Load Testing

A meeting of minds

“But what’s in it for me?” Victoria asked, smiling pleasantly as she sipped her YucaBean latte.

“Was that not clear?” Cynthia replied, a tightness to her voice.

Victoria continued to smile. She probably shouldn’t bait Cynthia Haas, but Victoria had always believed the director of Haas-Bioroid took herself too seriously.

“Yes, alright. Unlimited processing power offloaded to the systems that net criminals themselves use to undermine our margins. But how do I sell this?”

“You fast track any project you want, and I can guarantee its safety. How about that new Rhapsody sensie drivel? Done.”

“It’s intriguing,” Victoria admitted. “Let me think on it.”

Ugh, gross

This deck looks degenerate.

I haven’t looked to see what other people are doing, so mine probably has more theme than terribleness, but seriously. Why is this possible?

With three Clone Suffrage and three Load Testings, the runner only has one click a turn. Throw in ELP, and they can only run if they have a run event, a click ability, or a current. Throw in Victoria Jenkins and the runner has zero clicks unless they have Beth or Josh B or something.

It’s gross. But I’m going to try it and see how hard it is to pull off the combo.

I put in Hades Shard by recommendation from one of the guys at THG, that way I’m less likely to burn through my deck before I win, and I put in Vanity Project to save a click here or there when scoring to win.

R&D is obviously a problem, that’s why we’ve got three Eli and three Seidr. ICE won’t matter once the combo is running, so the suite is relatively cheap with no late-game ICE.

We have a few outs if the combo doesn’t come together in regular Jeeves play, two Biotics, and Tech Startups that can bring Director Haas in for an extra click. In fact, you can score a 5/3 out of hand with Director Haas and two Biotics. Or a 6/4 out of hand with Jeeves in play as well. Plus Jeeves and Haas don’t need to be in play when you start that turn, you just need your Tech Startups on the board.

Since the end goal is to play three Load Testings a turn and then install or advance an agenda, we’ve got three PAD Campaigns to trickle the cash in and make sure we don’t run down to zero while we advance.

If you’re lucky, you get two extra clicks after the Load Testings (Director Haas/Jeeves), and you can win moderately faster.

Things getting trashed? Friends in High Places helps there too.

It’s a gross deck if it ends up being reliable in any sort of way.

But the theme is on point.

Rebrand HB (Load Testing)

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

 

Agenda (8)
1x Accelerated Beta Test
1x Director Haas’ Pet Project
1x Hades Fragment
3x Project Vitruvius
2x Vanity Project ●●

 

Asset (16)
3x Clone Suffrage Movement
1x Director Haas
1x Executive Search Firm ●●●
2x Jackson Howard ●●
2x Jeeves Model Bioroids
3x PAD Campaign
3x Tech Startup
1x Victoria Jenkins ●●●●●

 

Upgrade (1)
1x Ash 2X3ZB9CY

 

Operation (9)
2x Biotic Labor
1x Enhanced Login Protocol
1x Fast Track
2x Friends in High Places
3x Load Testing

 

Barrier (6)
3x Eli 1.0
3x Seidr Adaptive Barrier

 

Code Gate (5)
2x Fairchild 3.0
3x Turing

 

Sentry (4)
2x Architect ★★
1x Cobra
1x Ichi 1.0

 

14 influence spent (max 15, available 1)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Station One

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

NEXT Wave 2

Corinne was scanning through the weekly Bioroid maintenance logs looking for code inconsistencies when Stacy, the younger sysop in the next station over shouted.

“Corinne! The data packet came in on the latest shuttle!”

Sighing under her breath, Corinne rolled her chair over to Stacy’s terminal. Stacy had short, mouse-brown hair and the brow line tattoos of her Martian clan. Corinne was Earth-born and counting down the days until she was eligible to request a transfer off of Mars and back to HB’s R&D facilities on Luna.

Stacy extended her terminal screen forward and gestured at the info dump’s preview pane. An animated diamond shape soared through rendered cyberpsace and exploded into nothingness. The screen went black, then the words “NEXT Wave 2” resolved. Stacy clapped furiously. The short video started again on its loop.

“This is so epic. We are going to mash some runner melons into mush with the new countermeasures.” Stacy’s voice dripped with awe. “Want me to forward the packet to your terminal?”

Corinne shrugged then rolled back to her station. “It’s just NEXT flexing their coding muscles again. Gold was an overcompensation.”

“But, shiny!” said Stacy, laughing. “I’m refreshing my nodes with some NEXT Ice right now.”

“You do what you’ve gotta,” said Corinne.

When she was sure Stacy wasn’t paying attention to her, Corinne downloaded the packet from the central HB servers and watched the vid repeat a few times.

Who loves brain damage the most? Cybernetics Division!

It’s probably not a super innovative idea to put NEXT Wave 2 in Humanity Upgraded. I get that. But I also wanted to try it.

The tough bit about NEXT Wave 2 is that it’s a 4/2. Rightfully so, but still tough. That’s why I went Jeeves. Now we can never-advance nine of our 10 agendas, pretending that they’re Adonis or Eve Campaigns. Or Snares.

To never advance, we put in Accelerated Beta Test. Self-Destruct Chips are a no-brainer (har har), and GFI rounds us out to 18. Put in some campaigns, a pair of Howards, and we’ve got our assets. Breaker Bay is a nice inclusion, but it might be first cut. Who knows.

What I really want to do with this deck though is double down with Defective Brainchips. If I think I have a good window, I’m going to advance my NEXT Wave 2 so that I can play a Brainchips from hand and score the NEXT Wave 2 right after. This is my goal. This is my white whale.

Obviously we needed to go with the NEXT suite to make this work, so that was the backbone. With all the free influence I also put in Eli 1.0 and Architect. Other seasonings were some Bioroids and Ravana 1.0 to make servers very taxing. I’d put a Tollbooth in, but I already have a lot of Code Gates. We’ll see, we’ve got the influence for it.

 

CyberNEXTics Division (NEXT Wave 2)

Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded

 

Agenda (10)

3x Accelerated Beta Test

1x Global Food Initiative  ●

3x NEXT Wave 2

3x Self-Destruct Chips

 

Asset (11)

3x Adonis Campaign

2x Eve Campaign

2x Jackson Howard  ●●

2x Jeeves Model Bioroids

2x Snare!  ●●●●

 

Upgrade (2)

2x Breaker Bay Grid

 

Operation (5)

2x Defective Brainchips

3x Hedge Fund

 

Barrier (5)

2x Eli 1.0 ★★

3x NEXT Silver

 

Code Gate (6)

1x Fairchild 3.0

3x NEXT Bronze

1x Ravana 1.0

1x Viktor 1.0

 

Sentry (4)

1x Architect ★

2x NEXT Gold

1x Zed 2.0

 

Other (1)

1x Mother Goddess

 

7 influence spent (max 15-3★=12, available 5)

18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)

44 cards (min 40)

Cards up to Daedalus Complex
Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.