Pimp my n00b deck

My IRL playing group finally moved to the Spin cycle, so Jackson Howard is finally in our cardpool. :slight_smile: Because it took us almost a month to finally add another datapack cycle I decided to take the next step on Jinteki.net and I was playing a couple of “standard” games instead of limiting my games to core set only.

I was playing with a very “janky” HB Fast advance and I mostly faced three types of runners:
Astro Lock Hayley
Medium Dig Siphon Repeat Andromeda
and Sunlight Whizzard

I played in the casual lobby and I usually won against any other type of runner, and almost always won against each of these, except for the Hayley deck which had clot and I never managed to win against it.

My question is: Is there an HB Fast Advance “deck” designed in a way to beat clot? Or how do you handle it?

Another thing, how do you handle the Faust+ Dean Lister Combo? I think I would need a 11 (!) or 13 ICE deep remote server to be able to beat it.

Is there a way to use my Jackson and Akitaro despite of Councilman (Levy brought the Councilmans back).
Do you see some obviously bad things with the deck design?

Thanks for any comments or suggestions in advance!

Cyberdex Virus Suite can get past Clot. It is in Order and Chaos so does not help as to where your group is up to but neither is Clot. You can rez CVS, trash to purge and then score an agenda (must be advanced before you trash CVS) all in the one window so the runner cannot recur Clot with Clone Chip before you score. Sacrificial Construct with an installed Clot is a different story. You will have to do some manual purges or recur CVS multiple times.

Defensive upgrades are good against Faust and Lister. Caprice can keep them out indefinitely if you are good with Psi games but at least until the end of the run. Similar with Ash, if you have the credit advantage you can stop the run with Lister but they can still come back. Alternatively you can use ICE that cannot be broken with AI breakers. Swordsman is available in Spin. I think the rest are afterwards.

At the end of a turn there is a window to rez cards. If they choose to pop Councilman in response, you can re-rez them at the start of the next turn (even before any clicks/draws have been done) and you can use them as per normal. I guess this means you just have to plan ahead a bit more.

I would not feel too bad losing to those decks. They all did very well at regionals against the entire card pool not just what your deck consists of.

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Is Brainstorm good against Faust & Lister? O.o
If I have mostly end the run ICE, which is better Marcus Batty or Caprice?

Caprice > Batty in the general case.
Batty is for when you really really want a specific sub to fire. And not ETR, because Caprice does that.
(So usually you’re aiming to fire a ‘Trash 1 Program’ sub with Batty during Approach so that they run into the Destroyer ICE to get another trash.)

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If Councilman is a problem, just rez on your turn and if they fire him, rez again on your turn. It does remove the element of surprise but it means your upgrades and assets are online.

This is my latest iteration of the deck:

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

Agenda (9)
3x Accelerated Beta Test (ABT ftw!)
2x Elective Upgrade (if I score one early I usually guarantee the win, put it behind a gear check ice - or two and it is quite safe)
1x Merger ● (I lost games because of this and won game because of this card, it is around 50%-50%, I have no idea how I could replace it, )
3x Project Vitruvius (I have never used the “When scored” ability)

Asset (4)
2x Adonis Campaign (2 is enough, I love it when a runner goes through a taxing scoring remote just to thrash this)
2x Jackson Howard ●● (2 is enough, I almost never use the second one)

Upgrade (3)
2x Akitaro Watanabe ●●●● (cornerstone card)
1x Manta Grid (I won one game because of this card, but usually I don’t res it at all, I am thinking of replacing it)

Operation (12)
1x Archived Memories (against a mill deck it is quite nice to choose the card from your archive that you really need, it also gives back a Biotic Labor if needed).
1x Ark Lockdown (because of mooninites there are a lot of Whizzard decks with 1 paperclip in their deck, take away the paperclip and I pretty much auto win).
3x Biotic Labor
3x Green Level Clearance (I love this card)
3x Hedge Fund
1x Subliminal Messaging (really nice card, on average around 5 credits per game)

Barrier (9)
1x IP Block ● (I am experimenting with this, so far everyone is breaking it, which is a really nice tax)
2x Meru Mati ●●●● (I love this card, I usually don’t protect HQ, so if I draw it, this is the ICE that goes on HQ, even if they have a paperclip)
3x NEXT Silver (cornerstone card)
3x Seidr Adaptive Barrier (really nice card on R&D or scoring remote)

Code Gate (7)
1x Crick ●●● (I am experimenting with this and Architect, they seem to be around equal in “taxation”)
3x NEXT Bronze (cornerstone card)
3x Turing (mostly against Faust and Overseer, a little bit against Eater)

Sentry (5)
3x Guard (It is nice, but not the best, I am still experimenting with this)
2x Rototurret (key card, but 2 are enough)

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

Councilman is no longer a problem, Akitaro is just one credit so I can res him multiple times to remove their councilman and/or Sacrificial Constructs. I fooled around with Amazon Industrial Zone, and against most decks it is quite good, but against Councilman+Magnum opus+Sac/Con it is too expensive.
Clot is still an issue, if there are Sac/Cons out. I don’t mind purging it once, but clone chip+sac/con is terrible.
Faust+Dean Lister is still a problem, the only thing I can think of is Brainstorm.

I added Caprice and/or Marcus Batty into my deck but I usually never ressed them. i think this is a “piloting error”, I guess against Faust+Dean Lister this might be actually a key card, if it weren’t for councilman+sac/con. What do you think?

I would say I pretty much have a high winning chance against all other decks on Jinteki casual lobby. Usually if I loose it is because of bad piloting (and the very occasionally bad draw, which happens to everyone).

So I would say this deck has an above 50% winning chance against every other deck then Hayley Astro Lock, which I never managed to beat.

Not sure Akitaro deserve a spot even for free influence.
You’d better have hard money than a reduction imo.

You have 21 ices, you could play with 19, removing both Akitaro, put another Jackson and find a 3x money card.

3x Jackson doesn’t mean you have a use for the three, it means you have it earlier.