Damned if you do...-The flexible Kill Gag 1st @Malmö CO 3-1

Bridgeman 2579

After worlds I had been playing a reasonable amount of the Space Tempo List by TugTetGut: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/c9735156-005e-410d-bb2b-111f19ef6832/space-tempo-the-one-with-overseer-matrix-

Although it is pretty scary it felt a bit unreliable, and with the release of the Midnight Sun booster pack I now had to worry about the threat of Deep Dive, which meant that the plan of just recycling urban renewals until the runner runs out of cards is just far too slow.

However weyland got a new tool as well in Azef Protocol, with this and Audacity in your deck the runner would now have to trash every Urban Renewal or risk death, it seemed too good not to try.

I iterated on the idea a few times and almost gave up, but I felt that I just had to be missing the right formula so I kept pushing and I finally arrived at this list!

Key changes:

  • Agenda suite where all the agendas are 2-pointers for the runner
  • HPT instead of boom and consulting visit to be able to deliver on your threats early game, often you're too poor to kill the runner with a boom if the runner goes aggressive right away. Also means the runner has to clear all tags before taking an Urban Renewal hit, and can't go too low on cards while floating any tags.
  • More ice! (Two more veritas) We want to be able to reliably threaten scoring out with this deck which means we have a greater need for protecting our remote.

Ok so what makes this list work?:

  • The deck applies pressure in many ways at once, there is a real threat of scoring out, a threat of dying to tags, a threat of dying to urban renewal + azef combo. All of this puts the runner in a constant state of putting out fires and leaves little time for them to develop their own threats. We are flexible and can choose an avenue of pressure to emphasize depending on the strengths and weaknesses of the runner.
  • The runner has to steal 4 agendas to win(Unless there is Mad Dash :D). This is key because in order to capitalize on our remote ice we need to be able to drag the runner through it as many times as possible without giving the runner enough points to win. And ofc we are less likely to die to random acceses and things like Deep Dive in general.
  • A lot of slots are multi-purpose which means you rarely have dead cards. Audacity is a kill threat, but also a way to score out from 5, but also a way to score a GFI with one advancement and have a click left over for HHN. Azef is a kill threat, but it is also just a piece in your scoring plan that can snipe important threat cards from the runners hand. And so on.
  • Getting to 5/6 points means every installed card could be the winning agenda, this puts a lot of pressure on the runner to stop us from scoring a GFI, but also in theory we can never-advance our way to victory without scoring a GFI.

Most of the changes flowed naturally from changing the agenda suite, in the end it was all about embracing that we cannot win from the Urban + Azef threat alone, we need something more clever.

I believe the end result is a robust deck that you should be scared of :D In general I would say it only struggles against shapers with all the right tech(clot, misdirection, Deep Dive), but even then it is still a game.

Shoutout to my Team Unband as always for the great practice games!

Have fun with the list! :D

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