6-Agenda Harmony Medtech "Kinda Glacier"

Hey guys, I’ve been playing around with Harmony Medtech ever since GFI was spoiled and I think I’ve finally gotten a good list out of it. It plays a bit like a cross between glacier and rush–it’s primarily glacier since our plan is to score out 3-pointers, but it can go very fast since we only need to score two. Here’s the list I’m at (after many iterations):

6 Agenda Glacier

Harmony Medtech: Biomedical Pioneer (Honor and Profit)

Agenda (6)

Asset (3)

Upgrade (5)

Operation (14)

Barrier (5)

Code Gate (7)

Sentry (4)

  • 1x Assassin (Data and Destiny)
  • 3x Pup (Honor and Profit)

12 influence spent (max 12)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

A pretty simple structure, it’s just econ, ice, and psi-game upgrades.

Agenda suite is obvious, and is the whole basis of the deck. By running 6 agendas, 3 of them GFI, we only need to score twice and runner has to usually score 3 and win a psi-game or two. This makes R&D density low as well as HQ density.

The ICE suite is polarized between cheap taxing ice (the cheap binary ice tax runner to find a breaker) and big tough to break taxing ice. The idea is we cheaply defend R&D with taxing ice because agenda density is so low, we gear check HQ early on while the agenda/asset density can be high. Later in the game we can layer more tax on R&D and with HQ we either abandon it (we can often keep just 1 TFP in our hand so effective agenda density vs no film critic is 1/15 + a small tax 1/5 times) or we can reinforce with either tax or big ice–vs siphon spam we probably want to get something big there. Big ice tend to live on the remote, especially Ashigaru which is a nightmare for many runners to deal with. By saving money on central defense we have money to rez big remote ice fairly early and push out agendas. Generally our scoring server will end up having at least 2 big ice (toll-booth + ashigaru for example), though sometimes a couple small taxers or a third big ice are necessary.

Assets are kept to a minimum to make R&D and HQ less dense, but 3x Jackson is critical–he functions as economy very often since we have a protected remote for him a lot of the time and draws towards operation econ. Of course reducing HQ agenda density is crucial at times too, late game he can be used to shuffle back operations to decrease R&D density. I think dropping any copies of him is a clear mistake. 3x Caprice is obvious and backbone of the deck. 2x Marcus are there for redundancy and as a late game combo with caprice since you can rez and use both during one run–this combo forces runner to have at least 4 creds upon access (otherwise you can bid 2 then 2 and lock out) and even then if we have enough money to randomly generate our bidding it results in a 1/9 steal rate. Often Marcus can be enough to ensure a (2/3 chance) score though since usually runners are unable to run the remote twice in one turn.

Econ is maxed out operation based. The idea of operation econ is it makes R&D less porous, and stops the runner from being able to lock us out of econ. This deck just constantly hungers for cash between the giant ice and all the psi-games you need to be able to afford to play–plus just scoring the agendas costs at least 10 creds!. Every early iteration I’ve had was always tight on money, finally with this much econ the deck functions. It’s as much as I could fit between influence constraints and quality of econ. The weird choices are medical research fundraiser and GLC. MRF is really solid in this deck, despite us trying to be taxing, since it enables big ice rezzes that take back the money. There are times where you want to delay firing it (for example to not allow runner to get to Sure Gamble money easily) but it usually functions very similarly to hedge fund and restructure–it costing 3 is a big benefit too since it can get you out of tight money situations and get you into hedge fund and restructure money quicker. GLC is a late addition but I’ve been pretty happy with it. The minor econ bust can get you into money range to fire off other econ and the card means it’s very useful early game to hunt for ice/econ. In this deck drawing a card is likely worth a bit more than a credit so it’s almost hedge-fund except more flexible. This deck is often tight on clicks and often needs to control how many cards it’s drawing so BLC would likely be very poor here.

And that’s it! Pretty simple shell, no frills, but is very effective. We do live/die a bit on psi-games, but often the big ice early enough + caprice can shut runners out of the remote very effectively. We can often score out fairly quickly so there’s a ton of pressure on the runner to get set up fast. On avg in our remote we will lose psi game about 1/3 of the time so if we force out 3 agendas our expectation value is to score two of them–which is all we need. Because of GFI this means they can score that 1 remote agenda and another agenda out of R&D and HQ and still not win. So our game-plan on avg wins–but of course the psi-game adds quite a bit of variance.

Couple of quick thoughts on changes. I’m pretty convinced Mushin is a no-go. As much as it creates scores when combined with junebug and GFI, the 5-6 deckslots it uses are massive–even though it isn’t costly in itself, the opportunity cost of those cards not being econ is huge. It also creates another source of variance in an already high variance deck.

At this point I’m really unsure of how to improve this deck, maybe you guys have suggestions? One change I’m considering is -1 Assassin +1 Komainu since Komainu is a bit cheaper and often a bit more taxing (plus some face-check tax). Interns is tempting but i used it in previous iterations and between being dead early game and slow late game I decided to run extra Marcus instead.

There’s some weird timing stuff to know about with this deck. First off rez caprice and marcus when last ice on server is (or would be) rezzed–that’s the last rez window. I know simple for you pros but I played this wrong for a while :smiley: Second Himitsu-Bako with Ashigaru is fun. Please (please!) correct me if I’m wrong, but we can allow runner to break all the subs on Ashigaru then we can bounce Bako and force them to break one more after that–kinda fringe spot, but in theory vs Lady or Spike we can let them choose the subs, then add another after–so with 5-cards in hand we can force 3-lady tokens, then force a 4th to get used after we bounce Bako since he’s already chosen the subs he was breaking and so can’t just use 3 total.

I’m excited to hear your thoughts! I’m not sure yet exactly how strong this deck is, or how much room there is to make it better, but I’ve had a ton of fun playing it and have had pretty solid results with it overall. There’s some room where this is “food coats but worse” but at the same time because it doesn’t rely on asset economy and can score out in mid-game rather than late I think it has room to be extremely solid in a metagame tuned against foodcoats–plus games don’t ever run super long so that’s a nice benefit for tournaments.

7 Likes

I have a lot of ideas to improve this deck. I’ll post about it later.

Ice choices (ashigaru isnt good in this list imo), interns for caprice, protection vs RD lock/medium, adding a susan.

I’ll get back to you.

2 Likes

Ashigaru has been the lifeblood so far so I’m interested in why you think it doesn’t fit :smiley:

Yeah some issues with medium, i could see forcing in CVS. Susan sounds like a solid replace for Assassin–it’s more vulnerable to D4vid… I think i had it in a previous iteration but got Assassin fever after seeing the worlds food-coats list :slight_smile:

And yeah interns seems like it would be great but I found it to be dead/slow too often and prefer to just have extra copies of marcus instead. Does hurt R&D though.

Ashigaru is too expensive to die to parasite which is everywhere. Thats the short answer

I also have a lot of improvements on this deck as I’ve been testing a bunch of different Medtechs, but I’m curious about this:

Yeah i could see this being an issue in high level games. In practice I’ve found people use up parasite on the cheap ice instead. Still I just don’t see a way around this other than econ and more copies since I’ve found it to be so crucial for our scoring server.

In the end this an issue for all expensive ice? Tollbooth still sees play and is awesome and is only 1 more parasite/DS token…

Tollbooth also forces a cash loss while Ashigaru is just plain taxing. It hurts more to faceplant a Tollbooth than Ashi. So with Ashi they just bounce and parasite, while Tollbooth they will also need to find the 3 credits.

Like I said, I got ideas.

Cutting GLC for Elis is a great start. Susan is heavy tax (you only have so much david, and Toll is a david bait anyway). Lotus field is nice mid range to bring the gap.

But even still… lets take Ashigaru.

9 cost. You are running Fundraiser to afford ice like this, so you are mulliganing some of the tax.

Kate, in most scenarios. its 2 lady counters a try. Parasite is always an option in most Kates. Atman 4 is a nice default taht would be fine too. Its a rough cost, but no rougher tahn Tollbooth at its best, and way worse at its worse… while being easier to kill slightly.

Anarch has more access to kill it, and potentially Knifed. Not Davidable which is nice, and its a hefty tax on Faust.

Its not a bad ice, but that much Ashi… and that much Toll… seems like trouble. Id rather have more mid level ice, and less high end… you are in it for a while, youll see the big ice… but if you get overloaded on big ice early, you are in big trouble.

Hope this helps.

2 Likes

Yeah I actually cut Eli for GLC :smiley: i think it’s a sad necessity where we wish we had more influence. Himitsu-Bako has been OK (and vanilla would likely be good once it’s out).

The lack of mid-range ice is intentional. In my first builds I used it and found that using it on centrals was too expensive for the benefit, and on remote the high end stuff is better. I just found I couldn’t score out. I’m happy getting a big ice in starting hand, it means one fewer piece we need to start scoring out early–and there are time where an early ashigaru or booth on HQ (or R&D) are necessary (and we can afford it due to burst econ). Setting up our scoring server quickly is essential in this build so having lots of remote server ice has been good together with all the burst econ.

Also for Ashigaru we almost always make sure to have 5 cards in hands. This means Lady can only break in once, so together with caprice/marcus we can still use it to score with.

Susan sounds like could be better than Assassin. I guess it’s pretty close between Susan, Assassin and Komainu. Sounds like Susan is likely our best choice though…

Hey, to each their own. <3

Yep :slight_smile: It was definitely my first instinct when building Harmony, but ended up being very disappointed with the mid-range version. I’ve found this type of ICE suite just wins more game :slight_smile: Still I could definitely be wrong haha, testing is sometimes misleading since I might have faced weaker decks, or played better because of experience, or just had more luck or whatever.

seems like the idea is to blitz up in cash and push out the first agenda before they can come up up with a solution for the big ICE. whereas a traditional glacier setup would frown on ashigaru because of its parasite-magnet nature, here it really only needs to last for one score and then you’re on game point vs. a deck with caprice and it’s time to hit RND hard.

anyways I just wanted to say, looks interesting, will definitely sleeve this up (probably with -1 ashi +1 susanoo - a nice answer for shapers who might not be too troubled by ashi or booth…). Probably not T1 (man I wish they had learned their lesson about low influence IDs like 2 cycles earlier) but definitely looks fun and quick

1 Like

Yep that’s exactly the idea and why ashigaru plays such a central role. If you’re putting in Susan i’d likely swap it for assassin rather than Ashigaru tbh, it’s just been that crucial.

As for T1, yeah the 3 influence would be clutch :frowning: It’s frustrating because it feels very close to T1 but still is short… I’d like to think it’s at least T1.5 but that’s likely creator bias :smiley: I think this iteration is pretty solid T2 at least since it can pretty easily beat bad runners/decks,

And it’s definitely quick! I think it’s fun, but my sense of fun is weird–i also thought taxing CI deck was fun lol. It’s at least quite pure netrunner–money up, use big ice, score agendas in a remote. Psi games can be fun too!

Worth noting that the “hurry” to score also comes out of the ID–runner only has to score 3 agendas rather than 4 in foodcoats so it’s that much more important to get agendas out of HQ before legwork. The lack of solid asset economy also encourages us to get things over quick rather than taking our time.

I played against @coffeeyay a couple of times and it seemed like a reasonable deck. I was playing Geist with Faust and those Ashigarus caused problems.

I told him I was gonna copy his deck. See below for my iteration. I thought it might be fun to throw in The Twins. Seems like they could make Ashigaru a real problem, and there’s always the Komainu kill. It is 1-0 so far. Just barely squeaked out a victory versus a Stimshop CT with Magnum (c.f. @TheBigBoy CT Litmus Test)).

Harmony Medtech: Biomedical Pioneer (Honor and Profit)

Agenda (6)

Asset (3)

Upgrade (6)

Operation (12)

Barrier (6)

Code Gate (6)

Sentry (5)

  • 3x Komainu (Honor and Profit)
  • 2x Pup (Honor and Profit)

12 influence spent (max 12)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

While Twins is fun when it works, it seems fairly dead/inefficient here most of the time… Wouldn’t just 2 Crisium grid be better at that point? (or more econ :D)

1 Like

Twins also has some antisynergy with Ashigaru considering you have to discard a card from your hand.

I believe that Caprice and Marcus do (and threaten!) a lot of EtR work, so instead of EtR ICE we need to focus on taxing ICE instead.

Here’s a list that I have had a lot of success with recently:
(description and tourney report past the title link)

The Good Medtech (Honor and Profit)

Agenda (6)
3x Global Food Initiative (Data and Destiny) •••
3x The Future Perfect (Honor and Profit)

Asset (3)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) •••

Upgrade (6)
3x Caprice Nisei (Double Time)
1x Crisium Grid (First Contact)
2x Marcus Batty (The Underway)

Operation (14)
3x Celebrity Gift (Opening Moves)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
1x Interns (Mala Tempora)
3x Medical Research Fundraiser (Honor and Profit)
3x Restructure (Second Thoughts)
1x Subliminal Messaging (Fear and Loathing)

Barrier (4)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof) •••
1x Himitsu-Bako (Opening Moves)

Code Gate (5)
1x Crick (Breaker Bay)
2x Enigma (Core Set)
1x Tollbooth (Core Set) ••
1x Yagura (Fear and Loathing)

Sentry (6)
3x Assassin (Data and Destiny)
3x Pup (Honor and Profit)

12 influence spent (max 12)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

Another one bites the dust…
And another one down, and another one down, another one bites the dust!

MWL.

To fix, play some other 5/3 besides GFI… You’re playing GFI so they can either steal two TFP, or three agendas?

Alternately, run Bastion instead of Eli maybe? But then you have extra influence available… Hm.

I must be missing your point. Eli is the only card in the deck that is on the MW list and it’s not necessary to the deck’s function, just very efficient.

2 Likes

I’m not seeing where GFI really helps the deck… It was also the simplest change that could be made to free 3 influence. To put it another way, only the first GFI the Runner sees matters. The other two don’t, so the only reason to run 3 is…?

Also I felt Eli was more helpful to the deck than GFI.

But I did offer an alternative, replacing Eli with something else.

(I don’t play much Medtech though, so I could be 100% wrong.)