Spark - I H8 Ads!

Decklists
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I got such great feedback on my Silhouette’s Aquarium decklist that I decided to toss up the Corp deck I’m currently playing/tinkering with. To be totally honest, I found this on NetrunnerDB, but have modified it for the current card pool and for my local meta.

Spark - I H8 Ads!

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach (Data and Destiny)

Agenda (11)

Asset (9)

Upgrade (6)

Operation (8)

Barrier (4)

Code Gate (6)

Sentry (5)

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

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

I’d tried a Spark deck before, but never really took to it. A big part of that was because I was simply rezzing my advertisements at the end of the Runner’s turn. That is not how you’re meant to play the ID. It took this deck to really show me how mean Spark can be.

The correct way to play is to rez one of the 12 advertisements right before you think the Runner is going to play something important. Did they just click up to 5c? Rez an ad so they can’t play Sure Gamble. It does take a bit of educated guess work, and you do need to pay attention to the runner’s credit pool.

The deck love, love, loves Service Outage. With that on the table I am often able to dictate when my opponent can make runs, or even deny them runs altogether. Plus it turns News Hound into a fairly cheap ETR ICE.

Tithonium is because I see a lot of Switchblades in my meta, and those run through Archer like a knife through butter. Feed Tithonium a scored 15 Minutes or an AR-Enhanced Security to save your credits, often killing a Hunting Grounds or Film Critic to boot.

Speaking of AR-Enhanced Security, I was unimpressed when I first saw it, but holy cow! Score one or two of those and the runner really sweats over whether they should trash your ads or not. I’m not packing anything to threaten a flatline, but I can sometimes kill a pesky resource or land a Closed Accounts if they don’t shake the tags.

I lamented the loss of Sweeps Week, until I found Biased Reporting. Money that isn’t in the runner’s credit pool, like from Ghost Runner or Armitage Codebusting, can’t be touched with Spark’s ability. But with Biased Reporting you can rake in the credits due to all the resources on the other side of the table. :smiley:

3 Likes
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With GFI as your restricted, and so many of 1-point agendas, it seems that Exchange of Information is the perfect tag punishment.

1 Like
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I like it =) Firstly, speaking from experience, Marilyn Campaign is hilarious in Spark, given its recursive properties. I think I had maybe 6 or 7 Marilyns total rezzed over the course of a game last week. The runner just hated seeing it get reshuffled back in, and I delighted in his frustration.

Secondly, I dig the Tithonium and the Archer. I love seeing those cards out of Weyland, and I feel like no one is going to be expecting Tithonium especially. It’s a great secondary use of all those one pointers. Total agreement with @tvaduva about Exchange, though. It’s a super powerful tool that will win lots of games, if you can get tags to stick. It makes me want to mess around with the agenda suite in my deck and do the same, since it’s so good.

Also, here’s the deck I threw together last week! Right now since I’m in northern Italy, there’s only one guy here that I know of that plays, so we play together once a week, and I try and being new decks each time to keep things fresh. This one is based on @Zeromus’s old City Surveillance deck, but without City Surveillance, since it doesn’t exist any more.

Zerocredus

Spark Agency: Worldswide Reach (Data and Destiny)

Agenda (10)

Asset (13)

Upgrade (5)

Operation (9)

Barrier (3)

Code Gate (5)

Sentry (4)

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

Manhunt is my City Surveillance replacement, and it’s… okay? It doesn’t trash as easily, and has a better cost, so that’s nice. Beyond that, it’s a kinda standard HHN deck that tries to make the runner give up and just wear tags, or spend their day trying to remove them while I win. CPC Gen is there because I figure once they’re reduced to clicking for credits, I want in on that action as well – plus it’s another advertisement. It might just be better if these were Launch Campaigns, though, I dunno.

Anyhow, I dig the deck and the different choices you made making it. Your ICE is a good deal scarier than mine, and I love it. I might make some hybrid version for next week’s session, ditching the Adonis for Launch Campaigns to free up the influence and going with something that more closely resembles your ICE suite.

2 Likes
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Thanks for the shoutout. Also, Market Research is also rotated.

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Last week or so I’ve spammed a Spark deck that I think has some potential (though it’s too fair to be tier 1). The runners to beat are Smoke, whoever carries MO, goodstuff anarch, maybe leela. All decks which require some setup, and the shapers aren’t actually too good at dealing with assets. Spark tends to take a tempo lead at the start, though it’s not as good as NEH at keeping that lead. You could have some hope of finding a way to beat smoke here, I think.

It worries me slightly that both decks seem to be intent on playing long, as such. Both have tools to convert early pressure though: I like the AR-enhanced Security from the first list: you can push this out quite early, if you lose it smoke had to overextend and not set up, pass through your ice, and score a whole point. If you get it, cards like Ash and herrings become way more annoying late. HHN could happily press an advantage from the second.

But both investments on currents look like you want to have the runner actually avoid making runs: that means you are a sitting duck for the inevitable indexing.

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Well why the hell was it in my netrunner db card choices?! Must be some box I forgot to uncheck grumble grumble…

1 Like
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Thanks again for the feedback everyone. A two-week trip back to the States kept me from replying sooner.

An earlier version of the deck had Exchange of Information in it, but I found it to be something of a crutch. I can rarely get tags to stick to my opponent (they’re more an attempt to slow them down or scare them off) making it hard to land. Plus, I found myself saying “Oh, that’s OK. I can get that agenda back.” after they stole a GFI and as a result, not protecting my servers as well as I should. That being said, if I can find room for HHN, it might be worth including.

[License Acquisition] (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/card/06085) looks like it might be a way to get back a few trashed cards (namely Ash) from archives without Preemptive Action. Swapping 1x TGTBT and 1x AR-Enhanced Security for 2x License Acquisition would open up a slot for something like HHN or MCA Informant.

How have the CPC Generators been treating you, @Saan?

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They’re… okay? They’re probably one of the weaker pieces, but they still drain a credit, and the deck certainly forces the runner to click for credits pretty often. It’s 98% dead vs MOpus decks, though, but those are a bit rare atm. I do highly recommend HHNs, though. They’re amazing even at just draining credits.