Clicking Hell v1.3, Store Championship Winner, Chicago, IL, 2/20/15

Decklists
1

Hey,

So I’ve posted this on NRDB and also on Facebook at Netrunner Geeks, but I wanted to get input from Stimhack as well. This is a deck that I piloted at 2 store championships in Chicago, getting me 3rd and then 1st.

First the list:

Clicking hell v1.3

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

Agenda (10)
3x Accelerated Beta Test
3x False Lead
1x Project Vitruvius
2x Project Wotan
1x Utopia Fragment

Asset (5)
2x Eve Campaign
3x Jackson Howard •••

Upgrade (13)
3x Ash 2X3ZB9CY
2x Crisium Grid ••
3x Heinlein Grid
3x Red Herrings ••••• •
2x Strongbox

Operation (3)
1x Archived Memories
1x Biotic Labor
1x Rework

Barrier (5)
3x Eli 1.0
2x Heimdall 1.0

Code Gate (5)
2x Enigma
2x Hourglass
1x Viktor 1.0

Sentry (8)
1x Architect
3x Ichi 1.0
1x Ichi 2.0
2x Swordsman ••
1x Troll ••

15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Source

As I’ve written elsewhere, this deck has a unique play style and rhythm that you have to get used to if you want to play it as written. A standard turn is installing a single card and then clicking for 2 credits. This play style provides you with 2 main benefits: 1) it allows you to fill your deck with things that help you win the game, rather than mere money cards and 2) it makes the deck exceedingly annoying to run against. By installing one card per turn in your remote, the runner has to guess when you finally have an agenda in your remote. The runner will burn up a lot of resources getting in to your remote, only to find a Heinlein grid and an Ash. When they don’t run you’ll be able to sneak out False Leads and an occasional ABT (which you should only fire if you have Jackson as a backstop). Getting a False Lead or two scored can be very helpful for late game, but don’t worry too much about rushing the pace of your game. You’ll have a pretty strong late game.

The lynchpin of this deck is Heinlein Grid. It forces the runner to break all of your ice or lose their money. You’ll catch many runners off guard once by rezzing a Heinlein Grid and an Ichi or an hourglass. If you have a false lead scored, sacrificing it as the runner approaches an Ichi is absolutely devastating for the runner (I’ve won at least a dozen games based solely on this combo).

The mixture of ICE is completely a meta call. I was teching against anarchs with the swordsmen (they did very well for me, though I missed my second troll). I wasn’t expecting a ton of Yog so I replaced Viktor 2.0 with the 1.0 version.

This deck can easily purge its HQ (laughing at wonton destruction and itinerant protestors) so if you don’t get enough ICE feel free to prioritize your remote and R&D defenses. Crisium Grid should go on whichever central will hurt the runner most (I prefer it on archives because retrieval run is very common right now).

I’m not super eager to win a second bye, so I’ll probably switch to jank for the rest of the tournament season, but I’ll probably return to this deck at some point. Feedback and advice is welcome.

8 Likes
2

Hey @Daine

I gave your deck a handful (around 7) plays online and at my weekly netrunner night yesterday.

The deck actually did pretty well, going 6-1. Two of those online games were in SHL3 against Reg MaxX.

I swapped out a Viktor 1 for a Viper, added a third Eve. and put the second Troll back in over Swordsman because I think Crisium and bioroid ice in general already deals with Eater Keyhole enough. The Eater+Keyhole mess died down recently here.

The ice spread is brilliant. Yes, I kept the Hourglasses. They were royal pains in the butt to deal with,though I never fired Heinlein with them, just didn’t draw them at the right time.

I indeed did install click for 2 most turns, and it put a lot of opponents on edge. They would legwork me to find nothing, and look exasperatingly at the huge R&D and remote with 50 upgrades.

It’s a neat deck, though I was wondering if you could describe your evolution to the point of cutting the econ? It seems that even with just 5x Campaigns instead of 2x, you could make a scoring remote and a Campaign remote with 1 ice and have much more money to get going a little faster.

3

Congrats on your win. Was the SC less than 10 players? I didn’t see this posted on the Tournament Winning Decklists page.

I played against someone piloting this deck last night on Stimhack League. He made some dubious plays but even so, here’s my impressions:

  • Playing 5 cards with trash cost of 1 made centrals weak. It feels like too many.
  • I think cutting Hedge Fund is definitely wrong and I would try to make space for it. Eve Campaign doesn’t make money against a good Runner, rather it just makes them pay to trash it.
  • If you’re going to click a lot for money you can get 50% more by playing Gila Hands. The False Lead interaction is great when it works, but you’ve still forfeited an agenda point for it…
  • I think Swordsman is worse than playing Wraparound to tech against AIs. Swordsman still loses to Mimic, Femme, and Parasite whereas Wraparound makes them pay a ton to go through.
1 Like
4

I’m glad the deck has been working for you.

The evolution of cutting down on the money is a function of having written down why I lost each game during earlier versions. There would be games where I would draw my money cards but then not be able to leverage that money into a win. As I took the money out slowly, however, I never got to a point where I was losing games because I was too poor. It’s possible that I’ve merely adapted my play style to match the unusual deck construction, but I actually think it’s just a function of building the deck to be consistent, and adapting to make it still work.

I’m releasing the deck into the wild, so I won’t begrudge you adding more money if it fits your play style better, but I can say from my experience that it just isn’t as helpful for the deck as having a second strongbox, a third Eli, or even an archived memories have been for me. If you do end up chopping some cards and finding the deck works just as well, I’d be interested in the feedback.

I’ve had the viper recommended to me recently and I love the idea. It’s a good call.

5

Thanks for the reply and for the video. It caused me physical pain when your opponent trashed the ichi and I had to stop watching. Playing the deck slightly differently is one thing. But killing and ichi rather than pay a credit (against Exile) is just silly. It disqualifies it as a reasonable test game for me. They also weren’t really utilizing the deck at all. No upgrades used, advancing a Vitruvius (then not over scoring it), and too focused on money (sacrificing board state to get an eve up one turn earlier). It almost makes me want to start playing on OCTGN again just to show people how to run this thing. But I digress. Your points:

I wish my upgrades had better trash costs, but they don’t. And they’re necessary for how the deck works. I suppose repeated R&D runs can be damaging, but it honestly hasn’t felt like a huge issue for me so far.

The cult of hedge fund has never made much sense to me. Let’s agree that we are both unlikely to convince each other of our disagreement on the worship of this card. See my comments above about feeling free to add more $ if you feel you need it. But the deck is better off since the hedges have been chopped, IMO.

False lead scores me agendas and opens windows that money can’t. I tried Gila for a few games and hate hate hated it.

I’ve had wraparound recommended a few times, and I couldn’t disagree with the recommendation more. It’s bad on multiple levels. It motivates runners to find a fracter (whereas sometimes they’ll click through Eli instead), it doesn’t do any damage to the runner if they face check it, and it ends runs even when I don’t care if it ends runs. Honestly, if you’re going to cut the swordsmen, it’d be better to add some hedge funds and throw the influence away than adding wraparound.

1 Like
6

Ugh. So I finished the video.

It’s not that he had a few misplays, I’m fairly certain he didn’t have a single correct play all game.

First turn should have been install over R&D and click for 2. Second turn is install Eve, maybe install hourglass over it, click for a credit. Third turn is install ash in eve server and click for 2. Etc. etc. etc.

He was so focused on getting money he didn’t bother trying to score. He just let you have the agendas for nothing. Painful. He’s sitting on upgrades that could have protected him and his agendas and he lets you trash them from HQ. Ugh ugh ugh ugh.

1 Like
7

If you want, we can play on OCTGN sometime and you can show me how it’s done. It’s certainly not intuitive to me how you can win by spending 2/3 of the game clicking for credits. :smile:

Hedge Fund and Sure Gamble are not played in 99% of competitive decks because we are all cult worshippers. I’m not sure if you literally believe that or if you’re just calling names to justify your position. It’s because the math checks out, and no matter how good your other cards are you can’t use them without money.

1 Like
8

What was your record with this deck across the two events? What are the good/bad matchups for it?

I have been playing a “lots of upgrades” Jinteki deck the last couple weeks, and it was entertaining, other than the fact that I had to click for credits way more than I’m comfortable with. I guess having the ETF identity would help with that a lot. Have you tried Shell Corporation/how did it perform?

9

I’ve always wanted to play Hourglass but I think the 5 rez is way too high for a porous piece of ICE that does nothing last click. Granted, running last click against HB ain’t frequently smart, but I think it should have costed 3 at most to rez.

2 Likes
10

Got games in with the deck finally and yeah; 1 card -> 2 credits seems mandatory. The early game can be quite rough. That said, the servers become taxing very quickly and then once you get in, there’s another tax there. Even recognizing its power, I don’t think the deck is tier 1. It’s definitely tier 2-1.5. With enough skill and luck the deck will get you there; but I don’t find it to be consistent enough. There are a few outs for agenda flooding, but the deck is just slow enough that its bound to lose you enough games with strictly competitive players that I don’t think you could fight your way up in a large tournament with it.

Its still a very solid deck and I don’t think hedge would have ever been something I wanted to draw. Also, hourglass was almost valuable in a few games, but I found the 5 credit hit to be more than I could swallow a lot of the time. I’ve played with the card before and its definitely worth a slot; but its something you can play around with parasite/utensils. As for swordsman, its the right call over wraparound. I don’t want people to stay out playing this, I want them to pay through the nose. At the end of the day they’re the same tax, but even 1dmg can really throw someone off their game. False Lead is also the right call for this deck. Credits are nice to have, but runners need clicks. Deny them at the right time and you win the game. I love the agenda and the fact that you can never advance it like its yet another fracking upgrade makes it perfect.

I’m not really sold on eve. I never really needed the card. I think we should try to find another taxing something and just use that instead, but its fine.

–

@Kiv, I think the guy you were playing against was playing awful. I agree. I still think you’re right that the deck isn’t THE THING to be playing, but I disagree that its for lack of money.

2 Likes
11

my question is: is Troll worth the influence? I understand it synergizes with Strongbox but still… you already have 3 Eli

12

I never traced Troll high, so it was only a 2 credit tax (pup); I think it’d be best with a heinlin active than with a strongbox; but it definitely grants you some leeway to crap with people. I can’t speak to its value yet having only played a few games.

13

I think over the 2 tournaments I went 9-4 with this deck. This was counterbalanced by the fact that I did worse with my runner in the tournament I got 3rd and undefeated with my runner when I won. There was a definite runner-skew in both tournaments, so having a winning record both days with my corp was something I was happy with.

I have never actually put shell corp into a deck, so I can’t comment on whether it would be useful here. I actually think Marked Accounts would work really well with this deck, but I haven’t tried it out yet.

14

I’m not quite sure about the whole “tier” system. I think my style of play is to always find something that people think is crap and then make it work. It’s why I played RP 2 years ago (and won a regional with it), and why I gravitate towards finding things that are underplayed but have potential. That said, I appreciate you picking up the deck and shuffling it up a bit. I also really appreciate that you see the value in things like swordsman and false lead. I’ve been seeing this deck pop up a bit online and, while they aren’t all as painful to watch as the video that @kiv posted, there is less optimal plays happening that I didn’t really anticipate when I posted this on the forums. I’m having a hard time parsing where people have legitimate criticisms of the deck versus where they’re just misplaying it and then thinking it’s crap.

I did have one of my losses (in the tournaments) come from a straight up flood, but I’m not sure if this deck is more susceptible to floods than other decks I’ve played in the past. Though i will grant that it’s probably weakest in early game due to the combo-riffic nature of the deck. I’m still not sure if that’s a trade worth having for the late-game strength it can have.

Eve stayed in my deck over other money options simply because I found that people were often too poor to trash them, or if they did it would open a window for me to score a 5/3. In those cases where people couldn’t/wouldn’t trash them, it was 12 credits of profit for me for 1 click. I wonder if I was able to go as low on money cards as I did because I got lucky in my games about being able to keep my eves.

@moistloaf,

Troll is there because it’s a titratable tax that they absolutely have to pay, regardless of their rig. So if it’s in front of my scoring server and I have a few upgrades, I can do the math and find the perfect number to tax them with troll to make it mathematically impossible for them to score my agenda. It is frequently just a 2-credit tax, but with a heinlein grid and or an ash, I can easily math out in my head when I have a window given how many credits the runner has up. This has proven extremely valuable for me on multiple occasions and has been well worth the 2 influence. Though this deck works by having 15 cards that synergize with each other. If Troll isn’t working for you, cutting it for something else isn’t going to kill the deck or take out its synergy. But I love the card.

15

What do you do against Singularity? Install Crisium on the remote if you think they might be playing it? That’s honestly the only card I can think of that really counters the whole super stack of upgrades thing.

I’m somewhat partial to running Shell Corporation in this deck, just because it is a permanent econ card that doesn’t require a new remote to be able to use, so it gets all the protection of the ICE you have in your scoring remote. I also think the new HB asset in The Valley that lowers Bioroid rez costs would be bananas in this sort of deck, once it releases.

16

I’ve never had a singularity played against me. I have installed crisium in my remote just in case they have been playing it, but it’s a pretty savagely over costed card, so it’s unlikely that it’ll come up much. Though I do agree that it’s a nice takedown of this deck.

I’m coming around to the thought of shell corp.

17

The only issue of having to drop a Crisium in your remote is that you lose Heinlein, as I believe the one region per server rule applies even to inactive cards. But yea, it’s pretty overcosted for what it does. I’d only really worry about it if the only breaker I was seeing out of my opponent was Eater…as Singularity is one of the only ways they can pressure a remote while unable to get accesses.

18

Also thought of something else…Edge of World could be downright terrifying in this deck. Since you have so many upgrades, you can just keep installing more cards in your remote until the runner eventually runs it. Idk what to cut to free up the influence though.

1 Like
19

How deep does the remote actually get?

20

4 at most without ABT

Played it a bit more last night and had some pretty bad results. A lot of my ice was being eaten/parasited away and I just didn’t have enough counter play. The ice was a tad too expensive for me to continue to rez while stacking more than 2 pieces on a server. Every time I tried to focus on building a remote, I lost out on centrals. Time spent on centrals was usually lost when the parasite/silverware came down. (Security Testing Noise is apparently a thing and I couldn’t protect 4 servers)