Creating a 'grind oriented' Argus

Good day! I stopped playing Netrunner for a little while and now I want to get back into it. I want to make 2 corp deck and 2 runner deck to play a bit with some friends. (none are highly competitive person)

So, right now, I am looking at Argus Security. Unfortunately, I can only find ‘1 shot combo’ deck on netrunner db (aka hardhitting news boom and all that good stuff). Is there people on this forums that are willing to make a skeleton of a deck that use the more ‘grind’ oriented meat damage generator cards that Weyland has to offer? Those are the cards I’m talking about:
-Door to door
-Prisec
-The Cleaners
-Vulcan Coverup
-Crisis Management
-Private Security Force
-Checkpoint
-Dedicated Response Team

It doesn’t need to use all those card, or even use Argus Security (I imagine Builder of Nation can work as well). The game plan would be to take it slow, have nice ICE that tag and deal meat damage, score Cleaners or/and Crisis Management. I ain’t against using Scorched Earth or BOOM! as a finisher, I just don’t want the whole strategy to be: Tag as fast as possible the runner and dig for BOOM using Tutoring effect.

The problem with that approach (and the reason that you won’t find any decks doing it like that) is that grind-meat damage is not really effective as a way to punish the runner. Door to Door gives tags 99% of the time, not meat damage, and is very expensive for the Corp. PriSec is good, but is best used defensively and to set up a tag-kill. Half that list of cards are agendas of varying difficulty to score that can get stolen out of the middle of the deck. Not only is Checkpoint illicit and a trace, but it’s dead if the runner simply jacks out. And ETR is nice, but it doesn’t play into your ‘damage grind’ gameplan. Dedicated Response Team is maybe the best out of all of them, but it’s hard to keep a runner tagged during the run and is likely to be trashed right away.

Basically, almost all of the cards you listed don’t create meat-damage pressure or any kind of damage grind at all. If you want to play a damage-grind deck stick with Jinteki. What you really want in Weyland (especially with Argus) is a tag pressure deck. The whole point of their meat-damage closing cards is to achieve burst-damage wins, but you need tags for that. The tag pressure is a surrogate for damage pressure that hits econ, rather than cards, to set up the kill with meat cards.

This is an Argus deck I ran a while back. It’s not 100% tuned, especially for this meta. From the outset I’d probably put in a Sapper or two and take out Casting Calls/HHN in favor of a Midseasons. You could try it if you wanted. It definitely can preform well against runners that make mistakes.

Offense is the Best Defense

Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed (Order and Chaos)

Agenda (15)
1x Chronos Project (First Contact)
3x False Lead (A Study in Static)
3x Hostile Takeover (Core Set)
3x Oaktown Renovation (Chrome City)
3x Profiteering (Second Thoughts)
2x Project Atlas (What Lies Ahead)

Asset (5)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) ●●●
2x Zealous Judge (Fear the Masses)

Upgrade (3)
3x Prisec (Blood Money)

Operation (15)
1x Archived Memories (Core Set) ●●
1x BOOM! i[/i]
2x Casting Call (Old Hollywood) ●●●●
3x Consulting Visit (The Liberated Mind)
1x Hard-Hitting News (23 Seconds) ●●
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
2x Scorched Earth (Core Set)
2x Stock Buy-Back (23 Seconds)

Barrier (5)
2x Ice Wall (Core Set)
1x Meru Mati (Breaker Bay)
2x Spiderweb (The Underway)

Code Gate (2)
2x Enigma (Core Set)

Sentry (4)
2x Archer (Core Set)
2x Data Raven (Core Set) ●●●●

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Escalation

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

2 Likes

I would agree, I think tag pressure is definitely the best thing Argus has going for it, with damage as an additional slow down. If you want to grind then you need to do it in Builder of Nations, however I’ve yet to hit on a good way of consistently dragging them through your servers.

I can give you a rush Argus who’s secondary win-con is meat. Suffers from variance but games are fast and fun.

Sure thing, fire it away. I’ll take a look at it :slight_smile:

If you want to do grind Argus, I’d say Snare/DRT is probably your best bet. You can splash for Friends in High Places to recur DRTs, Data Raven to give more ways of landing tags on successful runs. A lot of the other cards you mention unfortunately just aren’t strong enough in their own right to fit in a deck. Prisec’s great and protects whatever you want, DRTs or agendas or a cheeky trap. The Cleaners to round out an agenda suite is fine but I wouldn’t expect to score it often.

If you are more flexible with the idea, then Builder of Nations with The Cleaners might work better. The idea should center around rushing a Cleaners score somehow early, getting advanced ICE on every server, then slowly dragging the runner through your servers over and over until they run out of cards. Public Support sounds good for that purpose. You’d probably want a lot of recursion (Jackson, Preemptive Action) since games will be long.

1 Like

I am extremely interested by the Builders of Nations/Cleaners deck. Do you have a link of a good example? Thank you!

I remember @tmoiynmwg playing something along these lines in an online tournament but I cannot for the life of me remember what the tournament was, nor did he publish his deck list apparently. I’ll paste a list along the lines I was thinking below. Rush a Cleaners, drag the runner through the remote with Contract Killer, GRNDL, Snare, & Public Support, recycle your damage & economy cards. It probably plays pretty poor but the idea seems cool.

https://netrunnerdb.com/en/deck/view/864768

Nation Grinder

Weyland Consortium: Builder of Nations (Blood Money)

Agenda (6)

Asset (14)

Operation (10)

Barrier (5)

Code Gate (4)

Sentry (5)

12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Martial Law

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

1 Like

Heh, that’s actually a bit of fun to play. I actually made a few changes, though, in that I slipped in a PAD Factory since you’re already getting it for free influence-wise and it’s great in BoN since you can 1) advance things without spending credits and 2) advance ICE that isn’t advancement ICE naturally, It’s pretty sweet advancing GRNDL with it, since you’re getting even more value out of it when it pops since you’re not spending credits.

Also stuck in a Dedication Ceremony to turn on Mausolus faster, and a Cyberdex to help mess with Big Medium digs.

Actually got THE DREAM earlier, when I got to get Wormhole advanced and rezzed for free due to Factory, and the runner slammed into it. Which let me fire the Tag & ETR sub on a Dedicated Mausolus. Which gave me the tag necessary for EXPLOSIONTIME.

1 Like

here you go. i played it a whole lot. unsure how it plays witha aaron in meta tho.

Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed

49 cards
Influence: 15/15 ●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​●​
Agenda points: 20
Tournament legal

Agenda (15)
2 Chronos Project
3 Hostile Takeover
2 Oaktown Renovation
3 Profiteering
3 Project Atlas
2 Vulcan Coverup

Asset (13)
3 Dedicated Response Team
3 Jackson Howard ●​●​●​
2 Psychic Field ●​●​
3 Snare! ●​●​●​●​●​●​
2 Zealous Judge

ICE (8)
2 Archer
2 Mausolus
2 Quandary
2 Vanilla

Operation (10)
1 BOOM!
1 Casting Call ●​●​
2 Consulting Visit
1 Hard-Hitting News ●​●​
2 Hedge Fund
1 Scorched Earth
1 Stock Buy-Back
1 Traffic Accident

Upgrade (3)
3 Prisec

2 Likes

Fast Track and Gila are on trial. Haven’t had time to consider Veritas. Rush first, kill when able.

Argus Security: Protection Guaranteed (Order and Chaos)

Agenda (13)
3x Corporate Sales Team (Business First)
3x Hostile Takeover (Core Set)
3x Project Atlas (What Lies Ahead)
1x Gila Hands Arcology (Creation and Control)
2x Profiteering (Second Thoughts)
1x Oaktown Renovation (Chrome City)

Asset (6)
2x Snare! (Core Set) ••••
1x Shattered Remains (First Contact)
3x News Team (Data and Destiny) ••••• •

Operation (14)
2x Consulting Visit (The Liberated Mind)
1x Stock Buy-Back (23 Seconds)
3x BOOM! (Escalation)
3x Beanstalk Royalties (Core Set)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
1x Midseason Replacements (Future Proof) ••••
1x Fast Track (Honor and Profit)

Barrier (6)
3x Bailiff (Democracy and Dogma)
1x Bulwark (Intervention)
2x Spiderweb (The Underway)

Code Gate (4)
3x Enigma (Core Set)
1x Lotus Field (Upstalk) •

Sentry (6)
2x Sapper (Martial Law)
3x Archer (Core Set)
1x Grim (Opening Moves)

15 influence spent (maximum 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Martial Law

1 Like

Allright, I think so far, that’s what I’m gonna test this Saturday, and i’ll see how it goes:
Deck Created with CardGameDB.com Android: Netrunner Deckbuilder

Total Cards: (49)
Identity:
1x Weyland Consortium (Blood Money)

Agenda: (11)
3x Oaktown Renovation (Chrome City)
3x Hostile Takeover (Core)
3x The Cleaners (Second Thoughts)
2x Underway Renovation (The Underway)

Asset: (6)
2x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) ■ ■
2x Public Support (The Universe of Tomorrow)
2x GRNDL Refinery (Fear and Loathing)

ICE: (14)
2x Fire Wall (Order and Chaos)
2x Ice Wall (Core)
2x Mausolus (Martial Law)
2x Searchlight (Order and Chaos)
2x Data Raven (Core) ■■ ■■
2x Salvage (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Shadow (Core)

Operation: (16)
1x BOOM! (Escalation)
2x Dedication Ceremony (Kala Ghoda)
2x Door to Door (Escalation)
3x Hedge Fund (Core)
1x Hard-Hitting News (23 Seconds) ■■
2x Exchange of Information (The Liberated Mind) ■■ ■■
3x Shipment from Kaguya (Core)
2x Scorched Earth (Core)

Upgrade: (2)
2x Prisec (Blood Money)

So I went 49 over 44, because I don’t know where to cut. I think the deck in it’s current state is weak, because you don’t have much way to slow the runner down early game. I think there’s a couple way to make cash quickly, or hit the runner big time, but if he play smart or shake tags as they run, I don’t see how I would win.

To setup the grind in motion, 1 key play to make is to get your Cleaners stolen (should be easy to achieve), score a Hostile Takeover, and swap them with exchange of information. Then bait the runner in with Renovation, refinery and Public Support, and punish them with ICE that are advance with Kaluga Shipment. I think best case scenario is to have 1 Cleaners score (or exchanged), then setup a remote with 2 advance ICE, and 1 Prisec protecting agenda. If the runner run, he will take a beating. If he don’t you score no problem. Always the risk of getting tag for a possible Scorched Earth or BOOM finishing him up. I don’t think someone can survive 2 advance ICE + Prisec + Scorched Earth, especially if Cleaner is scored.

Anyway, for now I’ll go work on a Jinteki deck and 2 runner deck. Will come back Sunday to tell you guys how it went hehe.