In the corp plans thread I said the runner uses a bit of everything. This thread tries to quantify that ‘everything’ by breaking into groups / decision trees. One thing not mentioned here is money, but it should be an obvious inclusion in all runner decks.
Part 1: The early game. Even if the corp is not playing a rush deck, there’s nothing stopping them from installing that Wall of Static they had planned to use on HQ in a remote server instead and scoring some agendas when they notice you playing a durdly deck. What do you do to make sure you can get in?
*Use an AI - Overmind is perfect for this role, letting you get into any weakly defended server, though probably only once.
*Two rigs - Start off with a cheap rig you can set up to make runs in the early game (ZU.13, Faerie) then upgrade it to more powerful breakers when you have time.
*Evolving Rig - Start off with a cheap rig, then turn that rig into your main rig by adding support cards (eg. use Lady, then later reset it with Scavenge)
*Fast setup - Get your main rig out ASAP with some economic tricks like Personal Workshop + Stimhack.
*Use anti-rush cards - Inside Job, DDoS, Tinkering etc.
*Counter-rush the corp - Ignore what they are doing and hit them on a different server, eg. with Account Siphon or Medium.
*Keep the corp honest - They may have installed more ice than they can afford to rez to give the appearance of being well protected. Use Forged Activation Orders on a server you don’t even want to run to make them choose between keeping their ice or defending their remote.
Part 2: Your icebreaker suite. The corp may have many different kinds of ice and you need a way to break whatever you see. How will you divide your icebreakers?
*By type - Fracter, decoder, and killer
*By strength - Darwin, Atman, D4vid
*By position in the server - Alpha, Omega, 1/turn breakers for the middle like Panchabread or Nexus.
*Individual ice - Femme Fatale with London Library, Knight?
*One icebreaker to rule them all - Faust
Part 3: Your engine. As the game goes on the corp will draw a lot of ice, how will you manage the economy so you can still run as often as you need to?
*I can break ice -
**Rich runner - Have a way to generate credits and/or other resources quickly between runs (Magnum Opus, Underworld Contacts)
**Cheap runner - Be able to break ice cheaply with powerful icebreakers and/or support cards (datasucker, stealth)
*I can reduce ice -
**Credit denial - Attack the corp’s credits so they can’t afford to rez all the ice they draw, and derez expensive ice to keep runs cheap.
**Ice removal - Trash their ice or return it to HQ (Parasite, cutlery, Apocalypse, Leela).
*I can ignore ice -
**Direct mill - Put agendas into archives without needing to run (Noise, Data Leak Reversal)
**No rez - Prevent ice from being rezzed with card effects like Blackmail.
Part 4: Accessing agendas. Gotta catch 'em all!
*I not only want to access, but also prevent the corp from scoring
**R&D lock - Simply install several R&D interfaces (or Medium) and run R&D once a turn to guarantee that if the corp was going to draw an agenda, you’d get a chance to steal it first.
**Remote lock - Steal an agenda whenever the corp installs one in a remote. You need a way to make sure they can’t fast advance so you get this opportunity (Clot is good) and a way to deal with bluffs like assets and traps (eg. expose effects or occasionally running HQ and R&D to get information).
*I just want to get the points
**Agenda flood - This is when you steal agendas from HQ with the help of cards like Legwork. You can try to make agendas go in there faster with card effects like Fisk Investment Seminar and Maya, or let them accumulate naturally by having a remote lock.
**Archives - There are various methods of getting agendas into archives (Keyhole, direct mill, the corp putting them there deliberately); none of these should have much impact on what the corp is doing, but you can still race them to seven points or get them all at once with Hades Shard.
**Other R&D techniques - You can use cards that let you see the top of R&D like Globalsec Security Clearance so you know when to run. This makes it harder but not impossible for the corp to score agendas. Or you can use cards that manipulate virus counters to make a huge Medium run without having to do smaller runs first.