Val Frantic Coding (3rd Hurstville SC 21/1/17)

Figure I should post this deck. It dropped 1 game on the weekend against an RP match involving a 1st turn Liz Mills and some misplay on my part, despite a truly explosive start. Otherwise it smashed a lot of corps and generally performed well: came 3rd due to getting wrecked twice in a row as CTM by Best Guy Whizzard.

Side note, this deck breaks the golden rule of Netrunner of Never Not Whizzard.

This deck started out as a weird mutation of these Miffed Val decks floating around, trading the Siphons and the Hades + Obelus combo for Magnum Opus and Vamp, with a Levy thrown in so you actually can avoid losing the game when you throw half your deck in the trash if the game goes long.

The goal being to make the deck more consistent by setting up fast, digging through the deck faster and providing a stable source of money that doesn't rely on resources or borrowing it from the Corporation. And there's nothing quite as fast as an 80 year old Chinese man coding up a way to print money using a patented 1 finger typing technique that destroys keyboards.

I mean, we all know that Valencia is most of the time an old man in disguise anyway, so might as well embrace it and include more Omar cards

The deck usually follows a revolutionary new 2-step approach to playing Netrunner.

Step 1: Play Mopus by any means necessary

Step 2: Do stuff

Obviously whilst this can happen either through a first turn Frantic Coding or just having it in your opening hand, you do sometimes Wiff. However, given Frantic coding looks at TEN cards you're bound to find something worth using and installing for cheap. In addition, the deck is perfectly happy to go Same Old Thing Frantic Coding if needs must to go dig some more. Hopefully you've not shuffled all 3 of the MOPUS's together -_-

Late game it's often absolutely worth it to play Frantic because you'll often dig up a problem solving card like a David or Medium whilst being able to throw out your conspiracy breakers.

There's some pretty obvious synergy here between Conspiracy Breakers, event recursion and Coding. It's part of why I prefer this Val build to others since it cracks open more of your deck so you can actually interact with those cards. Often Val might be stuck with no black mail or no breakers. Whilst Frantic cannot tutor for events, those events that get turfed either thin your deck out more so you can get to The Good Stuff or can be recurred and brought into the game.

After you have achieved Step 1, proceed to Step 2. Often Do Stuff means Clicking Mopus a bunch and then drawing, playing a thing or trashing stuff.

Realistically this build is similar to Shaper builds involving Mopus and Beth to gain a bunch of money then Vamp the corp down to 0. However, you're in Anarch and are playing Val. This means you have access to a lot more scary tricks that you can pull off very early on against the Corp, even if all you have otherwise is a Mopus.

Whilst in some matchups it's wise to click for cash and save up for a giant Vamp (CI comes to mind), most of the time Mopus is used to quickly recharge after launching damaging runs on the Corp. Blackmail R&D, Mopus twice, En Passaunt. Trash an asset, Draw a card, Mopus twice. That sort of thing.

Realistically the way this deck wins most of the time is by setting up for big Medium digs on R&D whilst keeping Agenda off the board with the threat of Blackmail. It also has a surprising capacity to tutor with Frantic Coding: playing it before a big dig turn can often get you either a Medium or the tool you need to get past some Rez'd ice.

This deck can also often install your Obelus & other stuff without suffering a major tempo hit and it's hard for the Corp to keep you poor unless they can trash your Magnum Opus. Important for the NBN matchup since it makes Closed Accounts a much less powerful card, plus makes ASI a big of a non-issue. You can actually float tags (well, A Tag. Don't float 2 early if they are the type to run Boom) early against most NBN decks for little consequence. Because of this the deck runs Joshua B, who is fantastic with Mopus for similar reasons to why Beth is. Some decks cannot meaningfully punish you for floating tags and often they won't even have time to kill Josh if you're putting enough pressure on the table. This is to say nothing of his effect on an open (or open enough) R&D.

Some stuff in closing:

Memory is sort of an issue...but not really? Basically because you're Val you can often get away with a fantastic breaker suite of Magnum Opus, Same old thing, Black Mail and a couple of conspiracy breakers. Your general rig is often Mopus, Faust, Medium and A Program based on what is currently a program, assuming you've installed your console. Given you're often keeping the opponent's ice suite under control with your ice destruction you don't generally need a full rig out and can often hack through whatever off the back of good old Faust and some clever running.

It's a bit of a weird balance but it works out pretty well I find.

Faust incidentally is also what you use to convert your Blackmail and En Passants into useful cards if your opponent cheats and removes your Bad Publicity :P

This deck cannot destroy sentries unless you En Passant them. This is important so try not to let them rez too many of them. MK Ultra is good into Architect and mostly Garbage vs other things. You don't want to be relying on it too much.

Arc Lockdown is an issue but it's less of a problem than you think it is. It can be the nail in the coffin and lose you the game but unless they recur it A Lot you'll often lose access to one card and nail them with another. Often they'll pick Black Mail but not get all 3 copies, which often means you still basically have access to Black Mail and they've wasted a Lockdown. Watch for timings where they remove Levy from the game just before you pop it.

Weyland is randomly a problem if they're running Sapper: Try not to run (especially into R&D) unless you have a Faust on table or MK Ultra in bin: you'll regret it otherwise.

Vamp is a great alternative to Black Mail, is an enabler for En Passant and is this deck's HQ pressure. After all , if your opponent has no money, they cannot rez ice or defensive upgrades. For some added BM, remember that your Bad Publicity is a free Vamp Dollar waiting to happen.

Typically you Rebirth into Omar, Whizzard or Edward Kim based on matchup, what you need to trash or timing. Quetzel can be occasionally useful

This deck is Pre-Quorum. Post Quorum I dunno if you swap the console to SIFR and change the deck around but if so it probably needs a bigger rebuild. SIFR definitely solves memory issues but probably demands a different Breaker suite (YOG/Mimic for instance, since both Black Orchestra and MK Ultra don't really benefit from SIFR's majesty). The Corp meta post Quorum is also completely different so a lot of considerations change as a result.

Finally, remember that whilst it looks like a Shaper Deck and vaguely Feels like a Shaper deck, at its core is a very angry investigative Journalist who's got some beef to pick with Corp. And, since she's from the internet, may in fact be a dude.

Happy Coding!