Crossing the Rubicon, with your hosts: Los and Keros

Decklists
1

So I’ve been testing out Rubicon+Los for a little bit, then I forgot that Blood and Water has Keros in it. So, y’know, had to immediately slot him into the deck. It also made up my mind that I wanted to start Los, instead of start Andy and Rebirth into Los once I got the rig up.

Here’s where I’m currently at:

Rubicon Cube

Los: Data Hijacker (Station One)

Event (19)

Hardware (5)

Resource (13)

Icebreaker (7)

Program (1)

  • 1x Medium (Core Set) ●●●

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Terminal Directive

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

Deck is built on 3x Rubicon. I can see maybe dropping one of those for something else.
(I only have 2x Core, is why only two Desperado.)

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Aeneas Informant, Foodcoats and AgInfusion being the two matches they don’t do much in, and even then, I can get paid on a Medium dig with them, so it’s not all downside.

I feel the breaker suite might need some tweaking, but I like where it’s at for now.

With Obokata Protocol in existence, I don’t want to leave home without a Film Critic. And 3 Hostage helps make sure I get them, or Aaron, or Keros, depending on where I’m at.

The current plan is to facecheck basically every ICE, and use Mammon against Corps with spiky facechecks (Jinteki and NBN. Run first click against HB is good enough; They might fire Architects on you but that’s about it for Worst Case Facecheck.) Later in the game, you can Shutdown key ICE and then keep it down with Rubicon.

I can tell right now that the massive Econ of Temujin is the only reason this sort of deck can work. I’ve had 30+ credits at a time, and spent 15 of it to break into a server, and then Rubicon’d some of that ICE back down.

I’m unsure on the Shutdown/FAO split, settled on 2/1 because I don’t need Shutdown early, but I definitely need them at some point, and I only ever want FAO late in the game once I’ve got the Econ Denial rolling with Rubicon.

Basically, I’m feeling the deck has power, but there’s something I’m missing. I can’t tell if it’s the strategy or some specific card choices. I know that the strategy of keeping everything De-rezzed and getting paid when they try to rez can work, I just need it to work faster and more reliably.

2 Likes
2

I’ve been trying to make Off Campus Apartment derez decks, out of either Los or Andy, but they’re too slow to set up and too inconsistent if you don’t start with Off Campus. You would think Andy’s ability would make you almost always start with OCA, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.

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Compromised Employee is a card you might want to consider. At first, when one of my friends was playing it in Los, I was like “okay, you’re taking this concept too far by adding in bad cards,” and didn’t think much of it. Then Rubicon dropped and all of a sudden the deck was monstrous. With no breakers out at all, he’d just facecheck with impunity, getting paid to rez cards that would then just get shut down. Now Keros comes out and it’s almost a runner-side prison deck, because you can’t rez any god damned ICE in the early game already, and now he also gets paid on the backend, so Los just does whatever the fuck he wants. To further this goal, he’s also running En Passant to kill problem ICE and force me to stay in that early game that benefits his deck so greatly. I think the latest change included adding in a Hernando Cortez to further punish the strategy of just refusing to rez anything until you can afford to spend large piles of money, artificially increasing corp rez costs while keeping his shutdown price the exact same.

It’s so frustrating to play against. I love it.

Anyhow, as to your deck, I think it’s really funny that me, you, and my friend all independently came to the same conclusion that you want 3x Rubicon and 2x Desperado. You can afford to wait on Despy, but you want to be shutting ICE down at the word “go.” I really like the idea of the 3x Mammon, especially since you will know what all their ICE is from early facechecks, so later you’ll know how many counters need to go on. Also, it lets you facecheck potentially spiky ICE a bit better.

As far as the Hostage plan goes, I guess I’d almost rather just run 2x Aaron 2x Keros and 1x Hostage than just have 3 of them, since they’re such a slow card.

Other than that, it looks sick! I think Los has great potential, and I’m excited to see what people end up doing with him.

2 Likes
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Interesting build. I’m trying this one:

Rubicon Cruiser
Los: Data Hijacker

Event (13)
3x Account Siphon
2x Emergency Shutdown
1x Employee Strike ●
3x Forged Activation Orders
1x Hostage
3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (4)
2x Desperado
2x Rubicon Switch

Resource (15)
2x Aaron Marrón
3x Compromised Employee
1x Film Critic ●
1x Hernando Cortez
1x Keros Mcintyre
2x Maxwell James
2x Rosetta 2.0
1x Symmetrical Visage
2x The Turning Wheel ●●

Icebreaker (6)
1x Femme Fatale
1x Gordian Blade ●●●
1x Mammon
1x Mongoose
1x Paperclip ●●●
1x Passport

Program (7)
3x Crescentus
1x Magnum Opus ●●
1x Medium ●●●
2x Sneakdoor Beta

15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Terminal Directive

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

I’m trying to fit a Los shell onto a rosetta shell. Maybe that’s too much, idk. But Los needs tons of money and exchanging early Sneakdoor pressure later into a MOpus is fun. Crescentus makes sense for Los and as a tutor enabler for breakers.

5

agreed on Compromised Employee. it’s really stellar here.

also, i think Forged Activation Orders is an insanely good card here even early as you can force a rez and gain some credits and some insight into what the corp has or get an early opening (or both, depending on the ICE). but even if it’s say, a Vanilla, Pop-up, or Resistor, because of your strategy and and ID, it’s still worth it.
if i have one in my starting hand, it’s almost always first click (or followed by Sure Gamble)

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With the way the deck currently is, I can actually win games by just normal Criminal Aggression. Rubicon basically functions as a Econ Denial support piece, if I get stymied on just keeping the Corp poor and breaking servers because they have no money to rez… So, if they do manage to get money to rez stuff, that’s when I shift into Rubicon mode, using E-Shutdown on whatever ICE costs me the most to break, then forcing them to rez it over and over, getting paid coming and going.

Mopus is an interesting idea, though my current build definitely doesn’t have the MU to do that. (And neither does yours?) Still, I agree that you probably need some econ that isn’t tied to the Corp’s actions, which is why I have Kati.

I like the presence of Compromised Employee and Maxwell James, until I saw what you dropped to fit them… I’m not sure that dropping Temujin is the right call here, or Earthrise Hotel. (Your deck has zero draw power, and is clicking to draw the entire game.) That said, those two cards being dropped frees up the Career Fair slot as well, so that’s how you’ve fit so many other cards in.

1 Like
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To be honest, I’m not sure whether The Gauntlet is even better than Desperado.

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I’m… not sure how to respond to this?
No, Gauntlet is not better than Desperado. Especially here, where the point is to keep as few ICE rezzed as possible. Gauntlet only does something if you break ICE which we’re specifically trying to avoid.

Nobody even brought up Gauntlet here? The only Console I would even remotely consider would be Reflection or Maui, but both of them have problems… Reflection doesn’t really help us get money to de-rez things, and Maui only helps us get money to de-rez things while we run HQ. Desperado gives us money all the time as long as we run, and we like running.
(And it makes Aeneas Informant a click for 4 credits on open remotes, making sure that they don’t provide us with open remotes.)

1 Like
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Forged is also a nice Agnifusion counter.

1 Like
10

My Los decks run 3x Turning Wheel, even if I don’t think I’ve seen another deck run 3x.

I facecheck so early and often with Los that I absolutely need to see Turning Wheel right away. It pays off big to be able to start multi-accessing R&D before Medium shows up.

2 Likes
11

You are right. Desperado is way better and Gauntlet is anti-synergy. My bad.
For draw, what do you think about Drug Dealer?

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It’s not the worst, but the problem I keep having is keeping the credits flowing.
I think the main issue with Drug Dealer is that you won’t ever turn it off, and eventually you don’t need to draw cards very much anymore…

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I wonder if this cost-5 piece of garbage might make face checking less dangerous:
Charlatan - Click Click, make a run. This first time you approach a rezzed piece of ice, pay credits equal to its strength to bypass it.

Prob not. Eating a DNA Tracker is just as bad as paying to install Charlatan.

Also, are people really starting as Los? Putting it all in Rebirth Andy seems better. The good start trumps having his ability early.

14

The point is to have the ability and build around it, instead of making a good setup and then digging for Los.

Essentially, Los first allows you to get 2 credits on the first turn if they install any ICE and you aren’t afraid of facechecks. Andy instead gives you 4 cards.

Like, don’t forget, that’s all Andy’s power does: Draw Four Cards. If you pop Los ability even twice in a game, you’ve worst-case broke even. (Usually 1 credit < 1 card < 1 click, but at worst, you can trade a click for credit or card.) And this deck is all about getting Los to fire as often as possible.

If you could guarantee you’d see Rebirth in an Andy opener, yeah, it’d be better. But you can’t. :frowning:

TL;DR: ‘Good start’ applies to both starting as Andy and as Los. Los gives you money, Andy gives you cards. In a deck revolving around spending a bunch of money to de-rez ICE, money is more useful.

2 Likes
15

I’ve been trying to make Los work too - I agree with your points about Andy, @crushu - though it was explained to me more that Andy effectively gives you an extra turn at the start, and it’s whether you can keep the advantage of that extra turn through the game that makes the difference. I’ve also been trying the same shell with Andy and rebirth - and I’m just not sure yet.

1 Like
16

We’ll have to agree to disagree on Andy being just four cards. Her ability is way more than that. It’s four clicks early game when they matter the most, otherwise known as tempo.
Plus she’s a nine-card mulligan, giving you greater probability of finding the cards you need early.

2 Likes
17

if these are the points you’re arguing against, i think that you kinda missed @CrushU’s point

like your last point, ‘finding the cards you need early’ doesn’t help when you’re building a deck that hinges around Los’ ability and then making a deck that needs a one-per-deck card to start using that ability because you decided to go for Andromeda as your starting ID

18

So nobody else is building this deck with Off Campus Apartment? I have a hard time building decks with so many connections and NOT putting in OCA. On the other hand, it’s a frustrating card when you don’t see it early. It’s also problematic in Andy where installing OCA and then 3 connections makes you discard 3 cards.

1 Like
19

Fair, though I think I get his point. The end of my argument is that Andy’s tempo > Los’s 2 credits in the early game.

In the games I’ve played, I’ve found you can’t really take advantage of this deck’s power, which is Rubicon, until mid-late game. With Andy, in the early game I can more reliably get a couple Comprised Employees down, and more reliably finish off a Temujin on an open server. That econ set up gets me richer than Los’s 2 credits.

Curious as to how you play the deck. My wins come from me installing most breakers, landing Siphons and Shutdowns in the mid game, and then running a central every turn with Turning Wheel and Rubicon-ing the ice they rez. Los’s 2 credits a turn are just icing on the cake in that situation. They let me apply pressure a little longer, or maybe demoralize the corp player a little sooner to where they just stop rezzing and let me have my way on their centrals.

Starting with Los and running early, sure, you may get 4-6 extra credits. But then a bunch of ice is rezzed, you need your breakers to get into HQ and shut them down, and you either don’t have or can’t afford to Rubicon every turn. Plus you may have to endure lost turns, lost cards, and lost breakers due to brutal face checks. I can see how his 2 credits would help you Rubicon early (if you find it), but God help your mid game.

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You’re correct, Rubicon by itself does not a deck make. Thus it doesn’t do much until mid-late game.
However, where our experience differs is that for me, with Andy, I can’t turn one empty a Temujin without pitching cards, but I certainly can with Los. And, depending on the Corp, I can facecheck turn 1 and get 2 credits for a click, again something that Andy can’t do. Instead of spending 4 credits, two install clicks, and two cards getting two Compromised Employees, I just have Los’s ability so that alone gets the deck setup faster with Los-start instead of Andy-start. (Separately, I’ve come to the conclusion that Employee+Los is Too Cute for it to actually work. The best thing is that it enables you to keep 5-7 cost ICE permanently de-rezzed with Rubicon. Takes too long to setup, though.)

My wins come from early Siphons. It’s playing a Criminal Econ Denial game, and the big secret is that I actually don’t need or want to get into HQ once I’ve used the Siphons, so any ICE they put there is actually dead and I don’t care if they rez it early so that I can’t Rubicon it later without a Shutdown. (Which is the only remaining reason I have to run HQ.) They also come from getting Temujin/Aeneas down early and start money with them. Generally the deck turns Money into Winning. Thus, Los’s 2 credits/turn allow me to actually pay for all of my things while the Corp is forced to pay for their things.

Starting with Andy and not running early gets you four extra cards at the expense of your first turn, allowing the Corp to set up without pressure. And you still don’t get an economic advantage unless those cards you drew happened to be money, so wherever you run to try to pressure ends up with rezzed ICE anyway. Andy also has a worse time affording the Rubicon every turn, and instead of getting paid to facecheck, you have to play more carefully and get breakers down before you run, which I think goes against the Criminal Playbook, somewhere. (I think Iain’s main problem is related…)

Andy’s ability is entirely frontloaded, and the deck plays Rubicon to simply have a lategame plan. Andy burns your lategame to have an early game, most Andy decks don’t have a plan for the lategame because they should never get to the lategame, having won in early or mid. Instead, Los has a plan for the lategame, a plan for the early game, and for mid-game. He’s generally weakest at mid-game where the Corp can rez ICE and his breaker suite/Rubicon plan isn’t set up yet, but that’s a very small window.