Cybernetics Division, Brain Damage/Hand Limitation?

You shouldn’t try to build the best Cybernetics deck, you should try to build the best Cybernetics deck that works best in Cybernetics. I could just swap out the RP ID for PE in my RP deck, and it still might be the best PE deck, but it’s also the stupidest thing in the world. I could cut a Sure Gamble from Reg Ass Maxx for a Hard at Work and proclaim I made the best Hard at Work deck, but who cares?

The mushin deck Calimsha hijacked from me at least takes advantage of the ID (allows you to kill from 3 BD with Neural archived Neural, make better pushes with Junebug, and allows you to Mushin Advance to get around Deus Ex or IHW). It obviously has serious central problems but that could possibly be fixed by slowing down and including beefier ICE.

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Here’s what I’ve been toying around with on jinteki.net. Not the best build but it’s really fun to play. Still tweaking.

Cybernetics Division Humanity Upgraded

15 influence spent (max 15) •••••••••••••••
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Chrome City

Agenda (10)

3x Accelerated Beta Test
1x Director Haas’ Pet Project
1x Hades Fragment
1x Priority Requisition
3x Self-Destruct Chips
1x Sentinel Defense Program

Asset (11)

2x Brain-Taping Warehouse
3x Cerebral Overwriter
3x Jackson Howard •••
3x Snare! ••••• •

Upgrade (2)

2x Ryon Knight

Operation (6)

3x Hedge Fund
3x Mushin No Shin ••••• •

Barrier (5)

2x Eli 1.0
1x Heimdall 1.0
1x Heimdall 2.0
1x Markus 1.0

Code Gate (5)

2x Turing
2x Viktor 1.0
1x Viktor 2.0

Sentry (5)

1x Fenris
1x Ichi 1.0
1x Ichi 2.0
1x Janus 1.0
1x Rototurret

Isn’t it just a question of how you look at it? I’d say if the best PE deck were just your RP deck with the ID swapped, then there would be no point playing PE, at least competitively. Likewise with Hard at Work.

This is definitely more of a killjoy way to approach it, as opposed figuring out how to get maximum mojo out of the ID ability and then comparing it, so I won’t press the point. Especially since, in this particular case, I’m likely completely wrong about Cybernetics.

That’s what I’m saying. You shouldn’t build a deck that works better in another ID because you already know a way to improve it: change the ID. You should go at Cybernetics trying to build a deck that ONLY works or works BEST in Cybernetics, so that in case you do come across a good deck, you know that you weren’t just wasting your time with a suboptimal ID.

So, you shouldn’t just figure out how to build the best Cybernetics deck, you should try to figure out how to build the best Cybernetics deck that isn’t trivially suboptimal.

5 Likes

Time for the return of this jank? (rough skeleton whipped up in 3 minutes)

Brain freeze

Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded (Chrome City)

Agenda (9)

Asset (6)

Upgrade (2)

Operation (14)

Barrier (3)

Code Gate (5)

Sentry (5)

15 influence spent (max 15)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Chrome City

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

2 Likes

As obvious as the interaction with Self-Destruct chips seems, there are a couple of big problems with it:

(1) 3/1s are the Memstrips of corp cards
(2) Finishing the runner off from 3 max hand size is hard. Even 2 is hard out of HB.

So the question I pose is this:

Obviously, Mushin-Overwriter is a really good way to deal brain damage. It deals a lot of brain damage. We can easily kill someone from 1 Max hand size in most cases if they hit the Overwriter on 3 out of Cybernetics. IF we were to try to deal BD a little bit at a time, what cards should we be playing, and how should we be finishing the runner off? If we do play the SD chips, how do we score them, how do we deal 1-2 more brain damage, and how do we kill them?

The ease of Mushin Overwriter leads me to want to write literal everything else off.

3 Likes

Besides the obvious “hope they get BD from an ICE subroutine” I’ve had some luck with Ryon Knight a few times. Better runners will avoid getting in a situation where Ryon Knight fires, but sometimes making them click thru bioroids can put them in a pickle. But yeah, besides Overwriter, not sure how to reliably hit the runner with BD.

Also, I’ve occasionally Mushin’d out a Self Destruct Chip and scored it. This only works if you can recur Mushin with your Jacksons, so you can have a chance to set up the late game kill/score.

As for killing the runner, I’m banking on Snares to the job once their hand size is down. Only worked a few times. Had one game where the runner had 0 hand size, but kept missing the Snares in HQ. That was back before I added a third.

3 Likes

Corporate Troubleshooter with any BD ICE or Gyri Labyrinth.
Combo with The Twins for good measure to make the runner hits it twice (the strength boost from Troubleshooter persists for the turn). Gyri Lab turns into 4 temporary brain damage.
#janktastic!

5 Likes

This has been the most successful Punitive version I’ve come up with. Not to say that there might be a much better out one there, but this is what I have right now. Ryon occasionally works, but could be something else, honestly. He’d work better in a deck with more Bioroids. Maybe -1 Ryon -1 Something Else +2 Domestic Sleepers to make scoring out easier.

Tabula Rasa

Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded (Chrome City)

Agenda (6)

Asset (10)

Upgrade (4)

Operation (9)

Barrier (5)

Code Gate (4)

Sentry (5)

Other (1)

15 influence spent (max 15)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Chrome City

2 Likes

Working on this premise, how about an ICE-less version? IAAA absolutely everything with Mushin and use Reclamation Order to keep recycling. The runner has to check every single facedown to prevent you scoring out.
You could even use Shipment from Mirrormorph to drop Snares, 3/2s and Junebug/Overwriter then AA to leave the runner a horrendous guess.

There’s no real guess there. The correct decision becomes to only run on R&D and HQ. Sure, Snare! might make things annoying, but there’s little chance of a flatline if you run with 3-4 cards in hand.

7 Likes

Yeah, you can safely ignore remotes against hb. Importing Ronin could change that, though.

1 Like

I’m thinking the following:
3x Neural EMP/3x Snare!/3x Jackson Howard (optional -1 neural emp, -1 snare, +2 punitive)
– R&D->Hourglass/other cards & Ryon Knight
– Almost all 5/3’s, maybe some accelerated beta tests to mock the runner with archives->Punitive; Possibly false lead of the deck’s really working well.
– Archived Memories at 3x to get back snare! and other deadly cards
– Potentially interns
– Cerebral Overwriter

Probably want ICHI 2.0 as it’s a 3 trace for brain damage and not always easy to break. Turing for the remote to power Ryon Knight.

Forcing runners to staple beach party/logos/boxee is my ultimate goal.

Any Mushin deck without at least one Junebug feels like it’s making a mistake. It’s an easy kill when they have to go up from 4 cards in hand at probable most, seeing one may make them more likely to just overdraw to 7 and hit an Overwriter, and so on. You’ll pick up enough games off of that for one or two influence to seem worth it, to me. It also fires from less than Overwriter, so it’s harder for them to get you to spend under the effective range – if they think all you have is Overwriter, they’ll be more willing to run to trash it when you have 2 credits, at which point you can kill them dead.

Similarly, if you’re using Mushins and not running three copies of Vitruvius, shame on you. Pop it out, advance it once. They risk hitting an Overwriter for their whole hand, dying on a Junebug (or follow-up Neural), and if you get the score you’ll have 2-4 counters to play with which can be used to recur Mushins and traps both as well as cover for ABT attempts or bring econ back or whatever else you might need.

[quote=“linuxmaier, post:19, topic:3895”]
Importing Ronin could change that, though.
[/quote]Might be too much influence at 4, but could be useful with Mushin and such.

[quote=“Saan, post:18, topic:3895, full:true”]
There’s no real guess there. The correct decision becomes to only run on R&D and HQ. Sure, Snare! might make things annoying, but there’s little chance of a flatline if you run with 3-4 cards in hand.
[/quote]Valley Grid on R&D, maybe? Other than that, yeah, the runner is probably safe enough if you aren’t running Ronin, but it’s not like they want to let you score out either, especially with overadvanced Vitruvii.

But yeah, Ice-less seems waaay too risky when Ice is one of the things HB does well. Could see an Ice-light deck maybe, but not Ice-free if you wanted to actually survive. Medium, R&D dig, death.

Mushin/asset spam/never advance stuff does seem like it’d make Self-Destruct Chips work. Not ideal, but if you can average one of them and a Brain Damage each game then Snare kills if they don’t immediately draw up before running, and they stop being able to safely check Mushin’d anything for fear of the flatline unless they can expose it first.

Pinging the runner seems like the wrong move. For reduction and punishment, I’d look at Mushin, Overwriter, SDC, Junebug, Valley Grid, Snare, Ichi, Viktor, maaaybe Heimdall if you’re running mostly Bioroids, and NEXT Gold. Maybe Neural EMP and/or Ronin, I guess.

Ryon seems awkward and unreliable, though maybe Brain-Taping with Bioroids will prove me wrong there.

But if you can hit them with an Overwriter and score an SDC, the game is probably yours. Even beyond the increased flatline threat, it’s rough for a runner to not be able to hold very many cards in hand. Doable, sure, but not terribly pleasant.

1 Like

Cerebral Overwriter has to be in the deck. It’s the most “reliable” means of applying additional brain damage. Obviously Mushin No Shin makes sense to load the overwriter or bluff an agenda which leads me to two lines of thought.

  1. Mushin is greatest in PE because it could be trap/agenda/ronin. Ronin is the card that forces the run even when the runner doesn’t want to. Otherwise, you’re forced to wait for match point to mushin to have the runner actually run it. Ronin, at 4 influence, may not be able to fit in with mushin. It could be a good add in a low-ICE asset deck with encrypted protocols or something. This small deck makes me want to think more aggressively so never/slow advance may be too slow to take advantage of the ID ability.

  2. If you’re going to do 1-3 damage with an overwriter the best way to finish is punitive or some other bulk damage (see ronin above). Sea/Scorch is basically out of the question. Midseasons/Traffic Accident? I don’t have a better answer than punitive here and neural emp seems like it doesn’t do enough damage.

As hand sizes go down, Snare! seems like a must. They help protect your hand when it’s at 4 cards and your deck since your at 40. Should slow the runner down enough to create scoring windows or allow you to add economic pressure.

I don’t think I could justify playing with Gyri even in this deck. It’s almost never going to fire and the times you’ll be able to capitalize on it when it does fire will be minimal. I would play with Zedd before Gyri… which now that I’m saying it doesn’t sound terrible :stuck_out_tongue:

Ryon seems like too many hoops. I’ll report back on all this once I get a couple games in.

3 Likes

I think the goal is to just get 1 point of brain damage on the opponent. At that point punative+neural is enough to win most games.

Multi-tag has no business in the deck, so scorch is out, though closed accounts might not be if they’re trying to recover from snare!

Cerebral+Snare!+False Lead+Neural EMP wasn’t consistent enough when your opponent had a 5 card hand, but it probably is when they have a 4 card hand and there’s all these other modes for causing damage.

Anyhow, if you can get them down to a 3 card hand, maybe tagging is the way to go. Biotic+Security force for the win?

No mention of valley grid? That +2 ice makes for lethal punitives, with a back up plan in case of plascrete. Works well with eli/Viktor1/heimdall as well. Limited combo pieces helps with the handsize drawback too.

Valley grid is def solid. Influence and deck space are both concerns. Maybe a 1 of? Viktor 1.0 seems like he would be a bad choice since we’re getting Net Ready Eyes and will probably see a huge push for Yog.0 after NRE release. Yog.0 is still big in my meta anyways, so Viktor 1.0 while amazing on paper just eats it hard around here. Small bioroids seems like a good plan with valley grid though.

EDIT: Yog.0 breaks the subs, so it still works. But the card is much more likely to be trashed on first access.

I worry about how easy it is to land a punitive without EtF money, but ill give that build a go:

Valley Cybernetics (44 cards)

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

Agenda (7)
1 Domestic Sleepers
1 Hades Fragment
3 Priority Requisition
1 Project Wotan
1 Utopia Fragment

Asset (6)
3 Adonis Campaign
3 Jackson Howard

Upgrade (2)
2 Valley Grid

Operation (15)
2 Archived Memories
3 Green Level Clearance
3 Hedge Fund
2 Neural EMP
2 Punitive Counterstrike
1 Subliminal Messaging
2 Successful Demonstration

Barrier (6)
3 Eli 1.0
3 NEXT Silver

Code Gate (3)
3 NEXT Bronze

Sentry (5)
3 Architect
2 Ichi 1.0

1 Like

One of the problems with Mushin (cerebral/upgrades) from a game theory perspective is your win rate is semi-independent of player skill. You’re basically trying to reduce the game to 2-3 coin flip decisions where if you win any you win (either brain damage or being able to fast advance for the win). This is obviously reductive, but I think it basically holds.

So lets suppose you get 2 Mushin’s off in every game. Then you’re at a 75% win rate! Which seems pretty good. There’s actually a pretty large problem with your win rate, in that’s it’s pretty independent of your opponent’s skill. Or, I’m extremely happy winning 75% against Medio, but I’m extremely unhappy about winning 75% against a bottom half swiss player.

So a tournament worthy Mushin (Upgrades/Overwriter) deck will probably need to be able to win against a bad/mediocre opponent without scoring an upgrades or hitting an overwriter.

This is very different from SHL, where you can simply play it only against top tier players.

I’m definitively going to mess around with it some (Mushin is one of my favorite cards), but its just something to keep in mind.

4 Likes