Root Cause - Hemorrhage

Root Cause is a series of bi-weekly Android: Netrunner articles about deck building, strategy and tactical decision, for new and mid-level Anarch players. It was named in honor of Sam "Root" Groves, the character from CBS' show Person of Interest.

We recently got our new 4 influence card and it is already bringing Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire back to the business in some environments. Hemorrhage pressures the Corp to trash cards from HQ, making it an unsafe place to keep agendas without requiring you to run HQ - it smells like a card that you can base a deck on it, right?

(I hope Scud isn't writing a similar article... )

What makes Hemorrhage so unique is that it hurts the Corp regardless of which server you're running. You can "farm" virus tokens from the Archives or from a PAD Campaign if they leave those servers unprotected. But what makes it even better, and that's what I think people are overlooking, is that they stack. If you have 3 copies of Hemorrhage installed, running twice allows you to trash three cards from HQ. That's a huge advantage.

But first, in order to make Hemorrhage trash agendas, we need to make sure they'll be at HQ. To assure that, you must pressure the other server that, somehow, keeping agendas at HQ will be the best option for the Corp. The Archives server itself is fine, so you don't need any extra pressure there rather than the Hemorrhage itself. The R&D server can be pressured by either Medium or Keyhole, our old friends. All that's left are the remote servers.

Different Corps use their remotes differently, and you want your strategy to fit any of these uses. They'll either install agendas and bluff with traps, score from hand (a.k.a. fast advance) and use their remotes as least as possible, or build "super server" with high strenght pieces of ICE.

Don't waste my time.

There's not many ways to prevent the Corp from bluffing. You can either trash the traps before they are installed (which is kinda of a slippery slope rather than a strategic plan, "you must pressure the HQ in order to be able to pressure the HQ better"), keep the Corp poor (which, again, requires running HQ most of the time), or exposing the trap rather than facechecking it.

The exposing alternative is particularly interesting with Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter, as her ability has some synergy with Blackguard, and there's a good amount of people exploring such synergy. Giving more utility for your exposes (work as a "trap denial" rather than a "credit denial") makes that archetype even better. I still ain't sure about the potential of this archetype, but I had been wrong before.

Next week we will also be getting our in-faction anti-trap card: Singularity. While it is very expensive to use just to make sure that unprotected 2 advances remote server that might be a Cerebral Overwritter, Singularity strenght comes from its versatile, as you can use it to deny upgrades.

Astro Crush!

Most fast advance decks currently rely on SanSan City Grid to score agendas from hand. Some Haas-Bioroid players use Ash 2X3ZB9CY to keep their stuff safe, and - with Double Time coming next week - a lot of people is scared with those decks splashing Caprice Nisei. All those stuff can be beaten by Singularity, or Whizzard: Master Gamer, in spite of the last one requiring you to win the "psi game" (we don't have a direct answer for that yet).

The other main weapon of fast advance decks, specially Haas-Bioroid ones, is Biotic Labor. It allows you to score stuff from hand without ever having to leave a remote server for the Runner to run. Of course, you can use Hemorrhage to make the Corp discard the Biotic Labor waiting for an agenda, or vice-versa.

But we know this is not good enough - the Corp chooses which card to discard, so it is very unlikely they'll discard what you want them to. That's why Imp is so good: trashing dangerous operations. It helps you to slow down the Corp, and also protects you against Scorched Earth, Punitive Counterstrike, etc.

At last, you can use the not-so-popular alternative of using The Source to prevent the Corp from scoring from hand while trashing agendas with Keyhole, in order to keep your The Source installed during the entire game.

The Art of War

Using big remote servers is not that popular now, and I don't think it is very likely to become an S tier strategy, but we can't just ignore it. As most of our icebreakers have fixed strenght, not even a pocket-Stimhack will be enough to threat well protected remotes. We will have to use the old Sun Tzu strategy: divide and conquer.

The best way to attack a single server is to force the Corp to protect as many servers as possible. Not only Parasite does a great job punishing fragile servers, but a pair of Datasucker farming virus tokens will severely reduce the costs of running a big server, and that is already a reason to force the Corp to spread ICE rather than concentrate.

If you're afraid of purges, you can build a more versatile to allow your Stimhack to be an actual threat. Remember Steven Wooley's rig, Corroder/Ninja/Zu.13 Key Master? No one is safe when facing the best in their business.

If you want to play something new and unexpected, Fear and Loathing brought you Quest Completed and Blackmail, but I'll leave those for Scud.

(link for Scud's article on Quest Completed here)

Checkmate in three.

If you look closely, you'll see that my solution against one archetype can be used against the others too. Imp can be used to trash those strong pieces of ICE. So can Keyhole. Datasucker is good at pretty much any deck. The truth is that no one can threat all servers as strong as we do - Criminal has to borrow R&D Interface, Shaper has to borrow Account Siphon, while we already have Medium and Vamp to do the dirty job.

If you want to lead your Anarch deck to the top, you need to abuse this strenght. Pressuring all servers at the same time will not only make your Hemorrhage deck good, but it will always be one of the best strategy for any deck, any faction. Don't forget that. Ever.
As the spoilers will likely leak this weekend, I wish you all a happy ending of the Spin Cycle. I'll see you guys at my next Corp article, or at the Double Time review.

João "Hraklea" Almeida is a brazilian amateur card game player, and the responsible for the Android: Netrunner league, in partnership with Lojas Jambô, in Porto Alegre - RS. He's aware that this article is too short, but the Spin Cycle is not helping to bring new issues to the table. He is currently playing Tag Floatting and Supermodernism.