[STARTUP] Running Out of Time: 3rd, 3-1 @ Seattle CO

I would like to open this writeup by thanking @FireRL, @Santa, and @Maninthemoon for both showing me the frame of this amazing list and playing it with me the night before the tournament. I was looking around for something fun to bring, and this became exactly what I was looking for. Playing on a timer you made into your own deck is both really different from normal runner play and really interesting to think around.

(Also because of their help I realized that my 80 card Loup deck probably was a bad idea to bring completely untested. I may or may not be back with this at a later time).

This deck is hilarious. A common tenet of netrunner is how at some point the runner will get to a board state that allows them to get into a server anywhere. Corps fear the fate of "runner inevitability", as installs and credits grow to eclipse the defenses that have been set-up.

This deck does the exact opposite of that. As the game goes longer it's going to get worse and worse for you as the runner.

Mercury goes fast. Also all of their tools are either events or one-time resources. So there's a hard limit to how many accesses you actually can get before you just can't get into a server anymore.

By the end of the game you'll be digging through your heap double checking that you didn't use your last S-Dobrado. Maybe you've got a Mayfly you can draw into, or you end up counting down how many more Bankhar triggers you can afford before you are physically out of cards. This deck will force you to either win early-to-mid game, or cause a frantic search for the last agenda point as you count down how many runs you've got left before the deck just ends.

So that might sound really bad, but I brought this list to the Seattle Startup CO and ended up going 3-1, winning against PD, R+, and AoT, and losing to a different R+. So yeah I'm thinking it's actually kind of ok.

Anyways onto some more details.

Gameplan

It's simple: run a bunch and bypass everything. If you get agendas, bounce ice. If you don't, run some more.

Get money and use it for cool things.

There are two outcomes to this deck:

1. You rip every single agenda before the corp even conceives of its existence.
2. You run out of resources hitting nothing off of HQ and R&D, and then immediately lose.

There is no in-between.

(OK there actually is an in-between and it involves an immense struggle as you attempt to decipher exactly where all the agendas are as your resource timer slowly ticks down with every run made and every ice placed)

The Best Cards

Bankhar carries the list. It's your only "bypass" that actually stays on board, so you're going to be using it a ton. Pair with Red Team to turn cards into accesses and credits all at the same time!

Inside Job, S-Dobrado, Laser Pointer, and Backstitching are the rest of your accessing core. Get into a server, get the bonus access, get agenda, win game. Backstitching (and Laser Pointer, but mostly backstitching) is particularly good since Inside Job and S-Dobrado's first bypass are kind of anti-synergy with Bankhar. If only Spear Phishing was legal :(.

Sneakdoor Beta brings everything together, as it forces the corp to spread ice more evenly between all 3 centrals, instead of just 2. Drop it as a surprise and force extra HQ accesses, or just watch them ice up archives and then laugh as you run HQ normally.

Hermes is good. target one central heavily, then bounce ice on the others make going there easier for you later. Turning a 3 iced R&D into a 2 iced R&D saves you one Backstitching, which is INSANE sometimes.

If you need to bust open a remote, or need to just go for the blind access on a central, use Mayfly.

The Fun Cards

Finality was my "closer" of the deck, and a fun surprise to just check 4-5 cards off the top when you can. I put closer in quotes because in reality I just used it whenever I drew it since the deck's win con is "just rip cards fast" and the endgame is "what endgame?". Cool card, could replace with Eru though if you want to double-down on archives and avoid a 6 iced R&D. You could also just have a 3rd Bankhar but I personally am a fan of simply throwing any semblance of consistency out the window in whatever I build.

I know from the math that Earthrise Hotel > Verbal Plasticity 99% of the time, but verbal ends up pretty good if you spend a click to draw every turn. Having both of them out is also great to keep giving you Bankhar fodder.

Chrysopoeian Skimming GOT ME AN AGENDA IN THE LAST GAME. WOOOOOOOOOOORTH. This card is just fun. Drop it if you want but I love it as an add. With Mercury: Chrome Libertador giving a lot of base multi-access, it's kind of good regardless of which outcome fires.

Some Other Cards

Tread Lightly is kind of cool. I never got a chance to use it due to not drawing it but I can see the appeal. It's great early game if you want to force out money, and a lot of the time it's effectively another copy of an Inside Job.

Abagnale and Curupira are super irrelevant a ton of the time. Maybe don't add them. Instead go for MORE S-DOBRADO and maybe another Laser Pointer or something if you play against Jinteki a lot.

TBH they're not terrible as backup breakers I just never found myself with enough money to even think of remotely using them in more then 1 or 2 scenarios.

Thanks again to @FireRL, @Santa, and @Maninthemoon for the inspiration and a big shoutout to @SMITTYL who both hosted the event and had those great road to startup lists posted as well! The Mercury list he printed is very similar to this one as well, though I think it has a bit more of an endgame plan :).