Corporate Metagame going into Double Time

Netrunner General
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So, Double Time is now up on octgn, and, to help me pick out a deck for next week’s store championship, I figured I’d take a look at the top tier corp decks and see what they gain from the pack. I will list out what I believe are the tier 1 corp decks, with a short rundown of how they work, what they gain, and what they’re weak to. Because I’m bored right now

Cerebral Imaging FA
Variants: Not much, some run sansan city grid, i’ve even seen one splash scorched for tagme decks, but they’re all very similar

How does it work: Build a giant bank with your 18+ economy cards, lay a bunch of very taxing ice on centrals, and score agendas out of hand with biotics/archived memories/shipment from sansan + efficiency commitee.

What does it gain: Reclamation order could lead to some shenanigans, versions eschewing efficiency committee might go for NAPD contracts, but I don’t think that’s correct, Hive would be very strong, but influence is extremely tight.

What is it weak to: Heavy ice destruction, vamp, The Source (relevant with the release of fall guy), awkward starts. Mulligans are scary with this deck.

HB Fast Advance
Variants: taxing versions with eve/adonis campaigns and larger ice, rush versions with gear check ice and all operation economy. Most of the stronger lists now run closed accounts.

How does it work: stick a sansan and push through points, backup plan of biotic labor and either rushing behind an early server or scoring behind a super server depending on the version. Similar to NBN FA with more money and no astro shenanigans

What does it gain: Gear checking versions technically gain quandry, although next bronze is probably better. NAPD contracts is probably worth it in more taxing builds. Corporate shuffle if you can afford the influence.

What is it weak to: Varies depending on build. Gear check versions are weak against andy, taxing versions are weak to early R&D interfaces. On average not weak in any particular matchup, but not the strongest list in any matchup either, with room for specific matchup hosers.

HB Combo
Variants: Accelerated diagnostics and CI 7 Point

How does it works: score 7 points in one turn, back up plan of being a weaker version of a fast advance list. I never bothered to learn the combo so I assume it runs on voodoo, sorcery and shipment from sansan.

What does it gain: Reclamation order probably helps with the sorcery, probably.

What is it weak to: I don’t know, ask the russians

HB Big Ice
Variants: Backup plans include a mix of Haas arcology AI, biotic labor, Troubleshooter/Ash, rarely mandatory upgrades and director haas

How does it work: obnoxiously expensive ice mixed with high trash cost assets can make runners very poor, use those timing windows to score out behind ash. some versions even try to get really big payouts like mandatory upgrades

What is it weak to: Whizzard, criminal tricks so long as they have enough money (andromedas of the world, scrubber is a real card), stimhacks

What does it gain: not much, NAPD Contracts fits the style, but they usually want effects off their agendas. Definite maybe

NBN TWIY Rush
Variants: biotic labors, snares, various splashed ice. anything works so long as you can chain astros. some lists go with 12 agendas with no 4s, while some play 10 agendas and 2 4s

How does it work: Push through some early points with sansans or multiple etr servers, if you can make it to 5 points with an astro counter you’ve probably won.

What does it gain: corporate shuffle lets it shuffle out of an R&D lock and draw 5 cards giving it a lot more endgame reach. Both neutral cards are very playable in all non-bad pub builds. Hive also keeps people out pretty well to get the first astro.

What is it weak to: knight, early R&D locks. Whoever scores the first astroscript probably wins, and sometimes it isn’t you.

NBN Credit Drain
Variants: Ash, Interns, program trashing

How does it work: Super efficient ice like eli, viper and caduceus + multiple high trash cost cards make the runner very poor. Can afford to slow advance because of this, although it has access to all the nbn tricks

What does it gain: NAPD Contracts, although character assassination is at it’s best in these kinds of builds. Shinobi might find a place as a high strength 3 sub sentry, although bp hurts. If broadcast square is more playable than i think it is, it would go here.

What is it weak to: Whizzard, Magnum Opus, RNG (slightly porous R&D)

NBN Combo
Variants: Scorched, Psychographics

How does it work: use the tempo gained by being nbn to force them to overextend, punish with a large midseason and either psycho out a beale or blow up their house. You still have astros and sansan if they try to play around it.

What is it weak to: you need to overpower them economically, so any deck running more than 12 econ cards usually just stays out of reach of the combo. Opus and imp are also quite strong here.

What does it gain: NAPD contracts is pretty good here, corporate shuffle lets you start over if they see scorched and drop plascretes. Hive might be worth a splash since you want them to overextend.

Jinteki Shutdown
Variants: Snare, Troubleshooter, agendas can vary from 10 to 13, some run nisei over braintrust

How does it work: Kill their rig with destroyers, shutdown, and random jinteki damage. score behind etrs and the fear of jinteki

What does it gain: Caprice is likely going to be ridiculously strong in these kinds of builds. quandry might be playable, shinobi fits but sentry slots are tight.

What is it weak to: Vamp, losing priority reqs in R&D/to shutdown, versions without troubleshooter and nisei are weak to shaper recursion

Weyland
Disclaimer: I don’t think any weyland builds are tier 1, they lose to runners who know how to keep up economically and can play around snare.

Variants: Traditional rush, Accelerated combo

How does it work: rush agendas with scorched earth as the backup plan if the runner slips up.

What does it gain: Hive. Hive is amazing for the all in scorched builds. Quandry is also good for the codegate-light weyland

What is it weak to: runners with 3 plascretes, people who stay within 6 credits, Opus, Andromeda

Kill The Corroder

How does it work: gear check ice, high powered destroyers, troubleshooters and power shutdown. lock them out of a server by making sure they don’t have a breaker.

What does it gain: Hive and quandry are perfect for this kind of deck, although they don’t shore up its weaknesses

What is it weak to: decks that can keep up economically, have chaff under the cost of their cheapest breaker, and can deal with high strength sentries. basically, if they prepare for this deck, it loses.

With all that out of the way, I’m leaning towards CI, taxing NBN or possibly shutdown jinteki, depending on how ridiculous caprice winds up being in testing. Thoughts?

EDIT: Names now in Bold because my spacing didn’t work out

3 Likes
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nbn or hb. crush the passive players + give good players a run for their money.

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that narrows it down to 5 out of the 6 listed decks.

I also think shutdown jinteki crushes passive players (subliminal, sundew) and gives good players a run for their money. that’s why i consider it tier 1.

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I lol’d :stuck_out_tongue:

(voodoo = biotic labor, sorcery = interns with a sprinkling of Archived Memories for extra consistency)

For what my opinion is worth, variants of DB0’s Untrashable are at least as strong as the shutdown decks in my experience. They got an amazing piece of ICE in Yagura, and Caprice essentially is an in-faction Ash for them, so that will most definitely help.

I’ve spent the last month testing various Jinteki variants (including Shutdown) and I seem to always come to the same problem - Shapers hand me my behind really bad. The combination of fast rig, tutoring, recursion (both deck and programs) and that f***ing Indexing to completely disarm the RnD threat is just too overpowering. If you run into an ICE destruction variant, you’re doubly screwed, because your most taxing ICE is super-vulnerable to Parasite.

I haven’t checked to see how much Caprice helps (if any), but I’m getting the feeling that she won’t really be the answer - to get her reliably on the table, you probably want to be running Interns ('cause she’ll die from RnD like there’s no tomorrow) in an already very stuffed deck.

Got any thoughts on how to address the problem?

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Personally, I have dropped the 3rd Diagnostics and the plan to combo for 5 points. And as far as I understand the rules, Reclamation Order cannot bring back the Diag that’s currently resolving. So no, no place for it in my deck. But if you run 3x Diag and don’t use your Jacksons before the combo, then sure, go ahead. And good luck! :slight_smile:

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On topic: How about those decks that have already won more then one Store Champ?

HB Big Ice (Tollbooth)
HB Brain Damage
HB Man Up / Director Haas
NBN Scorch
Weyland Supermodernism
Weyland Glacier

1 Like
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Astrobiotics has won at least four, but I think players are starting to wisen up to it.

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Here’s another vote for the HB Glacier a la @Watertribe and @Nordrunner — it’s HB Big Tax, basically. Those have won multiple SCs are are tier 1 decks, IMO. They enjoy success against good runners and a ton of success against intermediate runners, who will exhaust themselves on the rocks.

Supermodernism-style builds almost never win in our league play. I agree that Weyland isn’t tier-1 across the board (as someone who top-4’d an SC with a GRNDL Deathstar); good runners simply don’t lose unless you draw the nuts.

I want to believe in TWIY Astrobiotics, but I haven’t seen it win in person as much as I win with it on OCTGN—maybe because it was a decktype that my local meta explored last year alongside TWIY Deathstar, so it has 0 surprise factor? That said, NBN has a ton of top-tier/near-top-tier builds, from Scorch to SanSan-FA to Astrobiotics. Flytrap can shine if there’s enough NBNFA in your pool, too. My huge man-crush on NBN remains intact, safe to say :).

I’ve ridden a Replicating Perfection list to 3 top-4s at SCs. It’s based around heavy, heavy program destruction @PeekaySK / @SamRS — I think RP does this better than PE. A good shaper is your worst matchup by far. There’s nothing you can do about recursion when those decks draw well. I play a tempo-based rush game (lots of IAA), but if I don’t draw good agendas early and the shaper gets recursion going, yerg. Kate is the worst matchup by far. It’s a great deck—probably tier 2—but it’s vulnerable to shapers. And it doesn’t recover as well from bad early draw as, say, NBNFA variants. I suspect we’re going to get true T1 Jinteki decks when H&P drops.

I think we’re getting to a point where even tier-1 decks that enjoy consistent success have an Achilles’ heel. That’s very interesting to me.

2 Likes
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What about NBN psycho-FA?

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I don’t know, Weyland still seems pretty tier 1 to me- top 2 players at the recent 56 player store championship in Toronto were running Weyland. They seemed to be using scorched earth as a back up strategy, relying on program trashing and big ice, along with obscene amounts of economy, to score most of the points.

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Midseasons => Psychographics FA is but one of the many fine NBN strategies :).

I think SE as a backup/alternate win condition is definitely the correct way to play Weyland; that’s the best approach. In the early days I used to run SanSans in my Weyland builds; program destruction + rush/FA with the threat of death if you misread or misplay a situation. It’s a solid decktype for sure, but once players are used to how it plays out it seems to lose potency quickly. “The Combo” crushes inexperience hard, though.

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Supermodernism is definitely tier 1 IMO. Like Astrobiotics, it crushes unprepared players while still having strong game against experienced ones.

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Meh, I dunno - it’s like Presley himself wrote: “The deck really falls or flies in the first 5-6 turns.” So what that means is if you’re prepared for an NBN TWIY rush, you really shouldn’t have much trouble with this.

With NBN, if you don’t stop the first Astro, you might very well be done. With Weyland, even if you don’t stop a 2-counter Atlas (which is pretty much his ideal first agenda), unless you give him a window to turn that into a kill he still can’t leverage that into an actual, proper win. He still needs to score 3 more points before he can double-fetch the Hostiles for the final two points.

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The choke point on shapers is usually credits, troubleshooter and nisei are both very strong because of this. even on super efficient atman builds, large atmans are expensive, and landing one good troubleshooter usually ends the game. I’ve had a lot of success with this version Madness Games Store Championship 2014 - StimHack

I filed that under twiy rush, the biotic labor version

HB Big ice - Most successful lists of big ice still go on the biotic plan for backup scoring, so I lumped it into FA. might be worth it’s own writeup, link to the lists?

HB Brain Damage - From the lists I’ve played, these aren’t great. It has the problem of “once they know your trick, the deck gets a lot worse”

HB Director Haas - I didn’t consider this deck a real thing, i’m interested though, link?

NBN Scorch - loses a little punch once they know you’re packing scorch, which is why I didn’t include it, but it still is nbn. I’ll make a writeup tonight

Weyland supermodernism - I don’t think it’s currently one of the best corp decks. All the tricks people are running for TWIY are also very good against rush weyland

Weyland Glacier - I feel like HB does this better. CI is the best glacier deck atm, it only needs 2 glaciers

Psycho FA - forgot to put it up

I don’t think the shaper matchup is bad if you run troubleshooters and niseis. I faced a good chunk of shaper at the last store championship, they have a finite amount of recursion, and it’s not always in hand. one good archer buys you enough time to score an agenda or two, and that’s all you need when you have niseis

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Aha. I don’t run Nisei in my deck. Perhaps I should. I run Corporate War instead for the econz.

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I’d say switching from SanSan to Tollbooth is a pretty big change, even if you leave the Biotics for backup. Whereas before it was pure FA, now it’s a hybrid.

It’s a meta thing. When every NBN is rushing early AstroScripts, it’s easy to bait a runner on TGTBT + Bernice Mai and kill him. And the opposite: the Saint-Petersburg meta was flooded with raining scorched death, the runners were cautious, and so my friend got to 3rd place with a TWIY* Biotics deck. That was before Lysander named it ‘Astrobiotics’ :smile:

2 Likes
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I like the Power Shutdown Jinteki deck, but the 2 Sundew look out of place. Also, no Snare?

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it might be right to cut the sundew for restructures, but it was definitely useful. Snare is an option, but I don’t believe it’s mandatory like it once was. Runners have a lot of ways to get around it in R&D, and shock is free to use. If you’re running braintrusts, it’s probably right to run snare, but I cut those, so I cut the snares.

@mplain I’ll test those out and update later, a couple of the big ice lists seem questionable (the pad campaign one). they seem very similar and only one of them is running haas, but there are a few arcology AIs for the same effect. Will probably update this and NBN combo wednesday night after some testing

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I’d love to see a same tread on the the runner side. Because I cannot get into a new runner deck ;(

I’ve played Sundews in Jin and they are amazing. Even in PE. They are a big distraction. I led a runner blind into a Sundew with Archer… That was GG, he never recovered :wink:

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Runner decks are weird, there’s a lot more slight variations and a lot less deck archetypes