Are we not talking about Mandatory Upgrades yet?

It looks like the sort of deck that can’t possibly be as good as other HB decks with most of the same crap, better cards, and no mandatory upgrades.

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You could try Mushin MU, Shipment from Mirrornorph to throw a couple pieces of ICE in front of it and a Caprice in the server? That way it’s only vulnerable for 1 turn in the remote. I’d say a 6 card combo is wayyyy too unlikely, but we do still have CI.

I played this deck a long time ago, before Red Coats was a thing. It wasn’t bad back then, however, my friend brought it to our weekly meet up and Noise crushed it. Imp just ruins all your sex bots and protocols. Agendas hiding behind red herrings were thrown in the bin.

Then the new version with Next ICE mid game just winds backwards with ICE trashing and you’re left with ineffective ICE without a viable scoring remote.

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I’ve played around with basically this exact deck in CI, and you quickly realize that, for a number of reasons, you’re just playing a much worse version of the fast advance CI deck. Essentially, you’re playing a combo that needs more pieces, more money, more influence, isn’t actually guaranteed to work against every runner, and forces you to run more agendas. And, relevantly, you still have to deal with Clot, and you don’t even get the option of spending extra combo pieces to Cyberdex purge like FA CI does!

edit: or maybe, That's The Joke - YouTube

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I agree completely…it was more of a “you can do this, not that it will necessarily be good” sort of post. In all honesty, I feel MU is overcosted…it should have been a 5/2 or maybe a 5/1…the difference between 5 and 6 advancement counters is such a huge gap in the game of Netrunner as it stands. Now, to be fair to MU, it’s never going to rotate out, so if something (ideally in faction) comes along to make scoring a 6 advance agenda considerably more viable, then I will be all about that. But until then…binder/jank fodder for you.

Mandatory will rotate out, it was printed in What Lies Ahead

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It looks like an inferior version of untrashable : :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I’ll give it a shot. As noted, I’m not sure Mandatory Upgrades has any distinct benefits over classic Glacier. It’s just a higher variance idea with a win-more attached. If I’m understanding that term correctly.

Yes, I believe you are in this context. I’m still not 100% it’s a valid…term(?)…in Netrunner, but most people seem to think it’s a thing, and more than a few arguments have made me think they might be right. The old “Why Win More is not a Problem in Netrunner” article here on Stimhack still holds some decent sway with me.

In this particular instance, in the three turns you are taking to score Mandatory as described in the article (and it is a good article), you could just score 4 points instead. If you have a Biotic, this can be 5 points. No need for the extra clicks to establish a more dominant position. Unless these are my first 4/5 points and I think I’ll be 100% locked out after this move, I’d rather have the points for a potential FA play to win the game outright.

If you’re looking for an extra click in your deck, I prefer Director Haas. It’s not unreasonable, and protecting her with something like Architect or something else that can overwrite her in the middle of a run (Executive Boot Camp?) can keep the opponent from trashing her when she’s installed. In your centrals is another story.

EDIT: Clarified a statement.

Heck in this instance even Arcology AI will serve the same purpose.

Leela also wrecks the ManUp plan. Spending 3 turns scoring 1 agenda is so bad when Leela can undo all your progress fairly easily.

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If that’s a card you want to play, sure.

…I wonder if it becomes reasonable with Breaker Bay Grid and some protection? Go with a pure FA strategy and a CVS to get rid of Clot? Probably just not as good as RP. Who would’ve thought that ID would be so good when it came out? More pertinent to that idea in the first place, too many pieces to really be viable.

I really dont see how this deck can be good. I’m worried that it will be alot like that Argus security deck that popped on here. The deck creater said he made top 8 a bunch of tournaments and then when anyone else played it, it just folded.

I’ve tried playing this type of mandatory upgrades deck. It just folds to, well, anything really. The netrunnerdb commentary said

"The advancement requirement of 6 sounds daunting since you need 3 turns to score it. But it’s actually quite doable. You even have some leeway since you don’t need to spend ALL of the clicks of those 3 turns to keep advancing the agendas. A move I like to do its Install, advance on the first turn to fake out an NAPD Contract. Next turn advance, advance and use the 3rd click to keep developing the board. This second turn will often seriously confuse the runners. Are you baiting them into a super-taxing run on a NAPD? Is this an HB trap? Or is this just an awkward 5/3 score? "

But the thing is, this deck doesn’t run traps so why would anyone think there is a trap here. It will only trick a player the first time.

Also, if it was actually consistently viable to have adavanced agendas out for more than a turn then people would be scoring mushi no shin-ing government takeovers all day long. But they aren’t, because its a bad play.

Put this deck in the good-against-noobs bin.

I can totally see this deck doing well if he only face voicepad Kate all day long because Kate can’t keep trashing every relevant assets or upgrade (even though Kate can probably pack a single Imp in some build) since her econ option is definitely finite. But it totally fold against any decent crim deck, against noise, desperado Val, desperado + scrubber Reina, RegMaxx, opus stimshop CT/Hayley/Nasir… Well globally everything except voicepad Kate.

As janky as it may be, I think it’s worth talking about why this deck is doing decently in so many regionals when (as many have pointed out) it really oughtn’t be. My thoughts are that it’s

  • a strong meta call against a kate and solitaire noise heavy meta. It goes to show the power of reading your local meta well over just always playing the conventional wisdom “good junk” decks.
  • worth noting that repeatedly making top 8 but not taking top spots may indicate a “moneyball” type situation; doing well overall in swiss against a large field is not the same as doing well against the best players in elimination.
  • possible that the success of this deck is due to HB being quite a bit stronger right now than most people might be thinking. While I won’t be playing any ManU, the conversation around these decks has got me thinking it’s time to break out the ole’ purple again and see what’s really going on with them right now.
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I don’t think mandatory is win more. Let’s say you were in a position to be able to score a 6/2 which didn’t have any abilities. Does scoring it mean you would necessarily win? Not really. Remember Netrunner is a long game, not like Magic which is decided in a few turns. I’ve won games as a runner where a few turns earlier the corp was sure they were in control of the game and had me locked out of their servers. Mandatory gives you a win when you might not have won without it.

In fairness, the creator never claimed that that deck was easy, just that he’d had a lot of success after a steep learning curve.

I kinda wish I’d been bringing it to more things, though. I’ve done well with it in playtesting and casual games, would like to give it a proper go in a bigger event.

But yeah, I can’t see this being quiiite the same case as that. This seems like a meta-call that’s paying off well combined with unfamiliarity. Had someone get an MU scored against me the other day, I thought they were going for a Vitruvius and tried to dig on R&D and get the lock, though I should’ve been running Leela anyway. Either way, just wasn’t expecting MU to be played by a player at the top table, as opposed to awkwardly trying to overscore a Vitruvius after I’d done the same in the previous game (though less awkwardly than install, triple, triple).

Once MU is scored, though, it’s true that it’s a damn nightmare to try and swing things back enough unless you’ve got Clot or a pretty solid HQ/R&D lock. I didn’t, so between install-melange and bioticing out a 4-advance NAPD, he kicked my teeth in pretty hard. But if I’d been playing Leela instead of an (untested, baaad) Hayley, I probably could’ve done much better.

I have a soft spot for Mandatory Upgrades… not the deck mind you but if you have never scored one before you just don’t know/understand. I think some day there will be a very strong deck that can work with it, and while its just a theory craft I’m interested in trying this out…

Man Up (44 cards)
Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded
– Agenda (9 cards)
3 Accelerated Beta Test
3 Mandatory Upgrades
3 Project Vitruvius
– Asset (7 cards)
1 Aggressive Secretary
3 Cerebral Overwriter
3 Jackson Howard
– ICE (15 cards)
3 Architect
1 Mother Goddess
3 NEXT Bronze
2 NEXT Gold
3 NEXT Silver
3 Viktor 1.0
– Operation (9 cards)
3 Hedge Fund
3 Mushin No Shin
1 Neural EMP
2 Restructure
– Upgrade (4 cards)
2 Shell Corporation
2 Valley Grid

Yes it comes down to a bluff in order to score the Man Up, but the idea is to put them into a lose/lose situation. If they dont check it they could lose the game (if you score a Man UP you are almost assuredly going to win) if they do check they could lose the game (with a max hand size of 0 its easy to setup a kill)

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Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded

Upgrades for EVERYONE!

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You can also score vitruvius with 3 tokens on it to turn a single EMP into a finisher.

I was theorycrafting something similar but I think Next Ice is a mistake. I think you want bioroids and brain-taping warehouse.

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