off NAT so you can Temüjin their PAD campaign and cause momentary confusion and hijinks. Also consider this if you are playing Argus, because they always have 3 snares in hand, and you will always hit 2. Until you don't.
3. If you can't find Sympathies and fear the flatline, you can always blank Safety First and draw up.

Lovegood is undeniably an acquired taste. This deck does not pilot itself, and for that reason is probably a sub par choice in tournament settings or when you are tired and tilting. Just keep thinking about your next turn plan as the Corp takes its turn, and you will find ways for Doc to be useful.

Corroder and... Inti - Breaker density. But for a few common barriers, you could go all in on this cheap son of a B and the suckers. All I can say is, the games where you break early and access hard are the games you win. Keep the hands that have these friendly guys in them.

In Memoriam:

The influence and card numbers are going to look weird, and I can safely say that's the result of practice. Strong, meta defining factions and tight theoretical decks have good looking influence. I only have 2 Temujins because I don't have the luxury of 3, and both career fairs and peddlers get squeezed in because I'm not settling for just one. NACH gets 2 precious deck slots because, well, you simply can't be tagged.

In the end, I'm proud of the deck partly because it looks so patchwork, and in spite of that you'll find it handing you gobs of money, draw, and accesses, all without breaking stride to set up, thanks to the cheap and plentiful breaking.

All in all, I'm happy I got to experience Adam's early days. Diving face first into the Paranoid Bioroid's directive-based nonsense is a grueling and rewarding trial by fire for an inexperienced runner, and I'd like to thank all the mindless corporate drones and nascent data devouring cyber-intelligences who gave me a beat down along the way. The Legend of Adam is over, and starting next week I'm excited to break all my preconceived notions of deck building and Find the Truth of this mini-factions strengths for myself all over again.

And who knows, I may even finally be ready to get out of the kiddie pool and play some real Netrunner!