The Grug in the Room

Older Grug once say important things. Younger Grug not forget. More important, younger Grug cannot forget. He tries and tries, but the demon spirit does not die. It spread like mind virus and now Grugs all listen to old Grug:

1. install breakers expensive and slow

2. grug not want install breaker

3. kit make ice code gate so play kit and strong decoder

New cards make Older Grug very happy. This is new demon. Demon must go bye-bye. So younger Grug use brain one more time. He listened to the voices again. He remembered:

1. sometimes grug themself!

2. sadly, often grug themself

3. so grug say again and say often: complexity very, very bad

Grug must go lower and make Grug, Grug. Who better to Grug, Grug, then Grug?!?!?!

The answer is simple: Grug Grid

A Wolf, Whale, and Peddler Walk Into a VYR

This is the corp deck I made in preparation for the first NANPC event. The deck ended up going 3-1, with the wins(Grug, Tao, Gnat) sprinting to victory and the loss going to a very well prepared Grug food and wine paired with a ghastly agenda order. Generally on JNET, it rounded off right around 68% WR, which seemed quite good given the new corp meta difficulty.

I was fairly certain that Lobisomem, Burner, and Cataloguer were going to be meta warping and that was confirmed this weekend. It is everywhere and tbh, it is a sick deck / tech. All the usual tricks weren't working against the decks, so I needed to go lower. Much lower. So low that it seemed like I paid for a Trojan horse to trash an Orca, without actually doing that.

A Sure Gamble

Many of these failed tricks involved having the runner make untimely decisions and/or things that rhymed with "they won't", which is a bad gameplan. Some of those included:

• Trojan horse: Omegalul paying 8-10 ain't it. Red Light
• Neurostasis: People were getting baited by this quite a bit, especially with Trick Shot in play. However, they can be trashed for 1 in R&D and they don't allow any SDS combos. Orange Light
• Self Growth Program / Retribution: These were decent options, but people were being responsible about clearing tags + I think people had the fear of See How They Run. Yellow Light and finally
• Zato City Grid: Grug loves this one! No hard math, you can't even use it on centrals (less decisions), combos with SDS (double complexity demon spirit for runner), and three to trash from R&D is good, and if the runner is only running the remote as a last resort you can ETR with it instead of trashing. Green Light

Like any important meal, we have the main course done. On to the appetizers:

ORder Up / HORs d'oeuvre

It is always important to iterate and progress throughout your deckbuilding life cycle. Last year, I was particularly focusing on "whenever", as that's one of the most broken keywords in Netrunner. For this year, I went with "Or". A brief presentation:

• Above the Law: You can trash a resource or not
• SDS: You can trash this program or that
• Predictive Planogram: This was the most important addition to the deck in testing. You can draw or money. 95% draw, even with 4-5 cards in hand.
• Reduced Service: You can install this on HQ or R&D. The card doesn't say that, but I did. That's where it goes and then the runner says their "Oh Nos" out loud.
• Crisium Grid: You can install this on the complementary server to Reduced Service or Archives. Early game / against Burner decks, you put it on HQ (preventing R&D things early is rarely good and mainly an effort to protect your RegCaps, which you can't score early anyways). Otherwise it mainly goes on Archives, which protects your Reduced Service target and shuts off good archives targets which there are many of. R&D gets it if the Ikea Cabinet is present and only in the mid to late game.
• Border Control: This is a two-fer! You can install it on R&D or HQ (see my reduced service email). You can trash the card to ETR or not.
• Descent: Vastly exceeded my expectations and I'm all here for it. At its core, you can expend it or install it. But there is so much more! You can use it as Botulus bait or as a Bankhar blocker. You can use it as defense or return it to hand for audacity cards on demand. Leave it at the innermost to check them after runners go through all your expensive ice, or toss it in the front to say no to Kit. Get creative!
• Piranhas: You can draw a card or not. Be like Grug - only draw. This card rocks and I like it way more than Valentao.
• Ballista: See me previous Zato email. Or don't

Desserts

Aside from the above, y'all got this:

• Score agendas and be risky with your non RegCaps early. Use 'em as less than ideal Zato bait (SDS supreme leader) and don't be afraid to do an early audacity to score one out. If you are doing Audacity late, it is probably not going well.
• Only make a remote if you have the cards early and are going against Crim / Anarch. Remote is cheese fondue fountain - it will only be there for Zato or cheeky omegalul Above the Law gottem. Shaper too good so you need the hell ice on centrals.
• Ice placement is one of the hardest things about this deck. Fortunately, this entirely depends on your opponent. Here's my cheat sheet Crim = Put all the code gates together so they actually read Shibboleth. 1x Trebuchet on Archives so the dirty laundry /// Shaper = HQ early and R&D late, BCs always on HQ. Ballista on remote because Trick Shot become Trick get got /// Anarch = Equal spread. Your upgrades are more important to place correctly than the ice. Descent and Code Gates if you suspect Botulus is about to drop /// Esa = you actually want a remote because they will still be saying "let me get my combo out" when you've scored 4 points with a single Descent remote ///
• The one card that didn't make the cut, but did okay in testing was Quarantine System. Sometimes you are Gruging yourself when either the runner is too busy playing with their legos or not running a diverse suite of servers, which makes you sad and unable to score RegCaps. Quarantine good for forcing ice Rez / that first hostile is a blank 2/0 for Econ, so it being a blood sacrifice is okay. I will return for you my child once I have the slots.

Weyland Job Done. Onto to Jinteki for now. Everyone go to Boston: https://alwaysberunning.net/tournaments/4107/nanpc-boston

See you on computer television program soon.