Nightmare Moon: Friendship, Upgraded (1st @ NorCal regional)

10/10 deck name.

Estelle Moon is ridiculously busted and will end up on mwl tier 3, calling it out now.

Still needs a good deckbuilder and pilot to use her full potential, so congratz.

Could you explain your ice choices a little? I'm just curious how you arrived at this particular mix.

Congratulations on winning a 2014 Regionals with this list! Looks really solid.

Ronaldinho!! Congratulations, man.

Ronald Five straight up beat me. 10/10 would lose to again.

The third Clone Suffrage Movement was crucial in our matchup, and the NAPD definitely put me on tilt. I was playing and expecting the established Moonites list and didn't mentally readjust in time; in retrospect, seeing the Turtlebacks should have made me stop and think a bit harder! Great game though.

@TR1S @guy.brush @yeoda Thank you!!

@FightingWalloon With Sandburg and so few ice slots I needed most of them to be actual gear checks. And Fairchild 3.0 and Architect are hard to break and inflict ridiculous facecheck penalties so they also earn slots.

@Zankoku Thanks, it's actually a tribute to @sirris's regional win in San Rafael 3 years ago. Hopefully someone can post a comment when @Alsciende adds the 2017 regionals category so that I know to update the tag.

Thanks for the great games @tzeentchling and @sirris! Finding a way to win through all the hate was really fun and definitely boosted my confidence through the rest of the tournament.

How did you know who I was!?

Thanks for the game and I will forever regret not playing Andromeda for this tournament just for better opening hands hahaha.

@tmoiynmwg Thanks for reminding me! Tags added.

congrats Timmy! This match up is so hard that I took a long time to think, I never thought there will be a game where I had to say to you 'sorry I have to take a bit longer to think' lol

omg Timmy I definitely didn't know what's going on in your deck. ONE AAL, ONE ARCHITECT, TWO FRIENDS, this is insane

@Segin Saw ya posting on Slack. It was great playing with you!

@Alsciende Awesome!

@crfluency Ronald demands sacrifice from his true believers ;-)

"You don't need to think that hard on your first turn. It's only Leela! What's the worse that can happen?"

Turn 1 click 1 run R&D and steals Global Food Initiative

"Whelp it happened."

@tmoiynmwg. When Timmy Wong, Deck Builder extraordinaire, starts to play asset spam, something breaks in me.

On another note, really solid choices, Ronald Five and Encryption Protocol paired with Friends in High Places is a match made in Hell!

P.S. You know that you have a degenerate deck when you see Mumba Temple in the list :(.

P.P.S. @tmoiynmwg, I think that you just destroyed the European Nationals :D.

@tmoiynmwg What are your thoughts on scarcity over ELP? It seems to me like the biggest threats to this deck are durdle shapers or Geist where the click tax doesn't matter either because Beth is on the table or they use the Conman breakers to bypass FC3. Seems like the ability to slow their setup down would be more helpful than click taxing them late game.

Is the deckname a My Little Pony reference? My, ummm, daughter wants to know.

@TR1S I would assume against the 'durdle shapers' your talking about, you can use ELP to help score a 3/2 off the table, if they are too focused on setting up and ignoring your assets.

I sleeved this up and played a few matches with this thing and it is absolute poison in the most beautiful way possible. So many lines and options at all times once you get built up. Person I was playing against gave up on my Estelle Moons and recurring FIHP/CSM bullshit and I cashed her in for 19 cards and 38 credits during their turn, rezzed Smartfabrics and 5 other things, showed them GFI out of HQ and gg.

There is something very wrong when Whizzard can't keep up with asset spam. What chance does any other runner have? FiHP is extremely broken, probably Estelle Moon too. I guess in a tournament, you play to win. But casually on Jinteki.net, I wish people would stop playing decks they know are broken.

Everyone is running slums to counter asset spam decks. But this one in particular may call for a long-forgotten card to deal with it..........Archives Interface. Some of the biggest threats (FiHP, BioLab, AAL, Moon) are either not assets or can be used during a run and are thus immune to slums/whiz. The deck runs paper-thin ice, so getting into archives regularly isn't a problem. Granted slums/whiz/hacktivist/rumormill SHOULD be able to destroy this deck, the fact that it can't is basically 100% proof the deck is 100% degenerate and broken. BUT imagine this matchup when you only get to use AAL or moon or FiHP or BioLab ONCE and then they are gone forever. This also removes the threat of Clone Sufferage movement without actually bothering to trash the card itself. It also removes Login Protocol from the equation AND gets around Hellion Beta Test because you aren't actually trashing the cards in archives. It's probably worth testing out, especially if this deck ends up like CtM was a worlds last year (nothing but 1 asset spam deck and nothing but whizzard in the hopes of countering it).

Archives interface even gets around ronald 5 and best of all isn't limited to once a turn like slums. You can drop it then run archives 3 times and permanently remove 3 major threats in one turn without having to pay ANY money other that getting into archives.

@metafoxx, I think you might be onto something--I'll probably experiment with an Archives Interface, though I think Salsette is a quicker response.

Also, happy to see 48 players at the regional. Hopefully we can get similiar numbers down here in Georgia. Good stuff, NorCal!

Lovely deck, Timmy.

I have one issue: where's the bloody MLP:FIM pic in the description?!?

@TR1S Probably not, as ELP is way too important against disruptive runners like Whizzard.

@kevo31415 Amazing. Do take care not to deck yourself!

@WhyohWhy @metafoxx While HB spam is quite resilient there are definitely some effective counters available. I think it should die down a bit soon. This week might be pretty rough on Jnet though :-/

@BobAloVskI @spags I've long resisted the trend of posting clickbaity pictures in my decklists. However, if someone can find an appropriate image I could make an exception in this case. :-)

The name is disturbingly appropriate. Great deck, 10/10, would not play against again.

Hi, beginner here. Could somebody plz do a write up about the essentials as to how to pilot this deck? Thx!

@erasureheadI don't really recommend this deck for beginners as it's not a good encapsulation of Netrunner fundamentals. But basically you want to create and install as many servers as you can, forcing the Runner to trash things like Estelle Moon and Clone Suffrage Movement. ETF's ability, Turtlebacks, and Estelle Moon will make you rich by midgame and gives you the ability to keep installing and rezzing things, recurring them with Friends in High Places or Jackson Howard as needed. Eventually the Runner loses the ability to keep up and your Clone Suffrage Movements will bring back Biotic Labors so you score 3/2's over and over again, and more Friends in High Places.

That's a really basic writeup of the main goal of the deck. I'm sure the author can articulate it better than me, tho.

@kevo31415 thx for your quick reply. Should have been a little more explicit...I'm a beginner compared to the people creating decks like this, but I have been playing for a little while and know the main archetypes, though I don't have experience playing all of them. The general idea of asset spam is known to me and I've played some IG prison on jnet. I wanted more of the finer details about piloting this deck that aren't obvious to me, which seem obvious to more experienced players. E.g. everybody says there's thousands of triggers to think about...which ones are easy to miss but important not to?

I took this deck for a spin a few times this morning on jnet...had a couple crashes and then a good win. On that last game I couldn't believe how the combo of Clone Sufferage Movement + Diversified Portfolio was netting me 10-15 Credits per turn. It ended spectacularly 7-6 with a suprise Architect + Sandburg rez (financially unbreakable for runner because of Sandburg + ~50 credits after CSM+DP) ->Agenda install on Runner's last click, then an AAL->Jeeves install + Biotic Labor enabling the advancing and scoring of GFI on one turn. First game had no ice even after a mulligan and the runner dug with Maker's eye, scoring two agendas and got a third out of HQ in the second turn. I still scored four agenda point before he got the seventh, tho. In the second game the econ just didn't come till too late.

People talk about this deck (and others) going undefeated. I agree asset spams are monsters once they get going, but don't know what you do if you can't get some early econ and ice going, which seems to happen to me not too seldomly. You can only mulligan once. If you don't get an ice on the mulligan and recurring criminal siphons you after each of your three clicks for three credits to try to get back in the game, seems like you're finished...at least I am, when it happens to me.

If anybody could point out the details of piloting this deck, combos to think about, main targets for friends, etc. I would love to hear it. Thx!

Other questions I have would be: what are the main cards to mulligan for and what to do when playing against slums, hacktivist & rumor mill (only 2 ELPs against ~4 RM+Hacktivist and no Lizzy for slums, so...)?

The mulligan is matchup-dependent, but like most corps you're generally looking for economy assets (Estelle, Temple, Turtlebacks), ice, and not too many agendas. Try to be ready to score or play ELP at almost all times so that you can clear a runner current. You can either simply outpace Slums, or trash it with Hellion Beta Test if you can provoke the runner into trashing a second card during their turn.

The sheer number of options available here make it very difficult for me to give a detailed strategy guide. Your goal should be to maximize the efficiency of every click while playing around possible threats from the runner and devising a plan to win the game. If you enjoy the deck, I can only recommend playing it as often as you can without upsetting your opponents, and discovering all the fun tricks yourself!

@tmoiynmwg : this deck is a masterpiece ! Could you just elaborate on the presence of Lakshmi Smartfabrics ?

There is very little ice so it seems the only way to score is FA with Biotic Labor and retrieving it. But there's only one and what if it's on the bottom of your deck? Is it possible to win then?

@Skandrino Don't know what the Experts have to say about this, but personally, I also shell-game quite a lot with this deck...after you get a bunch of servers installed, and have several unrezzed, many runners give up running all of them, so I occasionally slap down a naked ABT or Vitruvius amongst the others and adv,adv,adv,score next turn. Biotic labor+adv,adv,adv is expensive and I usually save that for a winning score. That being said, I have been running a 54 card version of this deck with 10 ICE, 2 Div. Portfolios, and 2 Biotic labors.

@solknar Lakshmi has saved my butt with this deck a number of times (see above re naked agendas). If you've got a second ABT or Vitruvius in Hand and a Lakshmi installed, the naked agenda install is a sure thing.

How do the Experts weigh in on this?

Nice suggestion, will try playing it like that, thanks!

Thanks! One more question, how do you score GFI? Even with Biotic Labor and Jeeves, install + score is 6 clicks and you only have 5.

@Skandrino Again, we'll have to wait for the Experts to weigh in, but GFI is, I think, as a 5/3 mostly in the deck to help reduce agenda density. I usually end up putting it on the bottom of R&D with Daily Business Show or discarding it and popping Jackson. However, as I posted above, I did also manage to advance and score it in one turn once w/ a combination of Architect, AAL->Jeeves, and Biotic labor. Your mileage may vary.

@tmoiynmwgWith new data packs released are there some changes you make with those new cards.

I would definitely try to fit in MCA Austerity Policy, that card seems bonkers strong. Other recent options you could look at are Warroid Tracker and Bioroid Work Crew. Cut whatever cards you find least helpful.

I would recommend Bioroid Work Crew. If your opponent is on Rumor Mill it can be hard to score an agenda without it being on the table. With Bioroid Work Crew (and it not being unique) you can score a 3/2 or 4/2 from hand after playing a Biotic Labor.