Credit Denial Anarch

Deck Archetypes
1

I want to talk about this archetype, I think we will see either Whizzard or Reina being played in this role more often than noise, but all Runners are viable. Personally, all I see is stuff to trash, so I almost exclusively play whizzard in these decks.

The focus of these decks is to abuse anarch access to good event recursion in the form of deja vu with Account siphon and/or Vamp plus the crushingly good identity abilities to break the corps back and crush them - usually out of R&D.

I think these decks are more defined by their central server strategies than their identities, we will see either data leak reversal or keyhole/medium being played as a win condition.

The interesting thing about how these decks play, is that they pick up speed as the corp slows down, if you love playing the tempo game, this archetype is for you. As the corp is spending 3 actions to gain credits and trash a resource, you are taking 5 click turns and accessing piles of cards from R&D, when the corp is running low and having to click for credits just to play the hedgefund that they drew, the anarch player is making free runs and gaining a credit advantage by vamping or siphoning.

Here is an example deck from a recent tournament win:

Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter (Mala Tempora)

Event (12)

Hardware (4)

Resource (15)

Icebreaker (8)

Program (6)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Double Time

Decklist published on NetrunnerDB.

The above deck uses DLR as a win condition; without DLR, the deck is forced to install what is essentially an Andromeda breaker suite without the safety net of good criminal cards and desperado. This is probably the reason that the designer opted to spend influence on fall guy.

With Fall Guy as a safety net, the corp has to trash at least 6 assets, realistically 9 (3 fall guy, 3 DLR, 3 Joshua B) to turn off your primary win condition - hopefully this will buy you at least 3 turns to DLR 15 cards and get 6.2 agenda points in the trash.

For the purpose of this discussion, let’s consider that we are choosing decks to take to tournaments that we want to win.

I think that any eggs in one basket strategy is going to be shut down by a skilled opponent who can identify your win con and play around it. My critical analysis of this deck is that it’s a great deck for beating up newbs, but it’s entirely focused on actually using DLR, it can’t really do anything with the tempo it gains from the corp trashing it’s resources.

Playing a John masonori instead of 1 Joshua B would help shore up this weakness; there is still a little too much luck involved with this particular deck for my tastes. Weyland is the popular noob-crusher faction to bring to tournaments and having 0 draw power and 2 plascretes just means that I spend a lot of time hoping I draw things every turn instead of actually doing what I need to do to win.

Spinal Modem / Grimoire is a total judgement call, those two credits per turn can be amazing, and Reina is incentivized to run already - I wish I could say that if you are reina you will always want spinal modem, because +2 MU and free parasite/data sucker tokens from grimoire are insane - not to mention I can have an extra data sucker in my full rig with grimoire over spinal modem making it closer to even.

I’ve played a little spinal modem, and against all odds - the card actually seems to play better when you have stimhacks in your deck. Stimhacking into a server with an upgrade means I get to trash Ash for free and access taking a brain damage and not be poor instead of taking a brain damage and being poor and maybe not trashing/accessing.

These days, I am leaning towards grimoire, but it’s still pretty dependent on your deck. I’ve seen anarch winners that run grimoire with 0-3 viruses in deck. 3 credits for +2 MU is really insane (it’s like 3 credits for 4 clicks worth of akamatsu memchips).

Keyhole is really insane, the MU and 4 credit cost are a pain, but the protection from punitive counterstrike, snare, and other on-access abilities. You can argue that it is slower than DLR since you have to keep them from rezzing ice on R&D (meaning you basically have to play parasite for pop-up window) and your runs telegraph your strategy much more since you will probably focus on crushing HQ and trashing remotes; however, I think it’s less reliant on drawing combo pieces and builds a more flexible rig since you get datasucker counters from keyhole, you also aren’t forced to spend all of your clicks to keyhole every turn like you kind of have to do with DLR.

Of course, it benefits from Joshua B the same as DLR. Jackson Howard messes up Keyhole worse than it does DLR, since you can DLR and mill their deck away, never having to actually run anything. That being said, I’ve never actually lost a game because of Jackson.

To wrap up this long post, here is my Whizzard deck in it’s current test version:

Whizzard: Master Gamer (What Lies Ahead)

Event (14)

Hardware (4)

Resource (11)

Icebreaker (9)

Program (7)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to True Colors

Deck built on NetrunnerDB

Testing with 1 John Masonori instead of Joshua B no. 3 and 2 Ice Carvers instead of 1 data sucker and 1 liberated accounts.

Notably absent: Imp, Infiltrate, SoT #2-#3, stimhack.
Reasons: Deck space and metagame concerns.

3 siphon 3 QT package is hard to resist, what do my fellow anarchists think of the archtype?

5 Likes
2

This is amazing timing, as I am currently running a Whizzard deck with the same Programs and Events, except I swap out QT for Retrieval Run, and use the 3 influence on 3 Femmes, and run 1 Corroder 1 Morning Star vs. 2 Corroder. 3x SOT, 3x Armitage, and 2x Kati in case I can’t hit that 1st Siphon.

Works really well so far. Siphon + Vamp is solid, and it forces them to protect all 3 Centrals. Often times they don’t protect Archives until either a Sucker hits, or a Retrieval Run hits and you get a 6-credit savings on a Femme, and by then you’re doing the Same Old / Siphon / Vamp, and Keyhole for the finale.

I definitely like it better as Whizzard over Reina.

1 Like
3

Thanks for a really interesting discussion.

I’ve been wrestling with getting this archtype to work ever since I started playing the game (a few months ago). I really love playing it (there is nothing more satisfying than Siphoning a CI player on 20 or so credits and cards and then Vamping them down to 0 with their own money), but I do feel that it lacks the consistency to be up there with the best Criminal/Shaper builds.

These are my thoughts, observations, questions:

I’m undecided on the identity. I always find Reina useful - especially in the first few turns. Whereas Whizzard is either amazing or next to useless with not a lot in between.

I find Quality Time to be crucial. For me, the main weakness with the archtype has been stalling through not seeing the right cards to press home an advantage. Without any tutoring (I feel Djinn is too slow and doesn’t get many of the key cards) I think this is the next best option. As a bonus it acts as damage recovery in an emergency.

I’m afraid I don’t have the courage to run Spinal Modem with Vipers and Ichis prevalent in my meta. I prefer Cyberfeeder as a source of recurring credits and Grimoire primarily for the MU. But I find that I can struggle for economy and that I rarely have enough to get Liberated Account into play. How do you find the economy stands up in the mid-game and how do you deal with random traces with Spinal Modem?

I think you are right to avoid DLR. It strikes me as a lot of effort to get what is essentially Noise’s ability. When playing as Corp I always relax a bit when DLR hits the table because the runner tends to lose focus and starts spending clicks to trash random cards rather than press home their advantage.

Generally I have gone with a Medium/Nerve Agent (2/1) mix over Keyhole. This is partly because of Jackson, partly because I found I struggled to find the 2 MU for Keyhole. If Jinteki starts becoming a thing, I will switch over.

How do you find just two datasuckers with only fixed breakers?

3 Likes
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In my version, I run 2x Datasucker and 3x Parasite and also 3x Knight. I don’t run any real fixed breakers. 3x Femme deals with annoying Gates or big Sentries and there is always 1 Corroder to back up the 1 Morning Star. Retrieval Run is key here.

Quality Time is good, no doubt, but I hate spending 3 credits you don’t often have and I think it’s more of a tempo hit than simply clicking to draw here and there, which is a common Anarch play no matter who you choose.

5

I personally started using 3x John Masanori in these builds and I haven’t looked back. You’re going to have accesses and you’re going to be tagged. Most of the time the Corp won’t spend time trashing Masanori right away and that is usually a mistake. If Masanori goes unchecked then you have a bit of a draw engine online and it’s fully neutral

1 Like
6

I do really want to try out a Retrival Run build at some stage. The thing that has keep me from doing so is that a lot of the big breakers don’t seem quite worth it or have two MU which seems problematic. But the extra parasite recursion definately appeals. How do you play it? Is it a case of Morning Star to ignore barriers and then Parasite/Femme for code gates and sentries? How does it run if you don’t see Retrival Run early?

Masanori has been in and out of my deck. I find he tends to get trashed straight away, which isn’t terrible if you manage to get a card out of him before he goes. But I don’t think he hangs around long enough to be the primary draw engine.

7

Masanori has been very good in my Whizzard builds. He earns you a few cards, and remember, you want them trashing resources. He’s actually replaced Josh B., as I can often get uses out of Masanori before I go tag me.

I want to like Spinal Modem, but it’s simply inferior to Grimoire. On more than one occasion I’ve found myself eating the 4 credits just to get an MU and never even using the recurring credits.

Once Brugger’s comes out, I’m going to try a Fall Guy, Public Sympathy, Retrieval Run Engine to see how it works. I want Morning Star to happen, but would hate to run 2 of them. May even cut down to 2 Siphons to pick up multiple Femmes.

1 Like
8

What does your deck need that it has to be anarch? For 11 inf you can have 3 sucker, yog, mimic, 2 vamp. Pad the rest out with tutors and easy marks and seems like gabe could do this better almost.

Not a criticism, but when your inf costs are so low, why play anarch at all? Gabe could theoretically be better than whiz in every way.

I’m looking at trying Donut in place of Ice Carver in my future build - if that turns out to be really crushing, shaper could potentially play this role better than anarchs also.

9

Morningstar crushes face. If you run Eli Twice with Corroder, you have spent 1 credit more than you would have if you installed a morningstar instead.

Morningstar is also the answer to Hive which isn’t Parasite.

Here is a morningstar deck which is not a denial deck, but a big-rig deck:

###[Oh Whizzard. Sweet Whizzard.][1] (45 cards)

  • [Whizzard: Master Gamer][2]

Event (6)

  • 3 [Retrieval Run][3]
  • 3 [Sure Gamble][4]

Hardware (8)

  • 3 [Desperado][5] ••••• ••••
  • 2 [Dyson Mem Chip][6]
  • 3 [Plascrete Carapace][7]

Resource (11)

  • 2 [Armitage Codebusting][8]
  • 3 [Ice Carver][9]
  • 3 [Liberated Account][10]
  • 3 [Professional Contacts][11] ••••• •

Icebreaker (9)

  • 3 [Mimic][12]
  • 3 [Morning Star][13]
  • 3 [Yog.0][14]

Program (11)

  • 3 [Datasucker][15]
  • 3 [Djinn][16]
  • 1 [Medium][17]
  • 1 [Nerve Agent][18]
  • 3 [Parasite][19]

Built with [http://netrunner.meteor.com/][20]
[1]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/decks/XnmjBuHTQFcPZ9R9m
[2]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/whizzard-what-lies-ahead
[3]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/retrieval-run-future-proof
[4]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/sure-gamble-core
[5]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/desperado-core
[6]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/dyson-mem-chip-trace-amount
[7]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/plascrete-carapace-what-lies-ahead
[8]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/armitage-codebusting-core
[9]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/ice-carver-core
[10]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/liberated-account-trace-amount
[11]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/professional-contacts-creation-and-control
[12]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/mimic-core
[13]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/morning-star-what-lies-ahead
[14]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/yog-0-core
[15]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/datasucker-core
[16]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/djinn-core
[17]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/medium-core
[18]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/nerve-agent-cyber-exodus
[19]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/parasite-core
[20]: http://netrunner.meteor.com/decks/XnmjBuHTQFcPZ9R9m

This deck needs a lot of work, but it seems more like what you guys are talking about. Retrieval Run seems worse than queens gambit or dirty laundry – What do you want to do? Click procontacts and discard end of turn to retrieval next turn? why don’t I just make money and install the damn thing since I need to have the program in my hand first in both cases.

I’d cut the liberated accounts as well, they don’t help your starting hands at all and pro-co is all I ever want to click. - Again, I’d rather have event econ.

3 ice carvers is too many, 2 armitage is too few, 1-2 Djinns is fine if you want to run Djinns at all - The deck has enough memory for a full rig, 2 data suckers and a parasite without the djinns.

This is the kind of shit a big-rig deck wants to do, a lean, only-what-I-need-to-win rig is more suited to the current metagame in my opinion.

I haven’t tested my Masonori yet (no internet at home) but I will play them instead of Josh B this week and see how it works for me.

1 Like
10

For cards like Joshua B., Knight, Parasite (which is phenomenal in the current meta), Deja Vu - Criminal can bring the phenomenal breaker suite over but most players have played against criminal strategies. I think fixed strength breakers + Parasite is amazing right now. Shaper can do it fairly well but fixed strength breaker Criminal is a completely different animal than this.

Deja Vu + Parasite + Medium/Nerve Agent all with the Anarch breaker suite is why you run this.

1 Like
11

between 2 data suckers 2 ice carvers and 3 parasites, I don’t have issues getting into servers. If I was playing noise id play 3 suckers.

generally we want the corp to click and destroy a resource, so ice carver gives the corp a way to show us they are desperate or trying to make a play by blowing it up - there is so much -str redundancy in the above cards that we should be able to switch reliance onto something else if we need to.

I agree with quality time, the only thing that would possibly work instead of QT would be professional contacts, and that’s 2 influence and 2 credits more. Lawyer up is also too slow for this deck.

The deck is over-reliant on account siphon for money, but I’ve played games with flare rezzed on hq turn 1 and still won. I hate liberated accounts myself, I think someone should test queens gambit… I may cut a sure gamble and something else for 2 Q’sG this week.

Liberated accounts is good because it’s a lot like an event-econ card with the added bonus of being a possible trash target for the corp.

Liberated accounts is bad because it’s seldom what you want to draw or have in your opening hand. Most of the time I want a sure gamble, I end up drawing a liberated accounts instead. Plus you also get those mulligan hands that just have 1 liberated accounts and nothing else in them - you end up spending 1 click for a cred and 1 to play it, and you don’t even have credits to show for it after running into an enigma turn 1.

Overall my problem with the deck is consistency, when I am spinning my wheels, it’s not because the cards I need aren’t in the deck, it’s because the cards I need aren’t in my hand. Money is much more infrequently an issue than lack of card draw.

12

In this regard Mr. Li has been invaluable in my Anarch builds.

Edit: I also really liked that Whizzard deck (from Lithuania or something) that ran 2 Siphon, 2 Special Order, 3 QT

13

I’ve tried Queen’s Gambit a little online. The “Gambit” isn’t often an issue since you can usually tell from the corp’s behaviour whether something is an agenda or not. But what is a big problem is the number of decks that just don’t play unrezzed cards into remotes except for agendas, leaving you with dead cards and with a gap in your economy (the same can be said of Activist Support incidentally, which was another random way to get cash I tried).

I really dislike Liberated Accounts for the reasons you gave. And in the mid-game, unless I’ve just Siphon’d, I struggle to play Sure Gamble, let alone an LA. For the time being I’m running an economy of Sihpon, Dirty Laundry, Sure Gamble, Armitage and Cyberfeeder (which is excellent and protects your Carapaces against Shutdown as a bonus).

Having played him some more I’m now sold on John Masonaori as a partial solution to the drawing cards issue. It helps generate momentum, which was something I tended to lose if I didn’t get a medium/nerve agent early. Deck still grinds to a halt when the card need is hiding on the bottom of the deck though! At some point I’ll pluck up the courage and loose a Siphon for 2x Mr Li/Special Order.

14

I have been playing around with the archetype as well and so far I really like it. Although I have not been using strictly Siphons/Vamps to cause cred denial/choke. My build has evolved a bit, and will definitely continue to change in the coming months.

Here is a deck that was inspired by part of a deck Damon Stone teased in a facebook group. It is meant to play off of Anarch aggression and an element of board control through cred choke w/rooks/xanadu, ice destruction through parasite/ice carver and hand pressure through hemorrhage.

One Night in Bangkok

Reina Roja: Freedom Fighter (Mala Tempora)

Event (13)
2x Diesel (Core Set) ••••
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
3x Inside Job (Core Set) ••••• ••••
2x Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow) ••
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (5)
2x Cyberfeeder (Core Set)
3x Deep Red (Mala Tempora)

Resource (5)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Ice Carver (Core Set)
1x Xanadu (Humanity’s Shadow)

Icebreaker (4)
2x Darwin (Future Proof)
2x Knight (Mala Tempora)

Program (18)
2x Bishop (Second Thoughts)
2x Hemorrhage (Fear and Loathing)
2x Imp (What Lies Ahead)
3x Keyhole (True Colors)
3x Parasite (Core Set)
3x Pawn (Opening Moves)
3x Rook (Opening Moves)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Fear and Loathing

Deck built on http://netrunnerdb.com.

I don’t think its top tier, but it has some potential and so far it has been the only build I have run that really capitalizes on the full Caissa suite. My influence is pretty much just inside jobs as sort of a wild card and to ensure I can snag an agenda for cheap. My breakers are expensive to use, but the main target for parasites will be the low, multiple subroutine ice. Use bishops to pull off a swing on a bigger piece too if you like.

What do you guys think?

15

I think I will try it out then, if I’m playing whizzard I can crush them if they try to rez things to keep me from playing a gambit. I don’t have high hopes though.

Dirty laundry keeps ending up on my floor when cutting. Where in my whiz list from OP do you think I could jam Dirty Laundry (or maybe stimhack)?

@Lysander
I haven’t played with Mr. Li in anything, but he seems better than Duggars.

@Myriad

I don’t think this deck can be top-tier and caissa at the same time. My reasoning is that there are too many pieces that do nothing on their own, i.e. Pawn, drawing pawn with no caissa in the garbage or in play sucks.

Granted it does something when you install all of the parts, but so does 3 ice breakers and a magnum opus.

This deck will trip all over itself, probably be in a lot of situations needing to play a caissa on a server but not having ice to host it on, not being able to afford to do things, and etc.

I’m glad you brought up the subject, but I think we should keep these types of decks on the kitchen table, because it certainly does look fun to play.

16

The bulk of the deck is devised from advice that Damon Stone gave me. I think some pieces of the puzzle are pretty undervalued. I agree, it is not going to be top-tier without some new cards, but I also don’t think it is out and out terrible.

Your statement about tripping over itself is not something I have encountered after about a week of play, but your economy guess is pretty spot on. This deck does run pretty tight on creds and I am not sure how to solve this problem. Kati Jones is great, but it can be brutal waiting for that pay day sometimes.

If I may ask, what other pieces aside from pawn do nothing by themselves in this build? Pawn has been pretty handy in this build to get Rooks out of my hand for free, thus capitalizing off of a run a bit more and for getting my knights, rooks or bishops back when I need them. I burn through bishops sometimes pretty quickly because of how they can work with Parasite.

17

I think the cards that I be most willing to cut would be the Liberateds and either the remaining Same Old Thing or one of the Ice Carvers. Liberateds we’ve discussed. SOT is really good in Criminal because they don’t have Deja Vu, but Deja Vu is better in my view and I find three is plenty of recursion. And Ice Carver is a very good card, but will cost you more than it will cost the corp to trash it - as presumably they will.

I’m not saying that Dirty Laundry is better than these - it’s been in and out of my deck enough times, often alternating with Stimhack - but those are the places I’d be looking to find space.

There’s also the question of how to beat Glacier with a deck like this. Whilst I’ve done pretty well against CI builds, against Stronger Together the answer seems to be “you don’t.”

On the Caissia question, I like Rook and (obviously) Knight. I also feel Bishop is a lot better than it’s given credit for. But if you don’t see the Console very early (or it gets Shutdown) it is very slow and clunky to get going and it needs speed to take advantage of the taxing effect of Rook, Reina and Xanadu.

18

I agree!, I’ll be cutting a SOT for dirty laundry, probably after dicking around with queens gambit to verify that it’s bad.

Beating glacier I think is just being more precise with your runs, you don’t want to run R&D before you can actually win.

@Myriad

Deep Red needs you to have caissa, Darwin needs you to have parasite or bishop or ice carver, bishop is like an ice carver that takes two clicks to use and costs MU, Rook is cool, but you have to have clicks to run to get value out of it - something which will be a premium in this deck.

Hemorage is super click intensive for a deck that is already click-starved. I’d rather have nerve agent or medium instead.

I think your caissa deck would run smoother with some ice breakers, corroder at least. You also can’t facecheck a swordsman without losing programs, not that big of a deal, but kind of an annoying weakness.

But I don’t want to be so far off topic, maybe we could make a new thread to talk about how Damon Stone sucks at his own game?

19

The Caissa deck did get me thinking about Hemorrhage. I haven’t liked Hemorrhage since it came out. But I think that’s largely because I’ve looking at it as a medium alternative - which it sucks at.

Instead I’m thinking it might solve one of the problems I’ve had with the credit denial builds we’ve been discussing; namely that it only takes a turn or two where the pressure on the corp slows or stops, for them to click for credits, then play an operation or couple of drip economy cards and get out of the hole. And once they are out of the hole they’ve usually got a hand full of Hedge Funds/Restructures/Blue Level Clearances waiting to be used.

But if you have Hermorage down early whilst applying the pressure, you can force some of the recovery cards out their hands (it’s that or agendas) so climbing out of the hole requires clicking to draw as well as clicking to get money.

Do you think it’s worth trying? As I say, I’ve sort of dismissed Hemorrhage from the word go so haven’t played it much. If only I could find the space…

20

I think it’s worth trying, I played it with noise and gorman drip instead of QT. It felt a little slow when I played it, so I went back to the drawing board since I wanted a deck that could beat TWIY decks most of the time.