7-Point Shutdown: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Decklists
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So, this deck has been around for quite a bit now, and I don’t think it’s particularly well-suited to the current meta, but I feel like it’s worth mentioning. I have been playing it off and on for a while. I played it at the pre-worlds tournament and ended up in 3rd, and played it to a win with a record of 7-0 at a recent store championship.

I have been trying to “popularize” it despite it’s degeneracy recently because I think it’s a big skill-tester on both sides of the board, it makes for some really novel, interesting games, and most of all, it is the most complicated and dynamic combo I have seen in any card game, ever. For those of you who don’t know, here’s the list I’ve been playing (note that the Fragments are probably a mistake, playing 2 Pri Req allows you to, in edge cases, Rec Order both of them back from Archives if milled, and the ability on the 5/3 agendas doesn’t matter one bit):

7-Point Shutdown (49 cards)

Cerebral Imaging: Infinite Frontiers

Agenda (9)
1 Accelerated Beta Test
1 Eden Fragment
3 Efficiency Committee
1 Hades Fragment
3 Project Vitruvius

Asset (3)
3 Jackson Howard

Operation (27)
3 Accelerated Diagnostics
1 Archived Memories
1 Biotic Labor
3 Blue Level Clearance
2 Green Level Clearance
3 Hedge Fund
1 Interns
3 Power Shutdown
1 Reclamation Order
3 Shipment from Kaguya
2 Shipment from Mirrormorph
3 Shipment from SanSan
1 Subliminal Messaging

Barrier (5)
3 Eli 1.0
2 Wall of Static

Code Gate (3)
1 Enigma
2 Quandary

Sentry (2)
2 Rototurret

The basic idea is to combo 7 points in one turn with a series of Accelerated Diagnostics after a power shutdown. Someone on Reddit did a good explanation of the ‘main line’ combo, so I’ll just steal it:

1: MirrorMorph: Install Jackson Howard, Efficiency Committee or Jackson Howard, and a 3 or 5 cost agenda.

2: Power Shutdown

Use Jackson

3: Accelerated Diagnostics: Install Jackson Howard or Efficiency Committee with Interns, Reclamation Order to bring back Accelerated Diagnostics, Biotic Labor.

Now you have 1 Jackson Installed, 1 Efficiency Committee installed, and one other agenda. You have 2 clicks remaining, 2 Accelerated Diagnostics in hand.

Use Jackson

4: Accelerated Diagnostics. Install Jackson Howard with Interns, then place 4 advancements on Efficiency Committee with 2x Shipment from SanSan.

Score Efficiency Committee

5-7: Use Efficiency Committee

Now you have 1 Jackson Howard installed, 1 other agenda installed, 4 clicks remaining, and 1 accelerated diagnostics in hand.

Use Jackson

8: Accelerated Diagnostics. Install the remaining agenda with Interns, Advance the 5 cost agenda twice with Shipment from SanSan, and recover 3x Shipment from Kaguya with Reclamation Order.

9-11: Shipment from Kaguya

Score both agendas.

Here is the original reddit thread where I saw the deck posted. In the comments section there is a broad discussion about other ways to pull off the combo, how long it takes, blah blah blah: Reddit - Dive into anything

Here is a few videos of me playing the deck:

A 5-Point combo win from 0 credits:

A win through the Source:

A TURN 3 win:

This deck has a lot of relevant weaknesses. Leela makes it next to impossible to combo in one turn, but you can still combo 5 points in one turn if you Biotic out a 3/2 in an earlier turn. Hades and Utopia Shard make it hard, but not impossible, (if you draw enough cards, you can win through essentially anything). Noise with a Clone Chip in play is a nightmare, but you can Power Shutdown their Clone Chips and/or take a 33% or 66% chance to win through the random mill if you play your cards right. Vamp can be problematic, but I have found most Vamp decks to be a pretty good matchup because they can’t afford to build up Vamp AND pressure you, and if they don’t run you can shove a naked EC out and win from 0 credits if they don’t run it. Siphon is a minor issue: they really need to land two of them, quickly, for it to matter, which most criminal decks can’t do most of the time. One more weakness is that if the runner gets to 5 points, they can stop running to turn off Power Shutdown and build to a turn where they get an absurd amount of multi-access, only having to make sure that you have enough cards in your deck that you can’t burn through them all in one turn, avoiding having to play Shutdown altogether.

It’s also going to get killed totally by Clot, which is part of the reason I am doing this writeup and sharing the deck so much. It’s just something really cool that you can do, and even if it does cause some grief, it’s going to have an end put to it within the coming cycle, so worst case scenario I am helping to infect the metagame for only a short period of time.

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This is sad because Clot will also kill many interesting decks as a collateral damage and it might even end up making the meta game more limited.

I enjoy a lot playing against shutdown decks and I feel games need this kind of tinkering decks to attract different players. Thanks for the great write-up.

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I agree. Clot was a much worse solution to the AstroBiotics issue than restricting cards would have been. I understand the desire to keep A:NR’s card pool ‘pure’, without restricting anything, but Clot is a solution that causes nearly as many problems as it solves. The meta is actually really diverse right now. The issue isn’t that FA is a huge problem, it’s that one deck, AstroBiotcs, is overpowered.

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I have a theory that runners are in a really good place right now, apart from NEH Astrobiotics. It so constrains viable runner decks that it’s not at all apparent just how good the runner decks, and even their variety, is. Actually I’m quite worried about the viability of many corp decks if NEH gets taken care of.

I haven’t tested Clot, nor Cyberdex Suite (its obvious counter) so I don’t know if NEH actually will get killed off.

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Couldn’t you use Cyberdex Virus Suite (or even Cyberdex Trial) to work around that?

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I’m sure you could, but then that’s deckslots dedicated to nothing but Cyberdex in a deck where basically every card is dedicated toward getting you the combo. That practically kills the deck before Clot even hits the table. I mean it’s still do-able, but much worse IMO.

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Perhaps. I suppose the Noise matchup is just generally pretty awful already, but I fear that any other deck could slow you down some by playing a clot, a lot more by saving the ability to recur it, and in the meantime, replay it and deploy additional Clone Chips and make it next to impossible. I haven’t really considered the timing in much detail, but it’s my suspicion that it would take Shaper decks, currently almost all great matchups, and make them enough harder to take this deck from Tier 1.5 to as low as Tier 3.

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I actually love this deck. Playing this deck is like the best chess puzzle ever and it’s different almost every time. I love the sheer number of variations on it. I play games for intellectual challenge and this deck always melts my brain.

That said, I rarely play it because a lot of people find it objectionable, degenerate, etc. To me, we’ve had instant win combo since Core Set called SEA+Scorch+Scorch so to me, AD combo is no different. Both make the Runner play to their outs, know their timings and know when to apply pressure and when to wait.

One of my other pet decks is the Power Shutdown combo but out of Weyland with Scorches to kill the Runner. It’s definitely less consistent right now than the CI version and hampered by the fact that it eats all your influence. But with the right setup you get to deal absurd amounts of meat damage!

It also doesn’t care about Clot one bit and Titan Transnational is going to come out with 17 influence, and a 9/6 is coming out that you can lower your agenda density with. Definitely some fun times ahead.

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I first got into playing on OCTGN a year or so ago by way of that deck. It’s way more money hungry, which is why I find the CI build so much more impressive. On paper it might seem like it’ll be easy to assemble 28 credits for a trace-less posted bounty triple-scorch combo kill, but not when you need to spend on ICE at the same time.

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Yeah, this one routinely wins the game only spending 15-20 credits. Often you need the credits to allow for a large hand size more than you need them to actually spend on things. In cases where you need to go long to beat disruption or eat a siphon or two, it gives the deck the resilience that makes it, in my opinion, the best shutdown combo deck.

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How do you play around the shards, and have you considered a one-of Foxfire?

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The problem isn’t that it’s an instant win combo, it’s that there’s not much the runner can do about it, unlike Scorch.

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Except all the things @mediohxcore mentioned in the OP. The Shards are brutal against this sort of deck, Hades > Eden > Utopia, but all do work. This decks has some nuts draws on a completely different level to other decks. See the turn 3 win vs Noise, but it is cool and has weaknesses.

You often can’t do anything while the corp is comboing out, but it’s usually not a solitaire game until that point. I’m a fan.

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One thing to note is that barring Noise + Clone Chip, most of the cards countering the AD shutdown combo came out from the Lunar Cycle onwards. This deck came out in that brief window post-Double Time where it was ridiculous to play against.

Now there are just too many counters which are commonly played for this deck to win consistently. But it was a unique and rather scary deck for its time.

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The fact that SEA Scorch Scorch can be defended against with just money is huge. Also, Plascrete doesn’t cost influence.

Defending against the 7 point combo on the other hand requires specific cards or IDs, and most of those cards cost influence. The difference between the combos is quite big.

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Ugh, who got combo on my collectible card game!? Revolting.

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I’m not against combos that require teching specifically against, so long as they’re clunky enough that probability is against them coming together early. There are enough runner decks that give this archetype fits. It requires a pretty sharp mind to play it through a tournament. I’m hopeful that they release a runner equivalent to Power Shutdown, so we can do similar nonsense with Trope once that becomes a card.

I used to be in the ‘it’s just not netrunner’ camp, but I’ve mellowed, I’m glad you can play the game in a bunch of different ways. If it gets too strong, then it needs kneecapping, but as there are cards that specifically tech against it in the card pool then I think it’s fine and cool.

Plascrete should cost influence. I think it might do if it were released once they realised neutral cards could/should have influence. Runners would be braver, and maniacal corps who are honest about their malpractices would be stronger.

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“Analyzing the board won’t help. Your mistake was thinking we’re playing the same game.”

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Ultimate troll deck. Well done, Dan. Guess I should probably be playing this.

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I’ve been running a list really similar to yours, Dan, and have been having an absolute blast. I went with the next ice over the Wall of Statics and Quandries as, for only a little more money, they can set up taxing servers as well as gear check servers. I have found that the absolute nemesis of this deck is Eden Shard which thankfully no one plays. If it gets popped right before the second or third diagnostics it almost always ends up with things in your hand that you can’t afford to have in your hand.

2 Likes