Waldemar HB - Caprice Version

Satellite Uplink 513

Modified from the Waldemar HB deck played in Germany. Main changes I made were to scrape Influence together to play a Caprice (-1 Tollbooth, -1 Jackson, -1 Wraparound), and to diversify the campaign portfolio to include Rex Campaign (-1 Pad, -1 Eve).

About Mandatory Upgrades: this is a Mandatory Upgrades deck, and probably if any deck is good at scoring Mandatory Upgrades it's this one as it's able to create strong temporary scoring windows with Ash/Herrings and you can often hide installing the Upgrades as you've so much asset economy, meaning you can then triple-advance next turn and only give the runner one turn on red alert to get in.

That said... although this deck is probably as good with Mandatory Upgrades as any deck can be, Mandatory Upgrades is still perhaps the worst card in the deck. I cut a copy for Accelerated Beta Test and I'm convinced that's the right decision. Two Upgrades is ok because if you can see/score one of them then it's Christmas, but you never EVER want to see two of them. In Regionals I played 6 rounds (going 3-3) and scored Upgrades in only 1 of those rounds, which proves that it's entirely non-essential to victory. If there was a more convincing 4/2 agenda I'd probably play that instead.

About Rex Campaign: switching Pad and Eve for Rex has two impacts. The first is that it speeds up my economy a little (and I think most runners see value in trashing Eve so she's only good if you've got multiple Encryption Protocols out). The second is that it fights Valencia - I played against her once and installed Rex on turn 1 behind a Datapike. The runner bounced off the Datapike, Rex fired and cleared the BP, and I walked to victory. I think Rex Campaign is a weak card but it fits very well into this deck and the added value of clearing BP makes it a worthwhile change.

About Architect: this card is nuts. That is all.

All in all, I think this deck is borderline competitive in a high end tournament - it has a lot of tools at its disposal but when a Runner is really strong you just can't hold them out long enough. I don't consider 3-3 a failure as the competition level was high throughout the Regionals, but it was my 6-0 Runner that took me to the Top 8, not my Corp deck.

9 comments
18 May 2015 linuxmaier

Did this place in a regional? It's still listed as a tournament deck.

18 May 2015 linuxmaier

Oops, just noticed that you said it did at the end of your description.

18 May 2015 Satellite Uplink

@linuxmaier I made into Top 8 with the deck although, as I say in my comments, the Maxx deck did most of the heavy lifting. :-)

18 May 2015 unitled

I made top 8 in Edinburgh with a similar-ish version of this (no Caprice). I'm sure Stu will be posting the decklists soon, but a few of us who brought HB on the day agreed Breaker Bay Grid is plain old ridiculous in this deck. I managed a turn one install of Eve, then had a runner hit an Architect which let me put the grid on Eve and rez second turn; an Eve rezzed for +2 creds basically!

I also ended up switching 3 Encryption Protocols for 2 Enhanced Login Protocol and an Interns. The former was a great addition, if nothing else it will help you cancel the truly vile Hacktivist Meeting.

18 May 2015 Satellite Uplink

I'm also not a fan of Encryption Protocols... I can see why they're good here but I think their taxation effect is minimal as often the runner's not tangling with your stuff anyway, or can absorb the extra few credits. I can definitely see those as spare slots for me to think about making changes, and likewise I think I could get away with one Crisium Grid.

Breaker Bay Grid - it feels like an asset economy card that's only good at making a couple of your other asset economy cards good, so I don't feel much value. I think there's probably a lot of PERCEIVED value when you rez Eve, but I'm not sure that value is much more than you would otherwise have got from replacing Breaker Bay with another economy card, and the flipside is that you've heavily restricted what you can do with the economy you get from that card slot.

18 May 2015 unitled

On first brush I would have agreed with you on BBG, but with some first hand experience I managed to do two free asset rezzes a couple of times (two eves!), and even if you don't have that you can slap it in your scoring remote to be able to Rez Ash, Red Herrings (/Caprice) for free too, possibly throwing off the runner's maths.

Certainly bears further testing, and I'm not ruling out that, as you say, it's of pretty narrow use!

18 May 2015 Satellite Uplink

@unitled I'd be more inclined to do something like this... netrunnerdb.com

-3 Encryption Protocol -1 Crisium Grid -1 Bastion

+2 Enhanced Login Protocol +1 Pad Campaign +1 Will o Wisp +1 Wraparound

18 May 2015 unitled

@Satellite Uplink I think the problem here, is that you've added ANOTHER card in Will-o'-the-Wisp that works really well with Breaker Bay Grid ;)

I'm going to have to test Caprice I think, it seems you could easily 'triple lock' a server with one each of Red Herrings, Ash and Caprice (then with some recursion in interns or Vitruvius counters you can replenish the upgrades if they ever run low). We just need an upgrade tutor now!

19 May 2015 Satellite Uplink

@unitled it's another Breaker Bay target, but you'd never put Will into the Eve server, so Breaker Bay would only ever rez one of them for you. So, yes, it's another 1-off Breaker target but doesn't help a Breaker rez multiple things. I just think the Bay is worse than comparable economy - I'd play Rex or something like Successful Demonstration/Restructuring first, I think.