Conundrum

Shutters

Mason Bellamy looked over the reports from the Mars expansion. Each was ordered precisely correctly. Inside, he mused at the efficiency of the Jeeves models.

Motioning for a junior sysop to take the load, Bellamy shut down his terminal and got ready to depart. His shuttle back to Earth was leaving in half an hour, and he was looking forward to going back to a full G.

The terminal flashed one last inquiry request. “Work Complete? Y/N”

The Final Riddle

The very last deck. The very last card. This blog has achieved a bunch. I started it on March 6^th, and since then I’ve put up 150 posts. Some where RPG-related, some were guest posts, some were musings or event recaps, but in the end I personally made about 115 decks for the Red Sands cycle.

I love Netrunner, and I’ve loved Mars ever since I saw Reina’s character and read her back story.

I’m super pumped that the revised core will have Reina as the Anarch runner (though I’ll miss Noise fiercely as well).

This has been a very fun blog to work on, but it’s also been exhausting. I’m tired of being obligated to write something every week, and the bandwidth this has taken up has left me a little less interested in doing other writing. With the blog firmly behind me, I’m probably going to go back to some novel or RPG adventure writing.

Still, I feel accomplished.

Oh, and this last deck?

As we lose Quandary, we gain Conundrum. So before we rotate, I made a deck with all three puzzle code gates. It had to be in Seidr because we want to make the runner lose clicks, and it’s built on a FoodCoats shell with the Clearances for acceleration.

Basically, let’s recur our Blue and Green Level Clearances—or Ultraviolet if you’re feeling spicy—and just jam upgrades and agendas into a remote behind taxing ICE. Strongbox with Warroid is so annoying.

Enjoy! Good luck! Farewell! Auf wiedersehen, goodbye!

Riddle Me This Seidr (Conundrum)

Seidr Laboratories: Destiny Defined

 

Agenda (9)

3x Accelerated Beta Test

3x Global Food Initiative  ●●●

3x Project Vitruvius

 

Upgrade (8)

2x Breaker Bay Grid

3x Strongbox

3x Warroid Tracker

 

Operation (14)

3x Blue Level Clearance

3x Green Level Clearance

3x Hedge Fund

3x IPO

2x Ultraviolet Clearance

 

Barrier (6)

3x Eli 1.0

1x Heimdall 1.0

2x Seidr Adaptive Barrier

 

Code Gate (9)

2x Conundrum

3x Enigma

3x Quandary

1x Turing

 

Sentry (2)

2x Ichi 1.0

 

Other (1)

1x Loki

 

3 influence spent (max 15, available 12)

21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Fractal Threat Matrix

Profit Sharing

“The Matrix has absorbed the data of over 50 runners this last week alone,” the sysop reported proudly. “It’s functioning well beyond what we were expecting, and it’s interfacing with our software better than we could’ve dreamed.”

Caprice nodded, but her voice was full of skepticism. “Keep an eye on it. There’s been a lot of tech sharing recently, but that doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

Let the Saw Go

Once more my friends, once more with feeling, as it were.

A deck with Fetal, House of Knives, Obokata, and Philotic (and Caprice). Honestly, Fractal Threat in PU is just so nasty!

I mean, it’d be great in a hard-barrier Skorpios too, but this is just icing. Double down on the net damage/stack shaving.

People want to break through a Kakugo? That’ll be one card from hand, three from the stack please. Hit a Komainu with no Breaker? Five and Five. Hit a Komainu with a breaker? Still two off the top. It’s the Runner lose/lose in the best Jinteki way.

We’ve also got the full boat of Domes and Shocks for one last time, and the Preemptive Action to recur them.

Oh, right, but how do we win?

We force the runner into going after House of Knives, Fetal, and Obokata until their deck is gone. Then we score with impunity—if they aren’t dead already. My favourite kind of Jinteki.

Ripsaw PU (Fractal Threat Matrix)

Jinteki: Potential Unleashed

 

Agenda (10)

3x Fetal AI

3x House of Knives

3x Obokata Protocol

1x Philotic Entanglement

 

Asset (9)

3x Breached Dome

3x Jackson Howard  ●●●

3x Shock!

 

Upgrade (5)

2x Caprice Nisei

3x Fractal Threat Matrix  ●●●●● ●●●●

 

Operation (13)

3x Hedge Fund

2x Interns

3x IPO

2x Neural EMP

3x Preemptive Action

 

Barrier (4)

1x Chiyashi

3x Kakugo

 

Code Gate (4)

2x DNA Tracker

2x Lotus Field

 

Sentry (4)

3x Komainu

1x Neural Katana

 

12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Priority Construction

New Normal/Old Normal

Dor was happy to be back at work. With everything that’d gone on, the normalcy of tracking cargo payloads was relaxing. This latest one coming in from Luna was marked as high priority, and Dor just watched it pass through the thin Martian atmosphere from her perch high up.

Ignorance. Bliss.

Advanced to Win

A double that lets you install and triple-advance ICE? Something I can get behind. I mean, it’s only on a remote server, but it’s something to protect Anson at least.

So, I put it in the Red Planet Couriers deck. Full load of Biotic Labor as usual. Just so many operations when I was done with my shopping list—26 of them! We’ve got cash, more cash, fast tracks, more cash, recursion, and a few support cards.

Every piece of ICE is advanceable, plus we have Anson Rose to improve things. Biotic, Biotic, Fast Track, install Government Takeover, and then bang Red Planet Couriers to score 6 points. Y’know. Regular deal.

I like it. There’s suddenly enough advanceable Weyland ICE to do it.

Grindstone BON (Priority Construction)

Weyland Consortium: Builder of Nations

 

Agenda (5)

1x Government Takeover

2x Graft

2x The Cleaners

 

Asset (2)

2x Anson Rose

 

Operation (26)

3x Biotic Labor  ●●●●● ●●●●● ●●

2x Commercialization

2x Fast Track

3x Hedge Fund

3x IPO

2x Mass Commercialization

3x Preemptive Action

3x Priority Construction

2x Red Planet Couriers

3x Restructure

 

Barrier (6)

2x Fire Wall

2x Hive

2x Ice Wall

 

Code Gate (2)

1x Hortum

1x Mausolus

 

Sentry (2)

2x Colossus

 

Multi (1)

1x Orion

 

12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)

18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)

44 cards (min 40)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Corporate Defector

Rescue Op

The wind whistled past the hopper as Geist’s grip started to slip.

“Don’t you let me go you piece of crap! You let me go, and everything goes with me!” Harrison Barker screamed as one of the aerial Hellions snapped at his foot. Geist looped his leg around the hopper restraints and hoped it would hold.

With a heave of effort, Armand “Geist” Walker lunged forward with his other hand and hauled Barker into the vehicle.

They collapsed together, exhausted and keyed up. And a calm voice spoke back to them from the cab. “It’s going to get a little bit bumpier, friends. Best hold on.”

Geist shot Ken a feral grin.

Pop a Cam

This is one of my most favourite decks. I’ve wanted Geist to work for years, and Spy Cam Geist is definitely the strongest build I’ve seen. With the new breakers from Terminal Directive plus Mad Dash, the deck is really nasty. My latest build uses Gauntlet for multi access so we can ditch the Legwork and have some more reliable multi access.

This comes in handy when the corp draws through your Spy Cams. So you trash a Spy Cam and see something you don’t care about. They mandatory draw that card, and then they click to draw again. Now—unlike Bug where you have to pay—we just get to see that card. Plus it’s a 0-cost connection. So we put that on Off-Campus and we get a free draw.

I like it. I like it a lot.

By putting Gauntlet, though, I’m losing some more reliable link cards. That’s why I’ve got some more Sports Hoppers and I’m keeping a Maxwell James on hand. But, even if we do lose our link due to unfortunate circumstances, it’s not a huge loss with two Levys in the deck to recur the dead programs. Plus Gauntlet puts us up to 6 memory. We’ll be able to hang onto a pretty respectable rig even without link.

I love this deck. Finally! A card in the back half that I’m excited about!

A&A Geist (Corporate Defector)

Armand “Geist” Walker: Tech Lord

 

Event (4)

2x Levy AR Lab Access  ●●●●● ●

2x Mad Dash

 

Hardware (9)

2x Sports Hopper

5x Spy Camera

2x The Gauntlet

 

Resource (21)

2x Aaron Marrón

2x Corporate Defector

1x Dean Lister

3x Fall Guy

1x Maxwell James

3x Off-Campus Apartment  ●●●

3x Street Peddler  ●●●

3x Tech Trader

3x Temüjin Contract ★★★

 

Icebreaker (12)

2x Abagnale

2x Crowbar

2x Demara

2x Lustig

2x Shiv

2x Spike

 

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

46 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Threat Level Alpha

Guards for Guarding

Harina paused outside the crew bathroom and leaned against the wall. For a movie about a bunch of kid’s fantasy creatures, there sure had been a lot of protection brought in. She nodded at two other sec team guys dressed up in AR-Enhanced armour just like her.

“It’s just a damned movie,” Harina muttered.

Meta Disgusting

Our goal? Draw into combo pieces, tax the runner, Hard Hitting News, Closed Accounts, Threat Level Alpha, eventually find a way to Psychographics into victory. Or just Exchange of Information into victory.

It’s just another stupid annoying Controlling the Message build. Something that dies to hate like Slums. But it’s got a convoluted combo with Fast Track and Vanity Project, and it has a Restructured Data Pool, so… cool? Honestly, I’m happy that Corporate Defector is a cool deck. The last four cards on the blog have been un-fun to build with. Maybe it’s because they’re NBN and Shaper, my two least favourite factions? Or maybe it’s because I’ve built 120 decks and I’m getting tired.

Or maybe it’s because these are all academic because rotation will be in effect a day or two after the final deck posts on the blog.

Dunno. But the pack is almost done.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me!

Crackdown CTM (Threat Level Alpha)

NBN: Controlling the Message

 

Agenda (8)

1x 15 Minutes

2x Global Food Initiative  ●●

3x Project Beale

1x Restructured Datapool

1x Vanity Project  ●

 

Asset (11)

3x Jackson Howard

3x PAD Campaign

2x Reality Threedee

3x Sensie Actors Union ★★★★★★★★★

 

Operation (19)

3x Closed Accounts

1x Exchange of Information

1x Fast Track

3x Hard-Hitting News

3x Hedge Fund

3x Psychographics

2x Sweeps Week

3x Threat Level Alpha

 

Barrier (6)

2x Data Ward

2x IP Block

2x Resistor

 

Code Gate (2)

2x Tollbooth

 

Sentry (3)

2x Data Raven

1x Thoth

 

12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Crimson Dust

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Dummy Box

Redundancy

Omar checked the temperature on the box one more time. It was up there, but within tolerances.

“Come and get me, you slag heads!”

Reaching

Dummy Box is pretty cool. My plan for it? Have a massive hand size. So we’re going Obelus tag-me and deep-dig. We can protect our Josh B with more Josh B. Protect our Jarogniew with an extra Dummy Box. Stuff like that.

They’re going to Hunter Seeker away our God of War? (Shhhh… I know they could just purge for one click more), drop a Black Orchestra into the bin!

I dunno. It’s an idea at least. It’s probably stronger if I had fewer events and more redundant resources and programs. Resources more likely. Maybe this is a deck that should have Wireless Net Pavilion? But then again, it probably just does the exact same thing as Dummy Box in the long run. Still. Probably a workable deck?

Seems like I’ve been having quite a few stinkers on the bank end of this pack.

Striker Omar (Dummy Box)

Omar Keung: Conspiracy Theorist

 

Event (14)

3x Déjà Vu

3x Mars for Martians

3x Peace in Our Time  ●●●

2x Power to the People

3x Sure Gamble

 

Hardware (3)

3x Obelus

 

Resource (11)

3x Counter Surveillance

2x Dummy Box  ●●●●

3x Jarogniew Mercs

3x Joshua B.

 

Icebreaker (9)

1x Black Orchestra

1x God of War

2x Mimic

1x MKUltra

2x Paperclip

2x Yog.0 ★★

 

Program (8)

3x Datasucker

2x Medium

3x Parasite ★★★

 

12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)

45 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Crimson Dust

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Rolling Brownout

Things’ll Turn Out

Craigsly passed the ration to Harriet, and smiled over the meagre light of their vid-PAD. “Well, it could be worse. NBN could’ve stopped regular programming while the grid was down.”

Harriet laughed. Craigsly hid his nervousness.

A Whole Lot of… You Know

I’m not a huge fan of currents, nor am I a huge fan of those cards that increase the cost of operations and events, like Donut.

Nevertheless, how to build this deck? Well, it could be CTM or NEH, as those don’t need events to function, but I decided to go with Spark for two reasons. One, I just did CTM. And two, Brownout sort of plays into a despotism build. Of course, we’re giving up on Predictive Algorithm, which is a much better current in a glacier-type Spark, but oh well. THEME!

So, we’ve got Launch Campaigns, Marilyn Campaigns, and PAD Campaigns. Lots of Advertisements. Plus Pop-up of course.

It’s definitely a glacier type of build and a bit of a No-Advance type of build. You can put Marilyns or Launches into your SanSan server. Trashing a Marilyn is no big deal, because they just keep coming back. Or you could be putting an NAPD in there.

This is not an optimized deck. Honestly, I’m not sure how to really stick Rolling Brownout. Maybe the agenda suite should be more no-advance with something like CST for more cash. Maybe I should have more reliable ways of landing tags than a SanSan/Breaking News combo.

But I’m honestly not very inspired by Rolling Brownout. The deck and card are… meh? Meh. We’ll go with meh.

Power Despotism Spark (Rolling Brownout)

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach

 

Agenda (10)

1x AstroScript Pilot Program

3x Breaking News ★★★

3x Global Food Initiative  ●●●

3x NAPD Contract ★★★

 

Asset (12)

3x Jackson Howard

3x Launch Campaign

3x Marilyn Campaign  ●●●

3x PAD Campaign

 

Upgrade (5)

3x Product Placement

2x SanSan City Grid ★★

 

Operation (5)

3x Exchange of Information

2x Rolling Brownout

 

Barrier (3)

3x Vanilla

 

Code Gate (6)

1x Archangel

3x Pop-up Window

2x Tollbooth

 

Sentry (8)

1x Cobra

1x Data Raven

3x News Hound

3x Turnpike

 

14 influence spent (max 15, available 1)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Reshape

A Shaper’s Playground

Cyberspace was a puzzle for Kit, one that she knew the general shape of. Swapping a piece here and there shouldn’t have worked, but it was her puzzle. So, it did.

It was a skill she had discovered in herself, and she cultivated it.

Unsure

Seriously… I’m missing the big amazing bit for this card. Is it good? I feel like it should be, but I’m not sure. Like Inversificator, it can mess with the Corp’s carefully constructed servers, but if you don’t know what the ICE is, it’s just a guess. Inversificator is much stronger.

So… we could go expose, or we could go derez. I leaned harder into derez with Rubicon Switch. I mean, Kit doesn’t really run more than once a turn, so she can draw, run, Switch, and Opus on most turns. Then on the off turns she can just Opus a bunch.

Otherwise, it’s just a good Shaper Econ package that relies mostly on Opus, but it supplemented by Beth and Bloo Moose.

Not sure if Reshape is worth a deck, honestly.

Radd Switcher Kit (Reshape)

Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman

 

Event (16)

3x Diesel

3x Dirty Laundry

1x Emergency Shutdown  ●●

2x Infiltration

2x Reshape

3x Sure Gamble

2x The Maker’s Eye

 

Hardware (6)

2x Dedicated Processor

2x Rubicon Switch  ●●●●● ●

2x The Gauntlet  ●●

 

Resource (12)

2x Beth Kilrain-Chang

2x Biometric Spoofing

2x Bloo Moose

3x Daily Casts

3x Same Old Thing

 

Icebreaker (6)

2x Inti

2x Inversificator

2x Na’Not’K

 

Program (5)

2x Magnum Opus

3x Self-modifying Code

 

10 influence spent (max 10, available 0)

45 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

AR-Enhanced Security

Underpaid, Undervalued

It was a bunk job, but Harina was good at it. Encased in the latest Argus and after-market armour upgrades, she was top of the line security.

And she was protecting Sensie stars. It rankled, but it paid.

“Honestly my dear golem, if you can’t get a simple drink order right, why are they even paying to charge your batteries?” The drawling tones of Trixie Marie grated against Harina’s enhanced hearing, and the security officer was forced to take a few calming breaths. Trixie’s favourite pass time was to torment the androids set to see to her every whim. It was a bully’s glee that Harina saw on Trixie’s perfectly proportioned face.

The android though, she was behind the bar and simply offered to remake the drink. Which Harina was sure had been exactly what Trixie had ordered.

The sensie star must have had better instincts than Harina gave her credit for, because Trixie turned to regard her hulking bodyguard and fixed Harina with a withering stare.

“Something to say, bruiser?”

“No ma’am, nothing to say.”

“Damn straight.” Trixie Marie sauntered away, new drink in hand.

Harina’s hands clenched around her rifle.

Double Down

AR works really well in CTM. I mean, period. It doubles down on CTM’s ability, and since it’s a 3/1 it plays into an asset-spammy, sideways deck.

This deck is not subtle. It spews out assets and agendas with abandon and forces the runner into wasting clicks checking things. If they trash, then they’re wasting their cash on traces and clearing tags, and if they steal, then they get snagged by a Midseason. Film Critic ruins the day, which is thematic since we’re playing with Early Premieres.

I also threw in Expose to clear some of the Threedee bad publicity for fun. Otherwise, it’s just a tag and exchange deck. Psychographics is also around. Just in case.

Augmented Targeting CTM (AR-Enhanced Security)

NBN: Controlling the Message

 

Agenda (10)

3x AR-Enhanced Security

1x AstroScript Pilot Program

3x Global Food Initiative  ●●●

3x Project Beale

 

Asset (14)

2x Early Premiere

2x Exposé

3x Jackson Howard

2x PAD Campaign

3x Reality Threedee

2x Sensie Actors Union ★★★★★★

 

Operation (12)

1x Closed Accounts

2x Exchange of Information

3x Friends in High Places  ●●●

3x Hedge Fund

2x Midseason Replacements

1x Psychographics

 

Barrier (6)

2x Data Ward

2x IP Block

2x Pachinko

 

Code Gate (5)

1x Archangel

3x Pop-up Window

1x Tollbooth

 

Sentry (2)

1x Information Overload

1x Thoth

 

12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Crimson Dust

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Diana’s Hunt

Thrill of the Hunt

Jesminder ran the simulation again. This time, she refined her trim rate by 10%. The pieces fell into place as they always did, but just like every other trial before, it wasn’t enough.

“Frag it!” She shouted, ripping her headset off and throwing it across the room. It bounced off of a rich-looking lamp, and both objects fell to the floor.

Ignoring the interface, Jesminder tried the trial again. This time without any modifications. She wiped all the settings clear and just went by feel.

This time, it worked.

Jank or Not?

Okay, so apparently everybody else saw this interaction. I worked on this deck, and then a few days later, I saw the same sort of idea on the front page of NetrunnerDB.

My version, however, is not rotation acceptable, so I get to do fun things like LLDS Processor and a Prepaid shell.

It also gives a cool reason to use Maya and Equivocation and Deep Data Mining together.

This deck feels like it’s a half card choice away from putting together a bunch of Shaper ideas that always seemed like they’d be awesome, but never found the right combination.

Raptors Jesminder (Diana’s Hunt)

Jesminder Sareen: Girl Behind the Curtain

 

Event (23)

3x Deep Data Mining

3x Diana’s Hunt

3x Diesel

3x Dirty Laundry

2x Levy AR Lab Access

3x Quality Time

3x Sure Gamble

3x Test Run

 

Hardware (8)

3x LLDS Processor

2x Maya

3x Prepaid VoicePAD

 

Resource (7)

2x Caldera  ●●

1x Hernando Cortez  ●

1x Keros Mcintyre  ●●●

3x Same Old Thing

 

Icebreaker (3)

1x Golden  ●●

1x Peregrine  ●●

1x Saker  ●●

 

Program (5)

2x Equivocation

3x Multithreader  ●●●

 

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

46 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.