Drawing versus clicking for econ when you have none

Netrunner General
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I was reminded by a store champ semi-final loss last weekend of an aspect of my game I’ve always been aware I need to work on and wonder if I can get some input here from better players. The short summary is this: when you don’t draw enough econ cards as runner, when should you draw for econ and when should you settle for just clicking for creds?

(I’m particularly thinking about criminal here, as I feel the decision with PPVP Kate is easy: always draw.)

To illustrate, the situation I found myself in was this: I was Leela, playing against Grail NEH. I dropped a surprise Sneakdoor to take a Beale and an Astro from his hand at a critical point, then he rezzes a SanSan and pushes through a Beale I missed; I check HQ a couple more times, check R&D (only a Popup rezzed) then trash the Sansan. Next turn he scores out a Breaking News.

At this point I’m pretty sure he has no agendas in hand, he’s on 0 creds (I have around 7-8) and I know I have control of the game if I can take advantage. My rig is Corroder, Faerie, Desperado, Sneakdoor. I have no long term econ options on the board, no econ in hand and a hand full of cards I generally don’t want to throw away (Mimic, Rex, Legwork and I forget what else). I’m also floating two tags from an earlier Siphon. Rezzed ICE are Galahad on HQ (he has Merlin in hand) and Popup on R&D.

As I see it my options are: play out the cards in hand to have the full breaker suite, but money to fuel only one or two runs for a single access each; or draw hoping to find economy or an R&DI to pressure with. What I ended up doing was drawing twice, dropping Kati and clicking her - I figured making him trash Kati would give me more time to draw into something useful, and if he doesn’t then I can get a meagre econ engine. This was absolutely the wrong decision and was the turning point of the game - clicking for creds would’ve been better, and I don’t know why I didn’t think that at the time - but I’m still not sure what the right one was.

What would you all have done in this situation? Just tried to survive on click-econ long enough to get lucky and close out the game? Dug hard for econ? Drawn occasionally while keeping up run pressure (this would’ve been my preferred option if running R&D hadn’t been putting him back into the game with Popup)? I’d really appreciate thoughts, because I just have no idea how to play these situations. Learning to click for creds instead of drawing hoping against probability to draw an econ event is a lesson it took me a long time to learn, but I wonder if I’m now going too far the other way. Thanks in advance for any answers - I appreciate this is a question for which there’s probably no easy response!

(I lost 7-6, by the way, as he drew a bunch of Sweeps Weeks and recovered enough to put up another Sansan and push through Astro and NAPD on it, even though I did find another Beale. Then @lpoulter booted me out of the losers bracket. shakes fist)

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If he had no drip economy set up, no money, and no astro token, you were in a good position to wait it out due to the popup and open HQ access. You can draw and play things for a few turns, looking mostly for RDI, and keep pressure on his HQ while gaining creds with Sneakdoor/Desperado.

When you find yourself in these positions, you don’t want to feed him by running through popup window. I would have avoided Kati as well. I would have checked remotes, checked HQ 1-2 times a turn, and drawn cards to find RDI. Once you get RDI online, he stops your Sneakdoor, or he just recovers economically, then you can start going at R&D.

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whats your econ package look like in your leela deck ?

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@mediohxcore Thanks! That helps a lot. Would you say that in general drawing for econ in crim is a bad idea, and I should only be drawing looking for something specific - R&DI in this case - with any econ being a nice bonus?

@Remorhaz 3x Sure Gamble, 3x Dirty Laundry, 1x Lucky Find, 2x Security Testing, 2x Kati Jones. (And 3x Desperado 3x Account Siphon if you want to count them). The 2 Kati and 2 Sec Testing is a bit awkward deckspace-wise, but Blue Sun and NEH are both very common to face and I felt like I have to have 2 of each. I’m considering 3 Sec Testing 1 Kati though.

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If you’re pressed for time or just have enough in play to finish the game, you could stop drawing altogether and just click for money/click kati/run testing/run. Usually you will have to find a breaker eventually, and some of the tricks can be nice to have extra of. You were in a position where most of your econ wasn’t very good, because you were floating tags, but you also had the bonus of being able to get HQ accesses as you ‘clicked for credits’.

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for the other criminal runners not named andromeda i prefer slightly different econ packages.

andy - sec testing, desperado, kati, daily casts, dirty laundry. siphon.

gabe and friends - siphon, desperado, dirty laundry, bank job, armitage codebusting, kati, sec testing.

the gabe plan accounts for being buried in siphon tags and needing more live econ draws. you can still run sec testing but if you miss it early you have outs.

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As the current meta sits, I am a big fan of running the bank job, armitage, and kati jones combination. As more corporations tend to be running open remotes, bank job has really turned on.

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Good thread.

In your position I would do at least one turn of “take 4” (run Sneakdoor 4 times with Desperado), then next turn probably “draw a card, Sneakdoor run 3 times”, and see where it goes from there. Further turns likely “draw 1 card, Sneakdoor run, play a card, last click for whatever”

Reasoning:

  • You are looking for RDI. RDI requires 4 credits to install.
  • You absolutely do not want to drop below 5 creds (Sure Gamble threshold)
  • NAPD requires 4 to steal, so you really need at least 9c every time you access cards that can potentially be NAPD. This makes your “real” threshold 13 credits (draw RDI, install RDI, run R&D, access NAPD, steal NAPD, still have 5c banked for SG).
  • You want to keep control of the game, and for this you either run R&D (which is not optimal exactly because of the reasons you mentioned - popup window too stronk) or run HQ several times in a row to see what Corp drew last turn. For this you already have the perfect tools in Sneakdoor+Desperado+open Archives.

In general, in Netrunner you never draw for economy. I have seen many players doing the mistake of drawing cards while being next to broke. I sense the smell of deeply rooted Card Advantage fallacy of MtG every time I witness such moves. What they don’t realize is that you need money to play cards. Even more, you need surplus money to play many cards if you are drawing excessively. Clicking for credits is much more efficient if you are poor. Only exception might be PPVP decks, where threshold of playing economy events is lower due to PPVP credits, and due to the fact they have higher money event density in the deck.

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