So much Netrunner stuff has happened this week! I mean, MWL 1.2 has barely cooled down, and now we’ve got Terminal Directive and a new official format.
Cache Refresh looks like a lot of fun, and I’ll devote an entire post—some time—to my thoughts on the meta that it creates with the boxes and Flashpoint/Red Sands. Should be cool to look at some of the possibilities for each faction.
All that said, people are cracking Terminal Directive (I’ve opened it, but won’t be playing it until later this month when our local event goes). Plus Regionals are starting up. My regional will be in Vancouver on the 27th.
However, we’re here to talk about decks. So let’s talk about decks.
Mobius
This deck was amazing. I mean, I didn’t see my Comet, and I didn’t really use Mobius. Saw it once, but didn’t have a good opportunity for it. Nevertheless, it did criminal things. I was up against my buddy Tyler’s Engineering the Future deck. It’s a hybrid glacier/fast advance with Biotic, SanSan, frustrating ICE, Advanced Assembly Lines, and Lateral Growth.
I siphoned, he bounced back ridiculously fast. I hit agendas here and there, he scored some too. With a cheeky Jeeves rez he scored a no-advance NAPD! Obviously I just need to run his remotes more often.
Still, I did criminal things and was able to close out the game. I locked his remote, and he was waiting for a few 3/2s or his third Biotic in hand so he could FA out his Global Foods. Instead, I ate the foods.
Bloom
My Bloom deck against Tyler’s Nexus Andi. Now this was a crazy strange game. Unfortunately for him, he thought he’d put his Levy back in the deck—he hadn’t—which meant he pitched his Peregrine to a Komainu thinking he could recur it. Suddenly he was only getting through my Tollbooths with Nexus.
It looked like I had it all in hand. I had a Lotus Field and Tollbooth on my remote, and a Tollbooth and a Yagura on R&D (he also had 0 cards in hand). I drew into the Nisei, threw it into the remote. Then drew a second Nisei. He hammered HQ and scored his fourth agenda before I could score my third. It was sad days.
But Bloom did awesome things! I got six pieces of ICE out with Bloom. Now if only he would’ve stopped siphoning me so that I could keep them rezzed.
Counter Surveillance
I played this one against Ashton’s Order and Chaos Titan. Unfortunately for Ashton, he was super poor, and I Knifed and Parasited his R&D barriers away. He put his ICE on his remote—not expecting a Siphon—and luckily for him, I never found one. But unluckily for him, I was Edward Kim with an Obelus and a Bhagat.
I created a rhythm. Hit R&D: draw a card from Obelus. If it was ICE or something I didn’t want to pay the trash for, I hit HQ and Bhagat got rid of R&D’s top card for me. Then I hit R&D again. This went on for four turns before he got ICE on both servers.
Still hadn’t found my Siphons. I had two Counter Surveillances out, but only Vamp in hand. So, I just kept doing my thing. Eventually I smacked into the last agenda on a 1/5 access on HQ.
Counter Surveillance seems amazing. I just didn’t hit the Siphons to really turn it on this game.
Load Testing
Against an aggressive runner this deck would have crumpled like cheap party paper.
I’ve heard about a CI build that uses this idea but with Shipment from Mirrormorph to turn it on. That seems like the actual way to play this annoying, super uninteractive, terrible deck idea.
As it was, it took me about 15-20 turns to set up. I got Director Haas, Victoria Jenkins, and Jeeves on the board behind ICE. Didn’t rez them. Got one Clone Suffrage and two Tech Startups out—again, didn’t rez.
Ashton was setting up his doom dig with Hivemind and Progenitor and Darwin. But he didn’t find his Darwin or D4v1d until late, so he only had Eater.
When I finally drew the third Load Testing (on a second click), I was super excited. I did random things then passed turn, holding my breath in excitement. Knowing that if he poked even one of my remotes he had a good chance of bollucksing up my whole combo.
He installed, took cash, did random things.
I said “Well, I think I’ve won.”
We walked through the combo together. I rezzed Victoria Jenkins and Director Haas, did my mandatory draw, then played three Load Testings. Advanced a Director Haas’s Pet Project (that was already on thet able) twice. Pass turn, he takes his Daily Casts cash and passes back. I return all three Load Testings, play them, score the Pet Project to install a Vanity Project from hand, and start advancing it. At some point, I also install a second PAD Campaign because my cash is dwindling.
The Vanity Project scores through, then I put down an ABT and score that. Seven points.
We shook hands, I apologized for the cheese, he said it was fun to see it happen. (Goods sportsmanship on that guy.)
I mean, I hate the combo. It’s funless. But the anticipation of how fragile I was happened to be exciting. But also, the theme was crazily on point. Victoria Jenkins and Director Haas worked together on Haas’s pet project—which turned out to be a Vanity Project for Victoria Jenkins. Then just an Accelerated Beta Test as gravy.
Pretty in-universe.
Sky Hammer Grid 