The Red Coats

Nordrunner 4138

In case you missed my original post on BGG: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1141751/deck-the-red-coats/page/1

Here is my most recent edition of the Red Coats since Double Time (no changes from H&P (yet?)). The Biotic Labor adds flexibility and is also a safety release for agenda floods. There are many good or even sneaky plays you can make with it to help give you an edge.

Ice has been further refined to be able to shut out all fixed breaker decks. Especially Atman and Yog. Notice all of the ICE strength variation, and all of the 5 strength code gates(6) that also end the run. Remember... Virus scans are your best friend, especially with trickle econ turned on.

3x datapike is a total no brainer and am totally shocked I somehow missed it on the initial version of this deck. It's a mini-tollbooth they will face check early when the -2 creds is most punishing. If you can get the runner credit pool down early, you will be in a great position to take total control of the game.

Otherwise it's mostly the same cards. Same mega-econ engine, and still trying to suck every dollar and click out of the runner possible.

Thanks to all who have reached out to share their appreciation for the Red Coats. It is truly a wonderful deck that I think is straight forward enough for new players to get it, but a vast amount of depth for highly advanced players to explore.

Hit me up with any questions or comments!

16 comments
11 May 2014 tacullu

I loved your deck since I heard of it, Nord. I'm your fan, really.

A few things, though. I replaced Restructure with Private Contracts, Biotic Labor and Next Bronze for 2 Subliminals, 3 Datapikes for 2 Interns and 1 Wotan, Beta Tests for Contract and Wotan, and some Vipers in here too, with Ichi 2.0 replacing Wall of Static

The only problem I have is Atman at 5. I've taken it to two tournaments successively and never lost a single one. It's beautiful, and very Criminal-resilient.

11 May 2014 Arkidents

I had the honor to play against nordrunner piloting this deck yesterday at regionals and it is brutal.

As a glacier player myself, I find that not having the econ early with the early ice to support it can be pretty bad. Clicking for three credits each turn without asset support is pretty bad for the corp here. In our game, I was lucky enough to have the credits to trash most if not all of his assets, preventing him from rezzing about a third of his ice, but the six operations alone was able to carry him to late game nonetheless.

As playing Katman w/ parasite recursion, I find that two Atman at 3 and 5 with datasucker and parasite support can get through most of the ice efficiently, but it is still VERY taxing.

I really like the singleton biotic labor. It is great to close out the late game. I personally run 3 in my build because sometimes having a monster server just isn't enough.

All in all, wonderful deck!! Keep up the great work! :D

11 May 2014 x3r0h0ur

I ran this at the regional yesterday too, but I had some bad draws and got some interesting matchups and it didn't do as well as it had in practice. I also swapped out 1 cad for 1 inazuma, hoping to snap off some breakers, since money was never an issue.

I also slotted a biotic labor for those turns where you didn't pre-advance an ABT, but still draw jackson, and to score out the game winning ABT. It was possibly the best add yesterday, because no matter how big my ice walls were, some runners just got in.

There was a kit yogasaurus deck that just poo'ed all over this. Overall still felt solid bringing it.

I had a lovely moment of hard casting a Wotan on HQ to stop a runner legworking in to my 3 card hand which had the game losing agenda in it. A little coercion to convince him to jack out, and wotan did the job.

Overall very solid deck, fairly poorly piloted by me :)

11 May 2014 DavyRam

This is an interesting deck both to pilot and play aginst, amd it's been great to see the resurgence in chunky big ice decks it has produced. I have but one question.

Why in the holy nipples of Gibson is it actually called 'The Redcoats'?

11 May 2014 Nordrunner

@Arkidents - You played an exceptional match, and your overall swiss performance was staggering! Excellent job! Atman 5 is its softest point without a doubt. That heimdall 1.0 is new since yesterday as I took out Ichi 2 for the extra strength variation. Overall this deck has done quite well against Atman, went 2/1 against Atman on the day. I also realized that all of my opponents made top 16, and 3 of them were top 5 after Swiss!!! Best day of Netrunner I had exprienced since worlds.

@DavyRam - LOL!!! This is copy pasted from my BGG response: Red Coats were the name of the British soldiers in the Revolutionary War. They were defending the government responsible for taxation without representation. So the "Red Coats" would be my ICE (Bioroid Soldiers) defending the "tyrannical taxing government". which is me, the megacorp. :)

12 May 2014 evilgaz

How about swapping out a Next Bronze for a Quandary - okay so you're only saving yourself 2c, but curious as to why the only one Next ice?

12 May 2014 bluebird503

I think 1 str next bronze is interesting vs atman if people are playing around rototurret.

I am most worried about yogasaurus with this current decklist, but looking forward to testing it. Datapike seems sweet with lots of lists NOT using yog all of a sudden, and it doesn't have last click weakness, interesting to see the back and forth between yog and other breakers in the future.

13 May 2014 Nordrunner

@evilgaz I have had a fair number of players ask me about the singleton Bronze, as it does seem a little silly. As Bluebird mentioned, it's primarily for Atman. It actually won me a game at my last regional against a Katman deck. There is not much difference between Bronze and Quandary, but there is a slight advantage over parasite with it having one strength, it can't be destroyed on the fly, unless they have a charged datasucker to go with it.

@bluebird503 I would be scared to see a yog-a-saurus runner deck. As of now, IDK how popular it is, but it wouldnt be pretty... lol. Thankfully yog+datasucker is way more popular, and this does pretty well against that, and with the comeuppance of Shaper, there are fewer yogs out there, and Datapike is superior to enimga when their breaker is not Yog.

16 May 2014 TheTick

Want to take this opportunity to say thank you for posting this. I unashamedly netdecked the original red coats list and have been having some really good success with it. Absolutely love it. This new version looks interesting. I'm not sure I'd be so willing to drop Subliminal Messaging. I'm always super happy to see it, and find that it nets me quite a few credits over the course of a game. Also...no Wotan?? I've had more than a few games where that card has nearly singlehandedly won the game for me by completely shutting the runner out of a server. Though I admit that given the amazing amount of economy this deck produces, being able to just hard rez a Janus into an unsuspecting runners face is rather delicious....:)

Kudos to you sir! Hope you don't mind being netdeck'd too terribly.

16 May 2014 Nordrunner

@thetick Thanks for the kind words. Glad you like the deck. This deck can be played many ways successfully, so just go with what works best for you.

If I didn't want to be netdecked, i would never post in the first place. :) I'm glad so many people enjoy playing with it.

16 May 2014 divvo

Nice deck. I play similar glacier HB:ETF, and noticed a few things that I think this deck may struggle with.

Econ Consistancy: I'm sure it's pretty good in about 75% of your games, but every once in awhile you're stuck clicking for credits. Gila Hands Archology is exceedingly easy to score behind early/cheap ETR (or hidden among asset econ installs and ensures you make at least 4 credits a turn + an install. It's not night and day, but 4 a turn has made a noticeable difference in my own games turning a streak of runner accesses into a dead stop. This makes the biggest difference against Criminal decks, but also against econ drain decks like Reina + Xanadu + Rook. It also acts as protection against Gorman Drip (though it's not exactly the most common card).

Caduceus: Maybe it's just me, but it's not my favorite card. Not when I have plenty of great early neutral ICE options and can spend the influence on scary things like Psychic Fields out among my econ assets or bluffed in my advancement server.

Datapike: Maybe it's your meta, but Yog lives 'round these parts. I use 1x quandary to force the runner to get a breaker, and every other code gate is 4str +. Even if it's rare, I'd rather not give even a single crim an advantage.

Ichi 1.0: Personal preference, I like to use 2.0 because it's much more likely to wreck their game state and you have the money to spare. There's no only trashing 1 program, it's 2 or none and a decent tag/bd trace. Most of my BD comes from this.

Reclamation Order: I like to splash 1 to pull back my operation econ late game. Nothing says "You're not getting through that server and ASH to score the agenda" like a bucket of credits all of the sudden. Table-flip city. This may help me more than you because I use 3x NAPD Contracts to sap the runner of credits even more if they want to score points, so having one in my advancement server late game isn't uncommon (I also use Mandatory Upgrades because I get more value from it than Priority Req, but that's me).

16 May 2014 Nordrunner

@divvo thanks for the comments, the deck has weaknesses, but money is almost never one of them, and I certainly would not want to change my agenda spread. But again, a lot of variations for this deck, so glad yours is working for you. :)

3 Jun 2014 citizenkeen

I've been loving Red Coats and playing a varieties. I'm curious - can Red Coats make use of Experiential Data?

11 Sep 2014 secretsecret

How would this bad boy of a deck look like today nord? Any substantial changes?

18 May 2015 Masterkira

@Nordrunner it's not time to a red coats remake ?? :D glacier is back ... ;)

27 May 2015 Nordrunner

@Masterkira Done and posted.