Ayla “Bios” Rahim

Cleanup in the aisle

Levy University’s third supply room on the 42nd floor had an astringent smell. Pervasive. Undefined. Every time Ayla stocked her needs from the third supply room, she scouted around for whatever the offending odour was coming from, but she never found an answer.

The supply room was square with two, long, freestanding shelves that split the room into three equally sized lanes. The lining walls were also shelved, but they held locked cabinets that Ayla couldn’t access until she had her full credentials.

Rolling her cart down the left-most aisle, Ayla grabbed fertilizers and testing equipment.

And that astringent smell assaulted her nose.

It seemed stronger in the back, left corner of the room.

Leaving her cart, Ayla paced up and down the left aisle, trying to find a hint, a clue.

That’s when she saw the stain.

It was tiny, only a spec of discoloration on the otherwise uniformly taupe floor tiles. It looked like a half-circle of runoff that had seeped out from under one of the locked cabinets.

The smell was definitely stronger here, but to be sure, Ayla grabbed a pair of gloves and a sampling towelette. She rubbed the disposable synthetic cloth on the spot and held it up to the light. There was no wetness to it, but it smelled. She wafted the air towards herself and nearly gagged as the toxic scent cloyed at her nostrils.

“Got you!” Ayla said, then she turned back to the cabinet, reading the name plaque for that particular locked case. “Professor Carlos Ramirez, eh? You need to check your containment!”

Watching grass grow

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again—I’m not a good Shaper. I like to attack! Not set up.

But I built this deck to set itself up. Get the rig, Mopus for cash, then attack remotes and dig R&D. We’re digging R&D in two ways, of course. Bursting with The Maker’s Eye and using the scalpel of Indexing plus Mad Dash.

With Ayla’s NVRAM, very impactful events are pretty powerful. You effectively have a free Planned Assault for any event that ends up in your NVRAM. And of course it’s amazing if you get a breaker or some redundancy. I don’t see a situation where NVRAM is bad.

I opted to go for Test Run instead of SMC because I was running relatively high-costed programs, and I’d rather have the option to Mod them out. Plus, if Ubax is in play, we Test Run a program out, then we get it drawn into our hand for free the next turn.

I think this deck will require patience. We’ll see if I remember that when I play it.

 

Cultivation Ayla (Ayla “Bios” Rahim)

Ayla “Bios” Rahim: Simulant Specialist

 

Event (25)

2x Employee Strike  ●●

3x Indexing

3x Injection Attack

2x Legwork  ●●●●

3x Mad Dash

3x Modded

2x Peace in Our Time  ●●

3x Sure Gamble

2x Test Run

2x The Maker’s Eye

 

Hardware (3)

1x Plascrete Carapace

2x Ubax

 

Resource (9)

2x Beth Kilrain-Chang

2x Film Critic

2x Sacrificial Construct

3x Same Old Thing

 

Icebreaker (6)

2x Corroder  ●●●●

2x Gordian Blade

1x GS Shrike M2  ●●

1x Mimic  ●

 

Program (2)

2x Magnum Opus

 

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

45 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Terminal Directive

Build Script

A one in all

A peace in silence

Scavenging hope from rubbish

Hold, forward attack


Hatchling takes its prey

Roosting upon frozen wall

Code, unpecked by all


Attack, the time now

Rubbish transforms to spark thought

Silence to stillness

Where’s Oracle May when you need her?

Sure, the haikus make it all seem like poised grace and then sudden, effective action, but really, this deck is frantically going, going, going.

Let’s do another Comet deck! I mean, Build Script makes sense in a Comet deck, right? It’s free, gets us a credit, and two more cards. Which can immediately be another one of our 29 events.

The deck is charmingly simple. Kit turns the outermost piece of ICE into a Code Gate. Egret turns hosted ICE into the three core ICE subtypes—which can be broken by our cheap and powerful Cyber-Cyphers. Scavenge to move Egret and Cypher around, Inti and Mimic to deal with problem ICE, if your opponent has something annoying.

Unfortunately, there’s only one answer for a strength 4 non-outer Sentry that is unrezzed: Tinkering. If they rez an Archer—and you didn’t tinker it—you’d better find your Levy or your Scavenges quickly.

I don’t think this is a particularly strong deck, but Build Script works really well in Comet, so I figured I’d go with it.

Early drafts of this were in Exile, because moving Egret around would draw us cards, but with only three Scavenge it didn’t seem like a really strong build. I feel like Exile is strongest with self-recurring programs, like Pawns or Conspiracy Breakers.

Anywho. Kit is fun and aggressive. Cyber-Cypher is cheap to install and cheap to break things with. It forces them to double ICE, then you can Egret the back piece. Indexing/Mad Dash is super easy to pull off when it costs you something like four credits to get into R&D.

I really, really wish I could’ve fit some Spooned in here. I love Kit Spoons, but Peace in Our Time is just such a great economy option for a setup Shaper with Comet. And Build Script costs influence. So does Process Automation. Can they just errata Kit to have 15 influence already? Heh.

I know. That would be too strong.

Maybe 12?

CypherDashing Kit (Build Script)

Rielle “Kit” Peddler: Transhuman

Event (29)
3x Build Script ●●●
3x Diesel
3x Dirty Laundry
1x Employee Strike ●
3x Indexing
1x Legwork ●●
2x Levy AR Lab Access
2x Mad Dash
3x Peace in Our Time ●●●
3x Scavenge
3x Sure Gamble
2x Tinkering

Hardware (3)
2x Comet
1x Plascrete Carapace

Resource (3)
2x Beth Kilrain-Chang
1x Same Old Thing

Icebreaker (5)
3x Cyber-Cypher
1x Inti
1x Mimic ●

Program (6)
3x Egret
3x Self-modifying Code

10 influence spent (max 10, available 0)
46 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Terminal Directive

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

Customized Secretary

Clippy’s little sister

“Please restate query.” The voice was quiet, calm, and slightly accented in something middle-European.

“Programs. Give me programs” Kate said, frustration leaking through her usually calm demeanour.

“Programs are available.” The voice replied.

Kate muttered to herself and shut off the secretary. Aesop had begged her to try the thing out, but it kept spitting back random data instead of the code she was looking for.

“Why can’t the code just write itself? What do I need a secretary AI for?” Kate mused, spinning in her chair and letting her eyes pass over the multitude of screens in her studio.

After a few minutes of fuming, Kate turned the program back on one more time.

“Please state query,” it said, madenningly calm.

“Programs,” Kate said, straining for patience.

This time, the secretary loaded four programs into the quick-cache buffer—some breakers, some utility, and a few cash worms. Pre-loaded into her rig’s buffer, she could load the bits of code quickly. Not instantly, but quickly enough that she could focus on other things until she needed those bits.

“Okay, I admit, that’s a little neat,” Kate said. “Maybe I won’t sell you back to Aesops.”

“Please restate query.”

“Don’t push it, smarty pants.”

I swear it can be good—Sex panther good

Maybe the Customized Secretary makes more sense in the Professor when you’re running like 30 programs. This deck only runs 20, so we’re less likely to get the value.

Still, since it’s in Kate, Customized Secretary only costs a credit, and you effectively get another hand or two of cards to use Kate’s ability every turn. Also, once we’ve cleared out the Secretary’s buffer, she’s another target for Aesop, just like Cache and Harbinger.

I like this deck because I love Escher. With Blackstone and Houdini, stacking barriers and code gates against us is no fun, and I can spread the sentries out so that they’re not draining my dagger’s stealth credits.

In regular fashion, we lock a remote then we start our R&D lock. Legwork can close out games if they think HQ isn’t a target.

Really, it’s a super straightforward deck that just uses Customized Secretary as another economy option and a weak bit of NVRAM.

Honestly, I really wish that Customized Secretary had a Street Peddlar-like ability that would let you trash it to install one program from it, no cost reduction. I don’t think it’d step on Peddlar’s toes since this takes up memory and isn’t a connection, but giving an instant-speed access to pieces on it would be really, really nice.

 

Assistance Required Kate (Customized Secretary)

Kate “Mac” McCaffrey: Digital Tinker

 

Event (9)

3x Diesel

1x Escher

2x Legwork  ●●●●

3x Sure Gamble

 

Hardware (7)

3x Clone Chip ★★★

2x Mirror

2x R&D Interface

 

Resource (10)

3x Aesop’s Pawnshop

2x Beth Kilrain-Chang

2x Net Mercur

3x Technical Writer

 

Icebreaker (6)

2x Blackstone

2x Dagger

2x Houdini

 

Program (14)

3x Cache  ●●●

3x Cloak

3x Customized Secretary

2x Equivocation

3x Harbinger  ●●●

 

10 influence spent (max 15-3=12, available 2)

46 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Station One

 

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.