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Register now to gain access to all of our features. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to create topics, post replies to existing threads, give reputation to your fellow members, get your own private messenger, post status updates, manage your profile and so much more. If you already have an account, login here - otherwise create an account for free today!
3
Tech Talk - Shut It Down Harder!
Sep 24 2013 05:15 PM |
Scud
in Android: Netrunner
Android: Netrunner Tech Talk Scud
Welcome back to Tech Talk, Tech Heads! This week, we're gonna blow the dust off one of our old favorites, the Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead) based credit-denial deck, and see what the very-soon-to-be-released Opening Moves has to offer in terms of new tools and tricks...The very first deck Tech Talk presented when we made the switch to the new deck-focused format was the Doppelganger (A Study In Static)-licious credit-denial deck that we dubbed...
SHUT IT DOWN!
Identity:Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead)
Total Cards (45)
Event: (17)
Deja Vu (Core) x3
Demolition Run (Core) x2
Stimhack (Core) x3
Vamp (Trace Amount) x3
Account Siphon (Core) x2 (8 Influence)
Emergency Shutdown (Cyber Exodus) x1 (2 Influence)
Sure Gamble (Core) x3
Hardware: (5)
Cyberfeeder (Core) x3
Doppelganger (A Study in Static) x2 (4 Influence)
Program: (15)
Datasucker (Core) x3
Djinn (Core) x2
Medium (Core) x3
Crescentus (A Study in Static) x1 (1 Influence)
Parasite (Core) x3
Crypsis (Core) x3
Resource: (8)
Joshua B. (Cyber Exodus) x2
Liberated Account (Trace Amount) x3
Armitage Codebusting (Core) x3
That's what the deck looked like just after A Study in Static released. We've tinkered and toyed with it with every new expansion and now that Opening Moves is just over the horizon (if you consider, like, Wednesday the horizon), we think the deck has gained enough new stuff to warrant revisiting.
So, what cards have come out since the original article that fit the deck?
Xanadu (Humanity's Shadow)
Also known as "Hey, why don'cha pay just a little bit extra for that ICE that I'm about to blow through on my way to draining all your credits," Xanadu throws the Corp's math off, often keeping her from rezzing a second piece of ICE during a run. One credit may not seem like a big deal on paper, but Xanadu hurts in the aggregate, when the Corp has to rez multiple pieces of ICE, either on the same or multiple servers.
Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
Boom, three more Influence-free copies of Account Siphon (Core). 'Nuff said.
Professional Contacts (Creation and Control)
We recently got a bottle of Balsamic Vinegar Ketchup here at the Tech Talk Ranch. Now we can't stop putting it on everything. Professional Contacts is much the same. There is almost no deck that it doesn't just make better. However, it is particularly tasty in this deck – one of the original deck's problems was that the economy was click-based, meaning drawing bit into your ability to keep ahead of the Corp's economy so that you could more easily keep them poor, and there was an awful lot of drawing you had to do in order to get the deck to work. Now you can dig for the cards you want and/or need while still building up the scratch to apply the necessary economic pressure.
Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
Speaking of the deleterious effect of click-y economy on the smooth functioning of the deck, Daily Casts gives us a solid source of clickless income. However, if we saw it as the only economy in our opening hand, we here at the Ranch would mulligan faster'n you can say, "balsamic vinegar ketchup!"
Rook (Opening Moves)
Gorman Drip v1 (Opening Moves)
The final piece of the newness pie, Gorman Drip v1 is just evil. Pure, concentrated evil. Imagine, if you will, taking a comically large, cartoonishly colored lollipop from a baby. Then imagine that every time someone hugged the baby to calm it or gave it a new piece of candy, you got more candy, too. Yeah, sure, the baby can spend all its clicks to make you lose all your accumulated candy, but then the baby isn't getting itself more candy.
This metaphor got away from us.
Gorman Drip v1 punishes the Corp for trying to recover from your gentle ministrations if, by "gentle ministrations," you mean, "stealing all her money." It is a kick to the stomach while the Corp is down. No, actually, it's worse. It's like when your older sibling would sit on your chest and tap on your forehead for the length of an entire episode of The Great Space Coaster and your mother was too busy crocheting another horrifying clown-themed wall-hanging to get involved.
We did it again. Sorry.
Enough with the metaphors – Gorman Drip v1 is a mean, mean, mean card that will ruin the Corp's day once they are at zero credits. End of story.
The clown crochets were terrifying, though. Really.
So, without further ado, here's the revised decklist...
SHUT IT DOWN HARDER!
Identity: Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead)
Total Cards (45)
Event (9)
Sure Gamble (Core) x3
Deja Vu (Core) x2
Vamp (Trace Amount) x3
Account Siphon (Core) x1 (4 Influence)
Hardware (2)
Grimoire (Core) x2
Program (20)
Gorman Drip v1 (Opening Moves) x2 (2 Influence)
Crescentus (A Study In Static) x2 (2 Influence)
Femme Fatale (Core) x1 (1 Influence)
Datasucker (Core) x3
Djinn (Core) x3
Medium (Core) x2
Rook (Opening Moves) x3
Crypsis (Core) x2
Parasite (Core) x2
Resource (14)
Same Old Thing (Creation and Control) x3
Professional Contacts (Creation and Control) x3 (6 Influence)
Liberated Account (Trace Amount) x3
Xanadu (Humanity's Shadow) x3
Daily Casts (Creation and Control) x2
The first thing that is likely to pop out at you is the fact that Grimoire (Core) has replaced Doppelganger (A Study In Static). Man, did that hurt. We hated dropping our favorite console, but the new toys are really that good. HOWEVER, we are doing some parallel testing with a version that drops Account Siphon and both Grimoires for three copies of Doppelganger. Relying on Crypsis as your only 'breaker is click-intensive, so having the extra run from Doppelganger can really ramp up the pressure, especially once Medium (Core) is online. We'll report back once we've had more games with both versions.
Well, that's it for this installment. Next time we'll be giving you a Runner deck using the already-deemed-worthless-even-though-the-pack-isn't-officially-released-yet False Echo (Opening Moves).
- paradoX, kurthl33t and Damoel like this
22 Comments
@Scud - Mind if I ask for the reasoning behind cards you dropped? Such as Emergency Shutdown, Stimhack, and so forth?
Would you change Whizzard for Reina once she is released? As I weren't sure how often you would trigger his ability, compared to hers (which suits the deck style more). With Xanadu, making them pay 2 credits to rez it would just annoy me as the Corp.
You're not making nearly enough money for Vamp to actually make someone broke, though. Daily Casts take f***ing forever to just break even, you don't run any Dirty Laundry, and your breaker costs an insane amount of money to power. Gorman Drip might carry you through a litt, but I wouldn't count on it being able to make Vamp work nearly as great as Siphon does.
Also, I feel like this is the one deck that PC really doesn't improve, as suddenly you have to care about tags and wipe them. That means that in order to drain the corp of X credits with Vamp, it'll actually take you like X+2+(cost of run) credits, and two actions minimum (probably three or four, given that Crypsis needs charging, too). Which brings me back to the point of "not enough money, nor fast enough money"
Just don't see it, really.
-2 PC
+2 Hostage
+1 Kati Jones
Take some other card out for Kati's slot.
The only other thing I don't like is that you don't include Stimhacks. Crypsis being your only breaker (well FF is a breaker but it won't be breaking much) can get expensive. Stimhack is also just a really good card.
I'm a huge fan of what you do here Scud. Keep up the good work!
I'm actually really unsure about the Crescentuses instead of the Shutdowns, though. Certainly, the reduced influence is great, but the way I see this deck working, you don't actually want to run on R&D before you've broken the Corp's bank account - and so there should be few opportunities for them to actually rez ICE. If anything, you may encounter some Efficiency Researched/Oversight AI'd big ICE there, and since you'd be running HQ first to Vamp/Siphon them, Shutdown seems more palatable.
Where I see the Crescentuses shining is in the coming turn(s) after you've emptied their coffers - when they'll have just a small bit of cash and maybe can afford to rez that one ICE. Since HQ will probably have rezzed ICE at this point from your initial Vamp/Siphon-run, it'd probably be easier to Crescentus than Shutdown. But if you have at least one Djinn out, why not make sure you've set up with all three Mediums before doing this, thus potentially just winning outright in the turn after your Vamp. If you combined the above deck idea with a few Demolition Runs, and threw some (maybe even two, but one should often suffice) Rooks on R&D, a two-turn victory becomes somewhat feasible - that is, your turns would be Vamp Shutdown/Run Run Run Run then pass then Rook once or twice and then Run like mad, possibly with Demos. Ideally the Corp would not be able to rez a single ICE on R&D, at any point, and the need for both breaker and Crescentus vanishes. If all else fails, keep vamping them I guess, although then Crescentuses for HQ becomes more attractive.
Anecdotally, I have had better luck with Crescentus then Shutdown. You can still heap the hurt on them, even if the fort up HQ and you have to play in some other playground for a bit.
In the Andy deck, I am still using this strat, and including Hostage on top, and I generally don't find the tags to be too bad. You get to pick when they stick around, and generally you can either play it slow and clear 'em, or let the cred deprived corp spend their time gaining a couple bucks to kill a resource.
Give the deck a whirl, it's been working for me, with a 75% win rate (6 out of 8). Small sample size, though, but it feels pretty good so far.
I'm not theorycrafting here, just FYI - I've been running a reasonably similar Whizzard for a couple months now, and with about an 80% win rate (in a slightly larger sample, 20ish games at least). Some of my findings:
My version has both more money generation than yours does (I'm running Liberated Accounts, Sure Gamble, Dirty Laundry and more Siphons than you are), a more cost-efficient breaker suite (Mimic/Yog/Corroder + Datasuckers), and I'm built to completely ignore tags (thus saving both money and actions), and yet I still sometimes run into situations where Vamp just won't work for me because I can't get enough money to make it worthwhile. This is the case mostly against ops-based economies (Commercialization is a serious nightmare, but even a well-timed Green-level Clearance can ruin your day occasionally), but EtF's extra credit per turn constitutes a problem as well. Also, sometimes I can't reasonably Siphon 'em early enough to stop them from getting a Melange behind reasonable ICE, and if that happens, I really need a solid plan B. Vamp does not provide this unless you have like 80 credits
Now, some comments:
1) relying on resources as little as possible is crucial to the kind of gameplan you're going for here, in my experience. If you can't have reliability in the stuff you use actions for, why bother investing in them. For instance, my deck's performance and general flow improved a lot just by ditching the Same old Things and upping the Deja Vu count (not only are they used at a similar cost, Deja Vu actually does more for you, as bringing back two Parasites often-times means game over). Liberated Account is great, because even tagged you can use it for Melange-like turns of Install/Cash/Cash/Cash, which leaves you at +6 credits and an almost-drained account that noone in their right mind will spend money trashing. Still, that money will more often than not be used getting into HQ (even breaking through two Ice Walls costs something, and rezzing them is the kind of money anyone can afford, even on the turn after you've siphoned them into the ground), and if people are running a low-money-to-rez ICE suite, you won't be able to stop them from rezzing.
2) You really ought to include one copy of Nerve Agent. It's tutorable by Djinn, gets tokens even on Siphon or Vamp runs, and allows you to control the Corp's hand that much more efficiently (especially against a decent player, who will start digging for the cards he needs with multiple draws per turn). Which brings me to...
3) Demolition Run. There are so many decks where it's an outright bad card (or a "meh" card, at the very best), but this ain't one of 'em. It can accelerate an RnD win by several turns (especially if you've broken the corp to the point where they can defend their HQ or their RnD, but not both), but what's more important... a demo-run that takes out an entire hand is a huge momentum swing. This is pretty close to a hard counter vs. any attempts to Bag you (let's face it, the tagging you're doing yourself a lot of the time already), and hurts a lot of other peoples' attempts to recover, too.
Really like the Crescentus, btw. That's something my version doesn't include, and it might be a good include.
I didn't try Professional Contacts in my resource suite as I'd blown most of my influence on Criminal cards. Forged Activation Orders, a card at which my buddy turned his nose up, was my choice over Emergency Shutdown or Account Siphon. It works quite well in this strategy. I'd often use it on a server I didn't intend to run right away just to waste money. If you do it to an ICE in a server with Rook all the better.
I left Kati out too, thinking I'd likely end up with a tag I couldn't clear. Destroying Armitage rarely feels like a worthwhile use of time.
I'll give this version a try (provided I find some time to play in the near future).
If it had been a Criminal deck, FAO would have been an obvious include, but the influence is tight. Shutdown allows you to resolve issues like Oversighted Archers and whatnot. Just my opinion on the matter.
As for tags, I find I usually don't end up with anything like "unclearable tags" before I'm good and ready to ruin their day, and by then losing my economy cards (by making them spend what little creds they may have scraped together) really isn't something I'll mourn.
Then again, as for the comment on 3 ProCons, there was actually some maths on it; http://stimhack.com/...-economy-cards/ which argued mathematically that having three is superior. Of course, I'd guess influence is the main issue here... personally I really liked the suggestion to trade some for Hostage, if the deck is made to include Kati and Joshua especially.
One issue is if they have a double-advanced, unrezzed card. It can be a Hostile Takeover.
They could also put their money into Thomas Haas.
ProCon is a card you *need* on the table, so having three copies in your deck increases your probability of drawing it.
I was arguing for having carapaces in the deck at all. If you haven't included any, you'd be hard pressed to play them no matter the circumstance
I definitely agree that getting ProCon early is all sorts of paramount, but as I was musing about earlier, what do you think of dropping at least one ProCon for Hostage, and then include Kati and maybe even Joshua? Honestly, if there's any deck that can use Joshua, it's this, at least in my opinion.
Speaking of cards you need 3 of, I don't agree about triplicates of Xanadu. Conventional wisdom holds that it needs to be out early to make its money back, but that's not really what we're looking for here - we're looking for it to make it that much harder for the Corps to crawl back after we siphon/vamped them, and for that purpose, we won't really need Xanadu before midgame at earliest. On the other hand, I see little reason not to throw in a third Daily Casts, and the way this deck works or at least can work, I think a third Medium for massive R&D "you can't rez ICE because you're broke, I run repeatedly for free"-carnage is within the limits of overkill.
I think I got 16 total prestige in 6 rounds the first night, and on Sunday I dropped after only getting 8 points in 4 rounds. In "Confessions of a Winning Poker Player," Jack King said, "Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career." So, my Cons will be a little more detailed than my pros as I am tired and cranky this morning =)
I saw Scud there on Saturday and I promised him feedback, so here's my thoughts from the weekend.
Pros:
- When it works, it works really well. I thumped some people that were headscratching when they saw Whizzard hit the table.
- The cost curve can be high, but it's manageable. It has enough income overall, more than I needed in some games, not as much as I needed in others. Hostage/Kati Jones might be a consideration, since there were times I needed money, but not cards. A few times I was just clicking for credits hoping that I would see a Liberated Accounts or Sure Gamble so that I could *stop drawing* and actually pay for something.
- It performs really well against NBN and HB which rely on their remotes for income.
- Rook and Xanadu together I *THINK* are really good. It's hard to say, really, because if it's working you will never know how well it's working unless your opponent wears their feelings on their sleeve and you can see them being despondent. Except that one time my despondent opponent suckered me into skipping down three deep into a Snare with two cards in hand, but that's another bit of stupidity on my part.
- Gorman Drip is pretty sweet. Aren't I just a big bucket of profound insight
Cons:Future/Misc Thoughts: