The Anarch Cookbook: Chapter One

Are you just giving up versus Scorch decks? Or is the play there to play “traditional” Noise and just never run?

Djinn is completely unnecessary. Grimoire gives you what little MU you need. EVERYthing is fuel for the Aesop’s. No sacred cows. No need to waste time searching, as you should be kicking ass on the Wyldside ASAP.

Yeah, Scorch sux, but where is it? You’re hoping to not hit it, and, if you do, you can go into turtle speedbag mill mode with Deja Vu and Clone Chip. Maybe you can ace pieces with Imp and milling.

I think that the deck is in the spirit of Anarch, and @PeekaySK’s article. I know, people hate Damon Stone, but, he did hit on a salient point regarding Anarch in that people may have to take a mindset shift when playing them. Jinteki is similar, in that regard, and people have started to come around on that. (H&P helped)

I believe a subtitle to @PeekaySK’s Anarch Cookbook could/should be ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Chaos’.

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Most of Damon Stone’s predictions have basically been proven correct at this stage. His most hated claim, the one about “end the run ICE is a crutch,” came a few months before NBN:Making News with primarily taxing ICE and few hard EtRs became one of the most popular Corp decks.

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I was thinking the title of the article is great just the way it is.

FWIW, some of you younguns who have grown up after 9/11 might not glean the reference in the title to “The Anarchist Cookbook”, a notorious “how-to” book written in the 60’s for creating violent mischief. Just typing that name in this board probably got me on the NSA watchlist.

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I don’t know what this means; could you explain?

I don’t think this is an accurate statement at all, and is basically nonsensical. The NBN ETR claim was considered especially silly because at the time NBN was already not focusing on ETR (see @Alexfrog and my own first place Plugged in Tour finishes with NBN prior to the interview).

Note that his more in depth claims like:

"So, NBN’s idea was always about taxing the runner. You want in? Come in. I don’t mind! I’ll even let you in. These four pieces of ice? Ohh Don’t worry about that! None of them are end the run. Ohh, and here’s a tag. Here’s two tags. What? You’re now six credits low? Excellent. Ohh this? Ohh sorry, Ghost Branch. Four tags. Now my turn. And i’ll lay this out, score it from hand because of all those tags you have and lay this out and score it from hand. You know, and that’s how that is intended to play…. "

Never came anywhere near to representing the game.

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I don’t want to live in a world where an NBN deck can install and rez 4 pieces of ice on a remote, then still afford to psychographics things.

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I think you have your dates wrong. That interview with Damon came out in August, and Plugged-In took place during October and November. FYI, I remember this because I also won a Plugged-In with that NBN deck-- and I consider the main influences on my version of it to have been Alex’s articles and Damon’s interview.

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I think the idea is that more dex like ones that Midseason or taxing RP (or most Jin in general) can work well with little ETR ICE.

Granted, it’s easy for someone like Damon to make these statements with the knowledge of XXX months worth of cards into the future.

Part two’s current working subtitle is " Mindset, a.k.a. Grip is for losers, programs are expendable, 2 credits is plenty ". I might change it around a bit as I finalize the Mindset section, we’ll see.

One of my main points later on is that Siphon anarchs aren’t necessarily the strongest breed right now, and most definitely aren’t the only viable one. The subtitling thing came mostly out of necessity, because I want it to be both evident it’s all a series and yet the various installments have their own titles.

(unless you meant the little subtitles at the start of the individual sections, which actually came around because of one particular thing that ended up in chapter two, and it’s my way of having a little fun after writing, rewriting, editing, researching and agonizing over a goddamn article about a stupid game for like 20 hours :wink: )


Also, as promised, here’s my current Reina with Caissas build:

Yet Another Siphon Reina

Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter (Mala Tempora)

Event (10)

Hardware (8)

Resource (6)

Icebreaker (7)

Program (14)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Mala Tempora

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

The thing I’m currently experimenting with is what to complement the Knight/Parasite “breaker” package with. Crypsis was too expensive (even with me running additional Liberated Accounts to complement it) and I just don’t like Overmind… so right now, I’m testing Darwin. Seems to work reasonably fine, because it can take care of smaller pieces (which the corp can pretty much always afford, even at +3). This deck really wants Inject, though :smiley: I’m on the verge of actually dropping the Atman and just going with three Easy Marks, despite how massively useful it really is - having just Sure Gambles and Armitages for burst econ is meh, even though the Feeders work really well as sustainable econ.

Also, I’m thinking of upping the Pawn count to 3, because the little guy is amazing. Sure, he actually needs Deep Red on the table, but once that’s on, he can be so important people will actually trash a rezzed piece for him, which makes him a 0-cost parasite.

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I like it. Atman, esp. with the Suckers, can really fill in the gaps. You can have it work anything 4 or higher if you set it at 4. Lower shite can be swept out the door by Parasites and Darwin. Deck is lacking card draw, but can deal, I suppose.

That is possible. That said, I think the rest of my post stands up. The specific claims were wrong or trivial. Taking a look back at them reinforces this point. The big NBN decks never played lots of ETR back then, if anything they play MORE now. At the time the big stuff was all flytrap / never advance.

This all said, this is terribly off topic.

Fair enough. However, this still doesn’t answer my question on how does Djinn work *with Scheherazade. I see them as anti-synergistic yet many look to be running them together.

I think this function of Jackson Howard is grossly over-rated. In games where you draw that badly the tempo loss in drawing through the flood is usually enough to lose you the game anyway, even if the agendas aren’t stolen immediately.

I think we’re starting to enter an environment in which Jackson is no longer an auto-include for a lot of decks. The competition for influence is getting tougher and tougher, so it won’t be long before Noise is back. I think Reina and Whizzard still need a bit more going for them - their abilities are too dependent on what the Corp is doing and have the potential to be blank in some matchups. I like a pro-active runner who can do things for themself, regardless of the Corp’s strategy.

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Almost certainly. Jackson is nice, but he’s far from mandatory, and I know plenty of decks that just don’t want to spend the time playing him in some cases. I suppose we’ll see, but I know SMod and Red Coats both can do without him, and honestly my RP deck could lose him if I had something else I needed influence for desperately enough, probably.

He’s a strong card, but certainly not vital.

I strongly disagree with this statement, RP decks are significantly stronger with a jackson out,

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QFT. Only the most influence-starved Corp decks would forego Jacko. There are always three cards in your deck weaker than JH.

Didn’t mean to say I’d want to. If there was something I absolutely needed, I could probably do without 3x Jackson, but he wouldn’t be my first choice and it’d make a number of games much harder. Even in RP, he’s not vital, but that’s a poor argument on my end since he’s still damn useful, especially in comparison to the others I’d listed.

After I read this I went away and made a Desperao plus Security Testing Whizzard deck. And it’s good, so long as it sees at least one of those two early. But (as someone who has only really played Anarch) I spent a lot of time wondering (as I failed to draw the breaker I needed) if Andy with a Scrubber or two might not be just better. What do you think?

My current (non-Siphon) Whizzard has 2 Security Testing and 3 Special Orders. Even if I don’t see the Security Testings early I have John Masanori and Dirty Laundry to make runs profitable.

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