Minh MaxX

MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock
45 cards
Influence: 15/15

Event (20)
2 Account Siphon ••••••••
2 Day Job
2 Dirty Laundry
3 Déjà Vu
3 I’ve Had Worse
3 Inject
1 Levy AR Lab Access •••
1 Retrieval Run
3 Sure Gamble

Program (5)
1 Corroder
3 Eater
1 Faust

Resource (20)
3 Daily Casts
2 Data Leak Reversal
3 Fall Guy •••
3 Joshua B.
2 Paparazzi
3 Same Old Thing
1 Utopia Shard •
3 Wireless Net Pavilion

Worlds

This deck was undefeated at Worlds. It went 8-0 during the swiss rounds and made me finish 2nd out of 269 players after day 1. People clearly were not prepared to play against it. It had a deja vu feeling. The situation was similar with my PE deck last year. This year it’s the Runner deck that would carry me far in the top 16 finale. Unfortunately I lost twice with Corp in the top 16. This broken deck didn’t get action at all on Sunday :cry: :persevere:

The old MaxX

I’ve been iterating through various builds of Anatomy of Anarchy builds since March. First with Quetzal, then with MaxX. I played a different Corp in every tournament since March and but always this runner archetype. I ended in the top 4 of every single one of them. Many of my opponents told me they were terrified of facing me because of this deck. Clearly the deck was very strong and I didn’t understand why almost nobody was playing it.

You can see the evolution of the deck over time below:

July 5th, 3rd at Belgian Nationals: Belgian Nationals - Android Netrunner - Acoo
May 31st, 2nd at Hasselt Regionals: Oberonn Hasselt Regional - Android Netrunner - Acoo
May 30th, 1st at Den Haag Regionals: Regional Den Haag, Netherlands - Android Netrunner - Acoo
May 9th, 4th at Leiden Regionals: Regional Leiden, Netherlands - Android Netrunner - Acoo
May 3rd, 4th at Brussels Regionals: Outpost Brussels Regional - Android Netrunner - Acoo
March 15th, 1st at Hasselt SC: Quetzal build similar to Brussels Regionals
March 14th, 2nd at Kortrijk SC: Quetzal build similar to Brussels Regionals

Wireless Net Pavillon and the new MaxX

When Wireless Net Pavillon was released, it was quickly clear to me that the card is totally broken. The WNP, Data Leak Reversal, Fall Guy combo is super easy to setup and makes resources untrashable. People tried to the combo with all sort of ID across the 3 factions. The consensus emerged that Valencia was the ID to play. Mostly because the bad pub counters All Seeing I I suspect.

I personally didn’t like the Valencia build though. Coming from MaxX, having a 50 cards deck and no auto draw felt slow and inconsistant. Updating the old MaxX deck with the new combo made it so much stronger and yields better results than the Valencia in my experience. It was too easy to steamroll the Corp with the new MaxX in my tests. Opponents on jinteki.net often just concede or rage quit mid game. It just felt broken. And with Valencia being the concensus choice, you don’t even have to care about All Seeing I.

With Keyhole in the old MaxX, you actually have to pass through R&D ices. It costs 4 credits and 2 MU. And after that you have to access the agendas in Archives which is tedious with Eater and Jackson Howard. So the old deck had a bunch of important support cards like Parasite, Datasucker, Grimoire to make the runs cheap.

An untrashable DLR, costs 0 credit and 0 MU, ignores the R&D ices. With 5 clicks per turn thanks to Joshua B., it’s easy to mill out the Corp before they can score 7 agenda points. So it’s not even necessary to access Archives to win. Because you don’t have to run to win, the support cards like Parasite, Grimoire, Datasucker are not necessary anymore. That frees a bunch of slots for economy and draw cards to make the setup fast and consistent. Paparrazi is the cherry on the cake. With some effort the Corp can still kill you through Plascrete Carapace. With an untrashable Paparazzi, the risk is zero. Of course the install cost of Paparazzi is 0.

The facts that you don’t have to run to win, don’t care about MU, don’t care about agenda points, can have a bunch of tags with no risk just breaks the fundamental mechanics of the game. Clearly this is broken. The old MaxX was strong but still manageable. The new one is totally unbalanced. DLR decks are there to stay and the Corp meta will have to change to cope with it.

How to play it

The basic idea is to recur Siphon to keep the corp poor. The most important step is to land the first Siphon. Once it’s done, it’s usually easy to keep the Corp broke. Closing the game by milling the Corp with DLR is then a formality. The deck has a bunch of economy in order to not be dependant on Siphon money. Even if Siphon shows up late or the Corp plays around it by rezzing cards to empty its cash, you still have plenty of money. Siphon is mostly there to keep the Corp poor. You should use it even if the corp has only 1 credit after rezzing cards during a Siphon run.

Also don’t get tagged before having 1-2 WNP and 1-2 Fall Guy unless the Corp is already broke.

Counters

  • Protecting HQ with strong ETR ices, Caprice or Crisium Grid.

  • The only bad matchup for the old MaxX is actually Blue Sun. Crisium
    Grid and strong end the run ices like Hive or Curtain Wall make it
    really hard to land Siphon. Ironically everybody thinks Weyland is
    bad (it’s descent in my opinion) so there was no Blue Sun to be seen
    at the top tables at Worlds. I haven’t played much with the new MaxX
    against Blue Sun (nobody plays it anymore) but it could be a
    good counter. With DLR decks taking the top spots at Worlds,
    this could trigger a Weyland renaissance.

  • If Valencia DLR decks keeps being popular, making All Seeing Eye
    unplayable, Freelancer is the next best counter. HB with Archived
    Memory and Project Vitruvius to recur Freelancer is probably a good answer
    that need to be explored.

Cards details

Eater is the icebreaker you want to have asap. Faust and Corroder are hardly used but very useful on some occasions. For instance, when the corp tries to rush agenda behind a single ice, or multiple Wraparound in front of HQ.

Deja Vu and Same Old Thing main purpose is to recur Siphon. But keep a close count of how many has been used or milled by MaxX and don’t be too greedy. It’s tempting to recure yet another Siphon only to end up being unable to LARLA. Try to keep one recursion card in case LARLa is trashed by MaxX. Be careful with net damage as they might trash LARLA or recursion cards.

Retrieval Run is awesome in this deck. Archives is often left empty or porous. This allows Retrieval Run to get one of the needed icebreaker without wasting a Deja Vu and a lot of tempo.

Utopia Shard is a last minute, untested replacement for Hades Shard before Worlds. Hades Shard is basically useless because it’s so easy to mill the Corp. I won only once with agenda points with this deck at Worlds btw. Utopia Shard was supposed to be added protection for Psychographics or meat damage in case Paparazzi doesn’t show up. In practice it’s almost never necessary so Utopia Shard should be removed.

Imp is badly needed. With the popularity of NEH and HB, I was trashing Pad/Adonis/Eve Campaign all day long. I’m not sure yet how many is the right amount but 2 Imp seems right with the current meta.

Many people asked about DDOS. I initially misread it as “make a run, the Corp can’t rez the outer ice during this run” when opening its data pack and ignored it. I also played almost no Netrunner for the past 3 months so I wasn’t aware of the card. But it is strong tool to land Siphon or snipe agenda behind single ICE. 1 or 2 DDOS could be added in the deck but more testing is needed.

Credits

  • Steven Wooley from Team Covenant for the original Anatomy of Anarchy
    deck.
    Anatomy of Anarchy | Covenant

  • Eli Mamane (drunkenphysics) for stomping me with his Quetzal Siphon deck on
    Jinteki.net around February. It made me play the archetype the whole
    year.

  • Addy Zwiebel (BJester) for stomping me with his MaxX Siphon
    deck at the Leiden Regional. It made me try MaxX instead of Quetzal.

  • Gary Bowerbank (Evilgaz) for the deck name (word play on Min-Max).

42 Likes

Loving the deck name and I hope this shifts the meta a bit, might have to dig out my Freelancer playmat!

Do you think Wireless Net Pavilion is really broken or just needs the meta to shift to lower it’s quality?

If it’s broken, what do you think the designers should do?

It seems that a lot of players feel like it should be unique but then it will become folder fodder…

I don’t think so. 4 credits to trash a resource is still a lot. Especially if you have 1 or 2 Fall Guy to protect it.

In my opinion, with WNP being unique, DLR deck will become less autistic as they will need to keep more preassure on the corp economy.

2 Likes

I think this is one of the most focused decks I’ve seen; congrats! And top name too.

Is it difficult to get all your DLR pieces with Maxx trying to mill them, or do Inject and IHW usually make sure you see them in good time?

This was the deck I was most interested in seeing after world’s and I really want to try it after I’m not feeling so burnt out on DLR. It could definitely be better than Val but ironically that’s only true as long as Val is there to keep ASI in check.

I do feel like this deck is more susceptible to asset spam and HB rushing since you are losing Blackmail and you’re not running Scrubber. Val also eclipses MaxX’s draw by midgame as well with 1 or 2 Drug Dealers plus Off Campus. You will definitely have more money most of the time though from bit having to pay Drug Dealer all the time.

Congrats on your finish and for being the only person to beat me in swiss

9 Likes

Since MU isn’t ever going to be a problem with this deck, did you consider Trope at all for recursion?

EDIT: I’ve just realised why that’s a terrible, terrible idea in MaXx.

I too realized that Anatomy of an Anarch archetype was extremely strong in the current meta and went with a Knight Siphon Whizzard at Worlds that went 6-2 and 4-0 vs FoodCoats. His ability took care of the Imp problem you’re having.

Great work on this MaxX, I really dig it. All this siphon anarch will resurrect the 2-3 crisiums fear decking tactic I think.

2 Likes

Bonjour!

Thanks for the shout out - Team UK still winning!

If I remember you beat me with another version of this in Belgium as well as Worlds? Horrible deck. My Valencia is similar to this rather than the standard Valencia DLR build, but goes all-in on the Account Siphons.

DDoS is excellent - I’ve landed so many A/S with it, it’s ridiculous - also if anyone does ICE Archives, it tends to be with a single piece and this is excellent for getting round it if you’re feeling nervous. Also, assets tend to get a single ICE (Jackson, Adonis, etc,) and having a turn of running everywhere is often great. Just don’t play it early or people will double-ICE. Having the extra click from Joshua B means you can put it down and still get four runs that turn!

People seem to be more keen on Scrubber than Imp currently, but I’m not sure. CVS tends to make your Imps sad and without Aesop’s in the deck, it’s a bit of a resource drain.

Thanks for sharing. Team UK are having a lot of fun with a version!

Great to play against you again. See you at another tournament soon.

3 Likes

So is the DLR craze gonna make Sync an actual thing?

1st off, I love love love this deck. Watch the streams and you’ll see, Minh was one of if not thesingular best runner deck at worlds. Totally bummed corp games bumped him out in the cut! Next year…

Good write up too on the overall strength of DLR/WNP in the meta right now. Mihn, I think it’s interesting that you mention weyland’s strength vs. it without any mention of Corp town. Non-BS weyland is still deep in T2, but their asset game feels like it’s up-and-coming and in my tiny little corner of the meta corp town has been doing a ton of work against DLR decks. “cannot be prevented” means the engine turns off right now, and if you can protect it for a few turns (not un-doable against eater…) you can just watch their whole board dissolve.

Not that there’s any decks running it that are necessarily good enough to hang with your deck competetively right now - I just wanted to mention this archetype-in-training that runs a very strong counter to one of the best decks in the game.

2 Likes

God does that make these decks sad too.

I ran Siphon Maxx, no WNP/DLR, and did OK. I think that it is well placed, since NBN’s ice is awful. Suffers vs HB though. I’m not sure how to do well vs HB foodcoats with siphon anarch, but I have made some wins out of it.

I love the deck

2 Likes

@x3r0h0ur That’s so interesting because I went 4-0 vs FoodCoats at Worlds. Being able to have a disposable rig and pressure everywhere was devastating. The slow parasite on R&D while I annoyed their remotes, then switch to siphon attack, then back to R&D digging…too much for HB to handle.

I will say that the biggest benefit I got from playing as Whizzard was the ability to trash cards during my R&D digs and HQ pokes. I used his 3 credits in those situations more than I did on installed assets/upgrades. I guess being able to call their remote bluffs was good too…because if I triple clicked through Turing I’d still gain 1 from desperado, draw 1 from John M, and trash Adonis/ASH for free. Not nearly as much of a tempo hit.

Whizz absolutely would have been better for me. The losses I took were because I both couldn’t afford to trash assets, and they had assets to rez in response to siphons.

1 Like

Nice Job Minh!
I would love to test some BlueSun vs dlr Maxx. I think BlueSun does have an upper hand coming into these kind of decks but Maxx usually is way faster on landing siphon that even bluesun sometimes has to take it.

If we talked earlier I should definitely convince you to play BlueSun at worlds so you won’t get double corp loss in elim rounds :angry:

4 Likes

Grats Minh, nice design work.

What’s your opinion of other max decks in the metagame?

1 Like

This list right here? This is some of the grossest stuff I’ve ever seen.

I love it. Congrats.

Is swordsman not really a worry?

Would a singleton corporate town be a good include in Weyland decks, to be tutored (and possibly fueled) by Project Atlas? Or would it be too clunky to play in time?

Note : he CHOSE to Corp vs me in double elims. Seeing this list, I’m a thankful man!

5 Likes