Discuss the latest post by Alex: Two Future Proof Decklists (NBN/Andromeda) - StimHack
How are his decks? Any disagreements over how he ranks the archetypes?
Alex man, you are so far ahead of the netrunner curve it’s scary. My only qualm, is that I think Weyland is tier2 insomuch as they are and will be continuing to put up tournament wins as much as HB and NBN since the global netrunner meta is dominated by below average players (myself included) and weyland is the best at punishing the bad plays that people in my skill tier will make, and will get plenty of free wins to keep it on top.
I feel bad posting such a short comment to such a long post…
… But what is so bad about Underworld Contacts?
I read the article again while actually awake and see Alex point about Underworld Contacts.
But there’s a funny error in the article: You write runner where you meant corp at least 4 times 
I completely agree with your assessment on Jinteki (and the rest, for that matter). I love the principles behind NBN’s new “flytrap” builds, and they’re sorely tempting me. I do hope Jinteki will have such versatility with the upcoming packs.
Very good article. Alex, you rock.
I see that you often mix Corps and Runners, I’m not sure why but I’ve seen many people frequently doing this! I’m starting to wonder if it’s deliberate!
Thanks for the heads up. I went in and fixed all the instances that I saw.
The NBN flytrap is very effective, but its also very popular right now (especially on OCTGN). I’ll admit I was caught in the trap a number of times but have since managed to shut it down.
I run a speed-rig shaper deck that has an economy powered by Opus. It turns out if you don’t take the bait for the flytrap until you’ve clicked up more credits than the NBN player (plus 8), you can then run and score all you want. The first time I did this, my opponent was flabbergasted that I wouldn’t take the bait. Instead I hung back, clicked up 4-8 credits per turn, and made sure to quickly deal with any economy cards he rezzed. I’ve had 2 player concede after seeing what I was doing.
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I don’t see how a “wait and bank” strategy can beat the NBN deck; Alex talks about this in the article, “Have two win conditions: One is tagstorm combo, but also we want to legitimately be able to win by pushing Agendas through. Alternate win conditions are not reliable, they are a bonus. Also, the threat of us winning will force the runner to have to run everything we play, because it could be an agenda, or else risk losing”.
Waiting and building up credits may beat the Midseason/Psychographics shenanigans, but you still have to beat 3/2 Agendas plus SanSan or Astroscript counters. If your opponent wasn’t pursuing the “just win with awesome agendas” plan they probably have a poorly built deck.
Second that, your average jinteki player running 4 and 5 difficulty agendas will lose to clicking opus and just running everything they advance - but an NBN player who has played with NBN agendas at least a few times will just punish your caution with ASPPs and the game will run away from you fast.
That’s the problem with shaper, the lategame victory isn’t even guaranteed anymore.
Hehe, yeah. When I start out writing about a corp, then the runner is the opponent in my mind. So if I switch to talking a bout a runner deck, I tend to still refer to the opponent as runner.
I think I fixed all of them 
Yeah, playing NBN against shaper is different than playing against other runners. Basically, you need to push agendas through very very aggressively, and then hoard any astroscript counters you get for winning later, once the Shaper is set up and is running your stuff.
In general, I find NBN does well against Shaper if it pushes agendas through aggressively.
One possible problem with this NBN deck is that it might need more End the Run ice than it has, even though thats not the primary strategy. Sometimes you do need to be able to end runs to help score agendas, relying on bluffing doesnt always work.
Exactly! If they arent going to run you, push through Astros/Beales. Once you have a lot of points, you really up the ante for them to have to run you!
Its true that Weyland is great at killing you for a mistake. Weyland is like the good Jinteki. They can kill you, but they also have better economy and agendas, so they dont need to kill you.
I believe Weyland used to be #1, prior to Emergency Shutdown. Shutdown really hurts Archer and Headrian’s Wall. Also Workshop/Femme hurts those ice a lot as well. Weyland is still good, and in fact they are probably the best corp at scoring 5/3 agendas. However, 3/2 agendas are just really really good, and Weyland has one of them, while HB and NBN have two each.
As far as corp strategies go, fast advancing is just a REALLY good strategy. Installing lots of cards face down behind ice, and then scoring 3 difficulty agendas this way, is also a really good strategy. The HB and NBN decks do this best, with a pair of 3/2s.
The reason to play NBN is the agenda mix. Its the best now, by a lot.
I think Midseason Replacements is going to be very unreliable for the corp. It’ll be great when it works, but a lot of the time it’s a dead card. I think its key weakness is that it won’t touch a runner who sets himself up and wins in a single big push - a la Noise mill / Medium dig. A strong economy (or savvy economy control from criminal) will also defeat it, and I also wonder whether we’ll see shaper replicator decks packing tonnes of link in the near future? If so tagstorm is dead in the water.
That said though, NBN’s 3/2 agendas are very nice so the fast advance potential will always be there. But I wouldn’t expect to be scoring big Project Beales with Psychographics very often. Firstly, read the article on the main site about combos - Psycho/PB with tagstorm is at least a three card combo, is extremely economy intensive and there is tonnes of scope for runner interference. I think NBN is better served playing traditionally and using its influence to recruit out of faction ICE that can actually keep the runner out. By all means play a couple of cards that punish tags, but don’t rely on them.
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Yeah, Alex. Did you even read the article about combos? geeze.
One small thing I think people have been missing about the new NBN identity : this is the faction that has Anonymous Tip.
Anonymous Tip is tricky to use well, partially because of handsize, partially because of not wanting to load up on agendas. But it’s also a strong enabler of the speedy style that’s possible with NBN. The new identity makes it a little easier to aggressively dig your own deck for the things you need.
Also I think the lost influence is less of a big deal than people are making it out to be, because if you slim your deck from 49 to 40, the density of agenda points (AP / # cards) stays about the same.
Not saying it’s a great identity, but I do think folks are over-eager to slag it…
Midseason isnt the most reliable thing ever, but its powerful when it works. Also, Psychgraphics is a good card in the deck already, because you need ways to make tags matter against a runner without resources.
Ultimately, this is a backup plan to simply scoring good 3/2 agendas.
As to Shaper decks with lots of link, they tend to be slow and get crushed by easrly Astroscripts/Beales.
I agree, I’m poking fun at Arkhon for telling you to read the article about combos when you are the author.
I think cards that are back-breakingly powerful should be special exceptions to certain deck building rules.
I was, of course, aiming my comment at the general readership, rather than the author 
The question I would ask about Midseason Replacements is “when this card works, does it win me a game I’m otherwise going to lose?”
If you have the economic edge over the runner such that Midseason is actually going to work, you probably have a big enough edge to close the game out via an alternative route. This card also then needs to pretty much guarantee you the game when it works - it’s no good sinking deck space and at least $5 into a card to give a bunch of tags if you can’t immediately exploit them, only for the runner to dig R&D next turn and win anyway.
In game theory the expected value of a play or strategy is the probability of a given outcome multiplied by the pay-off of that outcome. You then sum over all sum over all probabilities.
i.e. if I flip a coin and bet $1 on heads, 50% of the time I double up and win $1 and 50% of the time I lose.
So EV = (0.5 x 1) + (0.5 x -1) = 0 (i.e. it’s a neutral expectation proposition)
You can apply the same sort of idea to LCGs - albeit with a little difficulty. If I play Midseason replacements I would estimate that you probably only pull it off in 25% of games (I’m talking about tournament level games against tier 1 decks and decent opposition). So 75% of the time it’s a dead card.
Of the 25% you play it successully, I would imagine the runner gets away with no or very few tags about a quarter of the time - so all you’ve really done is drained his economy temporarily. I’m saying therefore that MSR “works” about 19% of the time, and ok perhaps you go on and win all of those games - but Midseason has only gained for you in that situation if you wouldn’t have won from that position anyway with an alternative (but reasonable) choice of card.
The difference MSR makes is small. It will appear as though it leads to some big plays, but you’ll easily forget about the tonnes of times it does nothing, or just confirms an already done deal.
With regard to Kate. I agree she’s a little slow at getting started, but actually it’s not as slow as you think. Replicator is pseudo draw and Rabbit Hole installs three copies for almost nothing and one click. It can get a lot in play very quickly and cheaply. I think Creation and Control should lead to some pretty creative shaper decks.
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