Root Cause - Strategy Planning

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.

Now that Reina Roja, Freedom Fighter is our hands (actually, I don't have one in my hand right now, thanks you, brazilian taxes!), all Anarch players are building decks and sharing them everywhere. But I keep seeing the same mistake over and over - the same mistake I used to make when I started playing, so I cannot blame those who make it now. The thing is that new players have a hard time understanding the difference between their strategy and their goal.

If you ever watched a business management class, you probably heard the vision/mission/values/strategy speech. We don't need to go that far (and honestly, I never payed attention to that crap). I'll keep it simple: a strategy is your way to win the game, but your goal is to win the game, not to successful implement your strategy.

Ok, this last sentence might have confused you a little. Let's go for the example.

This is the deck building process that I have seen in 90% of the Reina Roja, Freedom Fighter decks posted in the last two weeks: "Reina's ability is good to leave the Corp without credits, so I'll build a credit denial deck. What denial credits? Well, Account Siphon + Vamp + Emergency Shutdown + Crescentus + Rook + Xanadu + Deja Vu + Same Old Thing. I'll put 3 copies of each, because I really want to see the Corp poor!". Sounds like a plan, right? But remember that leaving the Corp with zero credits doesn't win the game, what wins the game is stealing agendas, regardless of how many credits the Corp has (it isn't even a tie breaker).

This is what will actually happen if you focus your deck purely in setting your strategy rather than winning the game:

- In some games, you'll manage to keep the Corp with zero credits every turn, but your hand will be filled with credit denial cards, so you will not have the cards you need to be aggressive and take advantage of the situation;

- In other games, the Corp will find a room to rezz something or score a relevant agenda and you'll be in a situation where you need something else to handle it, but you'll only draw credit denial cards;

- At the last games, the Corp will manage to protect the HQ properly and you'll get stuck with a lot of credit denial cards that won't hurt a rich Corp.

Reality never lies.

If you don't believe me, take your time to look around you. Which was the deck that dominated the Plugged In Tour and the World Championship Weekend? That's right, the Andromeda, Dispossessed Ristie deck. The Criminal faction is considered by many the master of credit denial, but how many card Andy needed to keep Corps under control? Only Account Siphon and Emergency Shutdown, and some people weren't using 3 copies of Emergency Shutdown.

Remember when people started saying that Same Old Thing was "a broken 5 out of 5 card that should never be released ZOMG!!1!"...? Now, how many Criminal players use it? Almost none. Why? Because they learned that being aggressive in that 1~2 turns that the Corp is poor is far better than keeping the Corp poor every turn at the cost of not being aggressive enough to win.

Poor vs Broken

Another thing that you must keep in mind when designing a credit denial deck is the concept of poverty. It seems that new players believe that poverty means "never having any money", while the actual concept of poor is "someone who doesn't have money to pay for his or her basic needs". You don't to deny all credits - only enough credits to make them poor.

Follow me - if I build a Corp deck without any economy card, you would say that my economy sucks, wouldn't you? I hope so. Now, if a Corp without economy cards is a poor Corp, then denying the net income from the Corp's economy cards is enough for a credit denial deck to set its plan. Sounds a lot easier than keeping the Corp with zero credits all the time, doesn't it?

The Economic Tripod

Operation based economy: You can take it as a fact, everybody uses Hedge Fund, not to mention Beanstalk Royalties, Celebrity Gift, etc. Those are what some people call "burst economy", they give you a huge amount of credits in a single click. The best way to deal with this is using the same sort ("burst") of credit denial, like Vamp and Emergency Shutdown. You might also want to use Imp, as it can trash those operation before the Corp play them.

Asset based economy: The most obvious tip here is to use Whizzard, Master Gamer over Reina Roja, Freedom Fighter. I really don't like Scrubber so, if trashing assets is a problem for you, I'd recommend you to stay with Imp. Following the same logic as before, the best way to counter a sustained income is by using sustained "credit-sinks", like Rook and Xanadu. And remember that self-tag resources are a form of sustained denial, as leaving a Data Leak Reverse and/or a Joshua B. on the board will give you a huge advantage.

ICE based economy: Some might disagree with me, but I trully believe that the strongest economy card in Android: Netrunner is Pop-up Window. If you're thinking about economy control, you should be worried about it. You can either trash it before it gets installed (Imp) or after (Parasite), so take the option that fits your deck better. Its partners in crime, Shadow and Caduceus, can be broken, but I wouldn't curse someone for trashing them too.

Countering your Meta

I'll give you an example to show you how you're supposed to think when designing your deck. I don't need a large sample to show you, so I'll take the last Plugged In Tour report decks (link here) and pretend they are my meta. These are the economy cards they used (you won't have access to your opponents deck list, so part of this process will be guessing when you'll do it):

- Operations (total: 24) -
12x Hedge Fund
3x Beanstalk Royalties
3x Celebrity Gift
3x Green Level Clearence
3x Successful Demonstration

- Assets (total: 21) -
6x Adonis Campaign
4x Melange Mining Corp
3x Eve Campaign
3x Marked Accounts
3x PAD Campaign
2x Private Contracts

- Pieces of ICE (total: 7) -
3x Caduceus
3x Pop-up Window
1x Shadow

- So, five decks are 245 cards, where 52 of them were economy cards, meaning a ~21% ratio. I'll need about ~9 cards to beat my meta economy;

- From these 52 cards, ~46% of them are operations. From my 9 cards, I need 4 of them to be able to deal with operation: I'd go with 3x Imp + 1x Deja Vu;

- Now, there are ~40% of these cards that are assets. Adonis Campaign and Melange Mining Corp are cheap to trash, but I'd need something to beat the last ~21%. Nine cards, 21%... let's say... 2~3x Rook;

- At last, there are 13% of them that are pieces of ICE. I'm already using a Deja Vu, so I can either make my deck a little more virus oriented with 2x Parasite, or add an extra Mimic and let Pop-up Window beat me.

And there it is! 3x Imp + 2~3x Rook + 2x Deja Vu + 2x Parasite.

I bet a lot of you thought it wasn't possible to build a credit denial Anarch without using Criminal cards, and I hope I made you rethink your position. Of course that you can make it different, and probably stronger if you take your time to try all the alternative. If you don't like virus programs or don't have enough memory, for instance, you can replace Deja Vu and Parasite with Vamp, Account Siphon and/or Emergency Shutdown, for example - or use both and save Parasite for non-economical pieces of ICE. The possibilities are endless.

Farewell, 2013!

I'll tell you what I always tell you at the end of my articles: test, test and test. My point is this article is not to give you a magic formula to credit denial, but rather show you what exactly you're trying to "deny" and how to properly do it, without using excessive resources (I mean card, credits and clicks, not the "resource" card type) that you could be using to run - your true goal in the game.

Honor and Profit announcement might have been a little frustrating for some Anarch players, but there's a lot of things for us to play by now. I hope you're enjoying your Red Queen, and good 2014 for us all!

PS: please, God, bring the Chronos Protocol Tour to the South America!

João “Hraklea” Almeida is a brazilian amateur card game player, and the responsible for the Android: Netrunner league in Porto Alegre - RS -, in partnership with Lojas Jambô. This is his current deck list.