Regionals Pre-Report

Welcome to my new Android: Netrunner blog!  I had originally made a website focused on the ins and outs of the FFG Netrunner game but have since decided to focus more on a blog style approach.  The benefit to this is that I can post at my own leisure and not worry about trying to satisfy the masses but rather post a few times a week based on playtesting sessions and discussions with my playgroup.  It may end up being more than a few times a week some weeks and may end up being once a week for others.  Point is, I'm going to provide you with the best information possible as often as I possibly can.  Anyway, enough about what this is going to be moving forward and on to what it is actually is; a blog about Netrunner.

First thing first, this weekend is my local regional.  I'm pretty blessed this year in that my local game store in Morgantown, WV has recently got into FFG LCGs and lobbied pretty hard for regionals for various LCGs. That said, this will be my first year attending a FFG regional event and I couldn't possibly be more excited for it.  I come from a pretty competitive gaming background, playing professionally in games such as VS System, Magic the Gathering, and the WoW CCG.  I've done quite well in the past and I can say without a doubt that Netrunner is one of the best games that I have ever played and can't wait to get a little more serious with it.  Anyway, my friend Zach Cavis and I have spent a ton of time testing the game and figuring out what the best strategies are and have come to the same conclusions that many others have had:

First, Haas-Bioroid and Weyland are the two best corps decks.

and

Secondly, Noise-Shop and Aggro Criminal are the two best runner decks.

I know, I know, not the inside information you were looking for but the truth of the matter is that that's just how the game is right now.  There's been plenty of HB decks listed so I won't bore you with the details but basically fast advance style of approach is the best way to go about it.  With the printing of Trick of Light, and basically every deck already playing Ice Wall, it's very easy to score agenda's out of your hand in a single turn, even 4 cost agendas.  HB is the best at this because they also have in-faction access to Biotic Labor which is more or less a 4 cost Trick of Light that doesn't require you to already have advancement counters on ICE.  So basically, you have two different "combos," which only take 1 and 6 credits:

1-credit:  Place an agenda (gaining 1 from ID), advance, Trick of Light; score.
6-credit:  Place an agenda (gaining 1 from ID), Biotic Labor, advance x3, score.

Both of these approaches are impossible to stop once it's the corps turn so there aren't many ways to attack them.  So.  What are the ways to attack this style of deck?  Well the answer is obvious in theory but much harder in practice.  To slow down this deck, you need to constantly apply pressure to their central servers (which is a recurring them with the Runner that we'll talk about later).  Gabriel is good at this because he wants to attack the hand from various angles as it is, and Noise is good at it because you can easily Parasite the low cost, efficient ICE that HB already wants to run.  The Shapers are a little less good at this because you're incredibly slow to get set up and you're typically more geared to run remotes and R&D.  Shapers don't gain anything from running HQ unless you splash out of faction cards like Nerve Agent that aren't typically good in those style of decks.  Inherently, I believe that's why Gabe and Noise are the best runner decks, even though Gabe hasn't gained anything of value for at least two data packs now.

The other Corp deck that I feel is the strongest is Weyland Tag-and-Bag.  I've logged a ton of games with this deck and you win by damage 80% of time and by Agendas the other 20%.  I've also seen a bunch of Weyland decks that only run 2 Scorched Earth or even none at all and that is absolutely 100% wrong.  It's easily their best card and should be run x3 every single time.  Weyland is also the deck that I'll be piloting at regionals on Saturday.  Let me supply my deck list before I get into specifics:

Identity:
Weyland Consortium: Because We Built It (A Study in Static)


Total Cards: (49)

Agenda: (11)
Government Contracts (A Study in Static) x3
Project Atlas (What Lies Ahead) x3
Posted Bounty (Core) x2
Hostile Takeover (Core) x3

Asset: (2)
PAD Campaign (Core) x2

ICE: (21)
Ice Wall (Core) x3
Shadow (Core) x3
Hadrian's Wall (Core) x1
Data Raven (Core) x3 ■■
Tollbooth (Core) x2 ■■
Archer (Core) x3
Wall of Static (Core) x2
Caduceus (What Lies Ahead) x3
Hunter (Core) x1

Operation: (15)
Commercialization (Cyber Exodus) x3
Beanstalk Royalties (Core) x3
Hedge Fund (Core) x3
Scorched Earth (Core) x3
SEA Source (Core) x2 ■■
Anonymous Tip (Core) x1 ■

Upgrade: (0)

Total Agenda Points: 20

Influence Values Totals -
Haas-Bioroid: 0
Jinteki: 0
NBN: 15
The Weyland Consortium: 39

Okay, so, some card choices:

1.)No Oversight AI.  That was in the deck originally until we figured out that it just wasn't needed.  Sure, it's pretty sweet on Archer but more often than not we'll have scored a Hostile Takeover by the time that matters.  Sure, it's fine on Tollbooth, but that isn't very hard to break.  Only other option is Hadrian's Wall and again that's not too daunting either.  So, we cut them in favor of the Anonymous Tip and a Hunter and have loved the changes.

2.)Operation based economy.  In my experiences with the deck, I've never really liked Assets in it.  I know that there are 2 PADs in the deck but that's more out of necessity than actually wanting them in there.  You'll gain most of your money off of Commercialization and Hedge Funds and that's perfectly fine.  Unfortunately, since you'll either want to advance an ICE every turn, or set something up, Melange isn't very good in the deck.  I've tried it and it just doesn't really work out for you.

3.)SEA Source+ Scorched Earth.  The way that games play out is that you'll score a Hostile Takeover or two, probably a Project Atlas and maybe a Government Contracts.  You'll have forfeited your HT to rez an Archer and will be in the drivers seat to winning.  What your opponent will have to do is spend a good bit of his credits getting through a remote to stop you from scoring another Project Atlas which will drain him of credits and leave him open to get SEA Sourced out.  This isn't a dream scenario, it's just what typically happens.  If your games are vastly different then you're probably doing something wrong.  This deck is particularly good against Noise decks as they're broke a good bit of the time as most of their economy is Stimhack based.  On their stimhack turn, assuming you aren't dead, you can almost always win on the following turn.  Add in that Noise is weak to tags and you have yourself a pretty favorable matchup.  Gabriel is a little harder because he can play around Archer quite well.  What I like to do against Gabe is pop a Data Raven and/or Shadow in HQ to provide protection against Account Siphon.  You can drain most of your credits into a Trace ICE and minimize the effects of their best card.  Also, never install Archer until you are sure that you can rez it.  Getting your best ice Forced Activation Orders'ed is embarrassing.  

Finally, the runner side of things.  As I said before I feel that Gabe and Noise are by far the two best runners.  Noise is technically better because Anarchs just have better cards overall but Gabe is a little bit more forgiving of your miscues.  If you mess up on a big turn with Noise or not use your Workshop properly (or never draw it) then you're going to lose more often than not.  Here's the Noise deck that I plan to take to regionals.  Again, I've logged tons of games with this deck and am very comfortable to talk about it and field questions:

Identity:
Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire (Core) 


Total Cards: (45)

Event: (11)
Deja Vu (Core) x3 
Stimhack (Core) x3 
Easy Mark (Core) x2 ■
Sure Gamble (Core) x3 

Hardware: (4)
Grimoire (Core) x3 
Dyson Mem Chip (Trace Amount) x1 

Program: (20)
Crypsis (Core) x3 
Femme Fatale (Core) x1 ■
Corroder (Core) x1 
Parasite (Core) x3 
Datasucker (Core) x3 
Medium (Core) x2 
Nerve Agent (Cyber Exodus) x2 
Djinn (Core) x2 
Imp (What Lies Ahead) x3 

Resource: (10)
Personal Workshop (Cyber Exodus) x2 ■■■■
Aesop's Pawnshop (Core) x2 ■■
Wyldside (Core) x3 
Armitage Codebusting (Core) x3 

Influence Values Totals - 
Anarch: 58 
Criminal: 3
Shaper: 12

This is very much like a standard list for Noise decks.  The Corroder has been everything from an Infiltration to a Yog but ultimately I want the barrier breaker just in case.  Using Crypsis to break everything gets a little taxing sometimes so you just want basically anything else to help out from time to time.

Well, thanks for reading and hope to get some viewers for future blog posts!  Can't wait to post a tournament report!