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.

Restore

Projected Upgrades

Jeeves was in his most enjoyable function. He was approving expenditure reports.

Another data pipeline to the SanSan outpost was being requested, and Jeeves transferred it to the expedite queue. SanSan’s grid service was impeccable, and with that sort of computing power, Jeeves’s work would go even more smoothly.

You Say You Want Efficiency?

This is another deck that is just hoarding the clicks and making the advancements go quickly. Restore is an interesting card. It’s slightly better than Friends in that you can do it on your first or second click, and it’s slightly worse in that you only get one card, and you lose duplicates (Jackson and Marilyn help with that, though. And Vitruvius, even Pet Project).

I like this as a target for an MCA Austerity after the runner has bent over backwards to kill one. Just Restore it back to its previous server and then click it again.

The cool thing about this build is that you can put SanSan, Warroid, and MCA all in the same server, then if they want to kill your MCA, they have to deal with the Warroids. Once you click/trash the MCA, you have a six-click turn on a SanSan, more than enough to score a Mandatory Upgrades. You could even score both Vitruvius’s from hand. Or score a Vitruvius with a million counters to recur your operations and anything the runner trashes.

Pet Project is a fun addition that can rebuild a Warroid/MCA server, or SanSan, or whatever. Or Adonis. And you can Biotic it out or SanSan it out. Lots of options.

I think if a runner doesn’t go heavily aggressive, this deck will run over them.

SanSan Makeover ETF (Restore)

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

 

Agenda (9)

1x Director Haas’ Pet Project

3x Elective Upgrade

3x Mandatory Upgrades

2x Project Vitruvius

 

Asset (12)

3x Adonis Campaign

3x Jackson Howard  ●●●

3x Marilyn Campaign

3x MCA Austerity Policy

 

Upgrade (5)

2x SanSan City Grid ★★ ●●●●● ●

3x Warroid Tracker

 

Operation (7)

2x Biotic Labor

3x Hedge Fund

2x Restore

 

Barrier (5)

3x Eli 1.0

1x Heimdall 1.0

1x Heimdall 2.0

 

Code Gate (6)

1x Fairchild

1x Fairchild 3.0

2x Ravana 1.0

2x Turing

 

Sentry (4)

2x Architect ★★

1x Ichi 1.0

1x Ichi 2.0

 

Other (1)

1x Loki

 

13 influence spent (max 15, available 2)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Revised Core Set

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

MCA Austerity Policy

Duck/Water

Jeeves had been reassigned. He enjoyed this work as well—not as satisfying as helping to run a mining operation, but production of Bioroid models on Mars had hit a fever pitch, and efficient service was Jeeves’s primary function.

Clicks? You say you want clicks?

I went overboard. This card is insane.

If the runner can’t get to it—through ICE, through net damage, encryption protocols, and through click costs, they just keep losing clicks. Then you get a six-click turn!! With that six-click turn, you can score a 5/3 (like Elective Upgrade) from hand. Or you can use Jeeves and score a Mandatory Upgrades from hand. Or you can over-advance a Vitruvius into the freaking sky.

Or you can click Eliza’s Toybox twice.

This is such a cruel, mean, terrible card. And I love it. Because it can be killed by running or by using something like Political Operative. There are ways around it. What a silly deck this will be.

More for Us HB (MCA Austerity Policy)

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

 

Agenda (9)

1x Domestic Sleepers

3x Elective Upgrade

1x Mandatory Upgrades

2x Project Vitruvius

2x Voting Machine Initiative

 

Asset (21)

1x Eliza’s Toybox

3x Encryption Protocol

2x Hostile Infrastructure  ●●●●

3x Jackson Howard  ●●●

2x Jeeves Model Bioroids

3x Marilyn Campaign

3x MCA Austerity Policy

1x Ronald Five

3x Turtlebacks  ●●●

 

Operation (6)

3x Friends in High Places

3x Hedge Fund

 

Barrier (5)

3x Eli 1.0

1x Heimdall 2.0

1x Wotan

 

Code Gate (5)

1x Fairchild

2x Fairchild 3.0

2x Ravana 1.0

 

Sentry (2)

1x Enforcer 1.0

1x Ichi 1.0

 

Other (1)

1x Loki

 

10 influence spent (max 15, available 5)

21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

CFC Excavation Project

Greener Pixels

Jeeves was satisfied with his new contract. Many bioroids together made the work more efficient. This was exceptional.

Occasionally, when going for his weekly maintenance, Jeeves would take a more roundabout exit through the Haas-Bioroid factory to pass by the server rooms. Within, he would observe the countermeasure bioroid models at their constant vigil.

Jeeves wondered what it would be like to experience another reality. One more akin to his own mind rather than the physical world. Cyberspace seemed freeing.

More Coats!

Unfortunately, Adonis, Jeeves, and Marilyn are not Bioroids. That’s sad. Warroid Trackers are though. And Ronald Five, but I didn’t include him in the final draft.

We’re doing a FoodCoats-style shell game here. Breaker Bay brings our Campaigns, Caprice, and Warroids up for free, and Jeeves lets us install our 4/2s without advancing them. If we score a CFC, Warroids alone will net us back 6 credits. Not to mention that all of our ICE are Bioroids.

For fun, I’m also running two Brain-Taping Warehouses. This makes our Wotan, Heimdalls, Fairchild, and Ichi 2.0 much more accessible and compounds the value of CFC.

Runner trashing your stuff? Friends it back. Plus they’ll lose some stuff off the Warroid, most likely.

Fun, eh?

Steelhand Architects (CFC Excavation Contract)

Haas-Bioroid: Architects of Tomorrow

 

Agenda (10)

3x Accelerated Beta Test

1x Advanced Concept Hopper

3x CFC Excavation Contract

3x Corporate Sales Team

 

Asset (11)

2x Adonis Campaign

2x Brain-Taping Warehouse

2x Jackson Howard  ●●

2x Jeeves Model Bioroids

3x Marilyn Campaign

 

Upgrade (7)

2x Breaker Bay Grid

2x Caprice Nisei  ●●●●● ●●●

3x Warroid Tracker

 

Operation (6)

3x Friends in High Places

3x Hedge Fund

 

Barrier (8)

3x Eli 1.0

2x Heimdall 1.0

2x Markus 1.0

1x Wotan

 

Code Gate (4)

1x Fairchild

1x Fairchild 3.0

2x Ravana 1.0

 

Sentry (2)

1x Ichi 1.0

1x Ichi 2.0

 

Other (1)

1x Loki

 

10 influence spent (max 12, available 2)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Rover Algorithm

Evolution

Loki floated in infinite cyberspace and watched all the little lines burst into being then fade into nothingness. There were many impermanents in this realm, and his consciousness paradoxically tracked them and dismissed them simultaneously—noting their uniqueness while also assigning them little value.

Until the damned dog.

It barked again as a user approached Loki’s domain. The god reached outward towards one of the lines of light and borrowed its code. The user was defeated.

The next time a user approached, the dog barked. But this time louder, more insistently. Loki took notice.

The third time a user approached, Loki awaited the dog’s bark, and was impressed with its insistence, urgency, and power.

Perhaps Loki had found a pet.

Coats Again

I’m a huge fan of Rover Algorithm, even if I don’t usually like cards that “improve” ICE. The thing that makes Rover so much better than something like Patch is that it scales and punishes the runner for going again and again.

In the case of Loki and Architect, it makes them super, super terrible. Loki’s biggest problem is that it’s strength 3, ditto Architect. That means they fall over to Mimic and Yog. Now we can pump that strength reliably, whenever the runner encounters them. That’s super cool.

In Architect’s case, we’re already not scared of Parasite. In Loki’s case, Parasite sucks, but at least it’s not hitting our Fairchilds.

Otherwise, the shell is predictably FoodCoats. Oh yeah, it also lands really well with Caprice. That’s super fun.

TricksterCoats (Rover Algorithm)

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

 

Agenda (9)

3x Accelerated Beta Test

3x Global Food Initiative  ●●●

3x Project Vitruvius

 

Asset (9)

3x Adonis Campaign

3x Jackson Howard  ●●●

3x Marilyn Campaign

 

Upgrade (5)

2x Ash 2X3ZB9CY

2x Breaker Bay Grid

1x Caprice Nisei  ●●●●

 

Operation (9)

2x Biotic Labor

3x Hedge Fund

1x Preemptive Action

3x Rover Algorithm

 

Barrier (7)

3x Eli 1.0

2x Eli 2.0

2x Heimdall 1.0

 

Code Gate (3)

1x Fairchild

2x Fairchild 3.0

 

Sentry (5)

3x Architect ★★★

2x Ichi 1.0

 

Other (2)

2x Loki

 

13 influence spent (max 15, available 2)

21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

O2 Shortage

For Your Safety

Reina had tracked some of the money back to holding accounts in Breaker Bay, but it had taken time. Time that she couldn’t afford to waste. HB was cutting some sort of deal with Jinteki, and—so far—hell hadn’t frozen over, so it had to be bad.

One of her side systems started to beep, but Reina was focused on her run. The Bioroid countermeasures that were protecting this server were hard to pin down. They changed, and each puzzle they threw at her took up more time. Always more time.

That’s when Reina started to pant.

She looked to her side and her eyes bulged. The dome was being evacuated?

Time to Tax

Sorry, this post is a day late. Yesterday was a potty training day for my 3yo! He did great.

It’s for reasons like this that I try to pre-write a bunch of posts, but I haven’t been able to pre-write anything more than a week in advance, and this week ended up being busier than expected. Who knew getting a mechanic to look at two cars while your wife is working and you’re home with three kids could be so complicated? Ha!

Anywho, this deck. O2 Shortage is a cool card. A Biotic Labor alternative, but also something that can enable a kill. I strongly considered putting this in a spiky Tennin Institute deck, but decided I would stick with HB so I could have five fast advance cards in one deck. The flip side is that I brought Snare into the deck. Which is something I think you need to do if you’re running O2 Shortage natively.

They have to be afraid of running with few cards. So they spend their clicks drawing. But then they lose their clicks to Turing and the Bioroids. Also Enhanced Login Protocol.

It’s another ETF Glacier. Maybe I should’ve gone Tennin, eh?

Gasping ETF (O2 Shortage)

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

 

Agenda (9)

3x Accelerated Beta Test

3x Global Food Initiative  ●●●

3x Project Vitruvius

 

Asset (12)

3x Adonis Campaign

3x Jackson Howard  ●●●

3x Marilyn Campaign

3x Snare!  ●●●●● ●

 

Upgrade (3)

3x Breaker Bay Grid

 

Operation (10)

2x Biotic Labor

2x Enhanced Login Protocol

3x Hedge Fund

3x O₂ Shortage

 

Barrier (4)

3x Eli 1.0

1x Seidr Adaptive Barrier

 

Code Gate (5)

1x Fairchild

2x Fairchild 3.0

2x Turing

 

Sentry (5)

3x Architect ★★★

2x Ichi 1.0

 

Other (1)

1x Loki

 

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Follow Up – Week 19

Unfortunately, this week was less than exciting. I didn’t get to play Maui, and the decks I played had pretty lacklustre games.

Warroid Tracker

I played against a Sunny deck. That basically meant that Warroid and Ash were turned off. No big deal, I scored a GFI early, then scored behind ICE and Caprice. It was a by-the-numbers game of classic Netrunner. I didn’t have much pressure on me though as my opponent was having trouble getting his rig and economy together.

He had tons of Link though.

I think Warroid is going to be really good. Particularly since it’s non-unique.

Jarogniew Mercs

I played this matchup twice. Jarogniew tag-me against a Making News Scorch. The first game was a wash because I hit three agendas off of R&D early pressure while he had no ICE.Womp womp.

The next game was better, but I Edward Kimmed his Scorches out of hand and took the agendas again.

Jarogniew is a great Plascrete replacement. It’s more interactive, and if it becomes meta, then the corp just starts running All Seeing I. You know?

Loki

What a lame deck. My opponent didn’t have AI, so I locked him out and played a Localized Product Line for my last Biotic. Triple Biotic to score an Elective Upgrades. Next turn: score Vitruvius. Turn after that: score ABT.

Also I Reclamation Ordered Hedge Fund like twice. So that bit was awesome.

Loki is definitely more fun in other decks. This is pure cheese.

With a lame strength of three, Loki isn’t really all that taxing or scary. You have to have a scary piece of ICE out already plus then have Loki surprise an incomplete rig. So maybe it’s a good remote piece of ICE?

Anywho, Loki will definitely benefit from some of the new cards coming out. Like Helheim. Mmmmm. Helheim.

Loki

Wanderer on a Sea of Stars

The net parted before the god, and he paddled a one-man boat across a sea of information. Dipping his hand into the waves of data, Loki sampled from all of the code that made up his realm.

And with it, he made them fear him.

Lockout and Score Out

Yet another combo deck. I mean, you can do super cool things with Loki and multi-sub ICE, but he’s still just strength three. I could shore up that weakness by putting him in Stronger Together and playing cards like Patch or Experiential Data or IT Department, but instead, I’m just going to go with the nastiness of Mythic ICE. As in, once I have my ICE up, you’d better have an AI breaker or some Parasites.

Otherwise, I’m just going to keep smashing you into Mother Goddess’s End the Run until I’ve got the cards in hand to combo out.

So ideally, we want Mother Goddess on HQ, Excalibur on Archives, and Loki on R&D. I think. I think that makes sense.

After that, we just do the easy version of CI. Make money and draw cards until we get Biotics in hand. Once we have three Biotics (which we can get with Localized Product Line), we can score an Elective Upgrade from hand. Then Elective Upgrade can score us our ABTs or Vitruviuses for the game.

Clearance Sale CI (Loki)

Cerebral Imaging: Infinite Frontiers

 

Agenda (9)

3x Accelerated Beta Test

3x Elective Upgrade

3x Project Vitruvius

 

Asset (3)

3x Jackson Howard  ●●●

 

Operation (28)

3x Archived Memories

3x Biotic Labor

3x Blue Level Clearance

3x Green Level Clearance

3x Hedge Fund

3x IPO

3x Localized Product Line  ●●●●● ●●●●

3x Reclamation Order

1x Ultraviolet Clearance

3x Violet Level Clearance

 

Other (9)

3x Excalibur

3x Loki

3x Mother Goddess

 

12 influence spent (max 15, available 3)

21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Tournament Report – Cache Refresh

We had an abysmal turnout.

Unfortunately there was a Magic pre-release this weekend, so no less than four Netrunner players were in the store playing that instead. Criminy.

Also unfortunately, our out-of-towners had to cancel. And that meant it was only me and Adam. Abysmal.

Anywho, Adam and I played four games and it was a ton of fun.

My Khan deck was awesome but could not keep up with his ridiculously rich and glacier-y Engineering the Future. But my Obokata Personal Evolution got two kills onto his Steve Cambridge.

The first game with PE, I killed him early on with a Cerebral Casts (he takes a Brain Damage on two cards because he’s worried I have Scorch), then double Neural to kill. He was down on two cards because he’d hit a Snare on click three and spent click four clearing the tag. The right calls both times, but I didn’t have the Scorch in hand.

The second game with PE, he handled me hard. Just kept smashing me down with Siphon and Medium. I stuck him with a Shi.kyu, then he scored a Nisei and a House of Knives. Then he scored another Nisei. He’d accessed a few Obokatas and declined to steal them (off R&D). MVP of this game was Miraju and Whampoa. I was able to pull some crazy shenanigans hiding agendas.

Eventually, I naked installed a Philotic. It wouldn’t win him the game if he stole it, and it would win me the game if he didn’t. It wasn’t in the remote, so he figured I was just setting up or baiting a trap.

Then I flatlined him.

As for Khan, I love the deck. I was on track to win the first game, but then he hit me with a Hunter Seeker when I scored my third (?) two-pointer. He killed my Dhegdeer and Opus, and suddenly I was just clicking for credits and hoping to win by Equivocation.

The next game, he just locked me out because I couldn’t find the right pieces in time. He scored an ABT out of the remote, then he scored an Elective Upgrades off a SanSan and Biotic. He then proceeded to win.

Cache Refresh was a super cool format, and I look forward to seeing it again with more players!

NEXT Opal

Nuance is lost

Ronald Five, a Marilyn, and an Adonis stood in uncomfortable attention along the wall of Estelle Moon’s office. The room was large, but spartan. There was an abundance of empty spaces and straight lines, very few adornments, and almost no artwork—excepting a single depiction of nonsensical and recursive architecture.

Shifting his weight as if to step forward, Ronald prepared to interrupt Ms. Moon, but the Adonis held out a hand in gentle reprimand. Interruption was not their place.

Ronald settled back and waited.

Ms. Moon, a woman as severe looking as her office, sat with her back to a gigantic window. Through the transplas, the view of New Angeles was expansive. Her office faced away from the Beanstalk, so the city’s form and light were unshadowed by that gargantuan feat of engineering. Instead, the city eventually transitioned to ocean.

A slight tapping came from Moon and her computer as she swiped through files or reviewed correspondences. Ronald couldn’t see what she was doing, and her head was down. He could not see her facial features to hazard a guess at her thoughts or emotions.

But she had kept them standing here without a word for fourteen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

The Marilyn let out a quiet sigh of disapproval.

The Adonis looked bored.

Ronald cleared his throat—an affectation that he had become used to as an actor.

Moon looked up, annoyance flashing across her face. “Well? What are you still doing here? I dismissed you forever ago.”

Ronald’s facial features flushed. “Actually, Ms. Moon, you told us you needed to take care of a few things. You did not suggest that you were done with our meeting, only that it had been interrupted.”

Her face went stony with annoyance. “Then let me make this clear. You are dismissed.”

The bioroids turned as one to file out of the office, and as he walked, Ronald caught a reflection in the transplas of Ms. Moon’s screen. She had been playing Mahjong.

Pink Lemonade

Apparently, Moon is a big thing, eh?

I’m kidding. Moon is a HUGE thing. There are lots of silver bullet Moon decks and tech card decks. The Nightmare Moon deck on NetrunnerDB is pretty cool and nasty.

I decided to go pretty straightforward in this Moon build.

I also couldn’t really figure out what to do with NEXT Opal.

One consideration was to put it in a non-combo Cerebral Imaging. Just have a ton of money a ton of cards in hand, and then Batty a NEXT Opal or something to install stuff… but that would require other NEXT Ice to be on the field and rezzed and where would I be getting the money for a big hand size if I didn’t have any of my assets down…

It wasn’t a great idea. Honestly, I’m also sort of at a loss for NEXT Opal. It might be cool to pop a Jackson out during a run or overwrite an agenda, but it’s a three-strength Code Gate. I feel like it’s barely a road bump.

Anyways, at least it’s another piece of NEXT ICE to make the other ones even better.

And the deck itself? Regular Moon shenanigans. Just putting stuff out. Making money. Scoring agendas.

Pink Moon Campaign (NEXT Opal)

 

Seidr Laboratories: Destiny Defined

 

Agenda (9)

3x Accelerated Beta Test

3x Global Food Initiative  ●●●

3x Project Vitruvius

 

Asset (17)

3x Adonis Campaign

3x Estelle Moon

3x Jackson Howard  ●●●

3x Marilyn Campaign

2x Ronald Five

3x Turtlebacks  ●●●

 

Operation (8)

3x Biotic Labor

3x Friends in High Places

2x Ultraviolet Clearance

 

Barrier (6)

3x Eli 1.0

3x NEXT Silver

 

Code Gate (6)

3x NEXT Bronze

3x NEXT Opal

 

Sentry (3)

2x Architect ★★

1x NEXT Gold

 

11 influence spent (max 15, available 4)

21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.