p4wned 1.0 (after NAPD most wanted)

This is a deck I've been working on basically since I started playing 6 months ago. With the recently announced NAPD most wanted list, it got a nice power boost, since none of its key pieces were hit.

This runner deck goes all-in on faust. Its most salient feature, however, is that it is incredibly fast to set up, and can apply early pressure without sacrificing its econ development. The playstyle is my interpretation of "shifting rig shaper", which is an idea that I've seen floating around and somehow got stuck in my head.

The deck is a bit complex to play, so give yourself time to get used to it and unlock its full potential.

It relies on the beach party / game day combo, which is very cheap and fast to set up out of hayley. There are only 2 adjusted chronotypes, but really aesop makes up the 3rd/4th copy, since it allows you to play out beach party right before game day, then sell off the party before it steals a click, hopefully having drawn a replacement copy in your 10 fresh cards (shifting rig philosophy).

There are many great utility cards that make aesop fodder when not needed: sac construct, same old thing, paricia, inti, bookmark and most of all redundant copies of beach party. This deck has great credit economy, more than enough to trash things, pay for ash and steal NAPDs, given that it doesn't spend many credits breaking ICE. Also consider that you will play 5-7 sure gambles in a typical game, as opposed to the 1-2 of a more normal deck, so you will often find yourself sitting on a pile of 15 credits in the midgame without trying.

The rest of the deck is pretty self-explanatory: symmetrical visage is a great card and gene conditioning shoppe is basically a 2nd copy of visage that also allows me to double up on beach party, but this should be considered a distant secondary use. Levy should be played as late as possible, because cards are fuel for this deck. The breaker suite is basically faust + ai hate hate; in this version I am experimenting with a 2nd cyber cypher because HB with double turing on 2 different remotes has given me a lot of trouble in the past.

I would really like to include another street peddler to make the setup even faster and create more hayley triggers on the corp turn, but cutting down to 1 copy was a concession to the extra neutral influence of parasite / clone chip (the other card cut was clot).

Some strategy tips:

As per the faq (page 4: using icebreakers) you can use faust to discard cards from your grip at any time. This is great for maximum deck cycling with game day. Don't be afraid to play game day below its theoretical peak efficiency in the early game; part of the reason this deck is so smooth is that the economy fueling its runs is the same set of cards that allows you to set up your rig fast and consistent. Once you're set up, you will easily be able to game day every 2 turns or so.

One of the things that makes aesop so great is that when the occasion calls for it, you can sell some of the less vital parts of your rig (e.g. symmetrical visage) to get a temporary credit boost when you most need it, and replace those pieces later when the situation has stabilised (click compression, again that shifting rig idea).

Bookmark is this decks plascrete. With game day, it doesn't really cost you much to load it up, and in matchups where you don't need it, it is aesop fodder and makes for a smoother levying experience. Now why would you need plascrete with a max grip of 10? because it's hard to get even into a lightly defended server with faust and still end the turn holding 8 or more cards. You're also somewhat vulnerable to being flatlined on the turn your deck runs out and you need to cycle.

Final remarks:

I have had good success with this deck, but I don't want to oversell it. This is not a finely tuned tournament winning machine. It has worked out great for me, but I have only played a couple dozen games with it in my small meta. However, I am quite happy with the deck, given that I developed many of its ideas myself; tuning this deck to its current form taught me many lessons of how to be a good aggressive runner. I hope you will also find the deck fun and rewarding to play, and I hope this is just one of many new fun ideas that will be more viable in 2016.