Eat My Traps

Netrunner General
21

I can only recall one instance of me hitting Cerebral Overwriter and it was with a Feedback Filter on the table.

Ultimately, there’s a huge difference in tactics between playing an agenda and playing trap and as long as that difference exists, the Runner will be able to tell which is which. I don’t think that just playing cards naked works, there needs to be a backbone that allows you to profit from misdirection and fear because they alone are not enough.

The best trap-based deck I have played was actually an HB glacier deck and it played only three ambushes (2 GRNDL Refinery, 1 Aggressive Secretary) backed by Midway Station Grid. Some reasons why I think it was a better approach than the pure Jinteki PE bluffs of its day are:

1) The difference between agendas and traps was narrow. Running on either an agenda or a trap was a huge expense and opened a scoring window either way.

2) Both running and not running favoured the Corp: GRNDL Refinery is the best example of this. If the Runner tries to get it, I win. If he doesn’t, I also win.

3) The bluff/agenda ratio was very high. I only needed 3 agendas to win. Two of those can be 3/2s which are easily disguised amongst assets/upgrades (There are 19). This leaves one or two 5/3s to be scored and you have 3-5 bluffs by recurring your ambushes with Jackson.

4) The number of possible “guesses” by the Runner was very low: This made the traps very controllable. You could “pull the Runner in”, basically.

5) The deck could win by pure force. It was an Ash/Midway deck and sometimes it just won because it had sex bots and money.

I keep thinking about building a similar deck, but my attempts at replicating it in Titan haven’t panned out, the deck is just too poor to keep its servers working.

BTW, keep in mind that Caprice is anti-synergetic with traps and ambushes.

3 Likes
22

Small background, This is my deck:

For me, there are two keys to mastering Trap Laying in netrunner.
Knowing what your opponent expects
and
either Manipulating or Understanding your opponents state of mind.

These are things that take a lot of time and practice to get right, and the best advice I can give is that there is no easy way to get there other than deliberate hard work by focusing on your opponents while playing and trying to be as empathetic as possible in your day to day life.

Though my particular case may give some insight onto fruitful lines of study, I’m a professional game designer, and I get paid to predict and understand what players think. So stuyding material on game design, general psychology, game theory, and constant self-reflection while playing games would be the things I’d recomend if you want to strengthen your Yomi muscles.

At least for shell game decks, I can never see backchannels being the answer. An un-used 4 advanced server still has immense use even if its read as a trap. Your servers are your board state, they are an array of threats you can use to make the runner second guess themselves and blowing up a failed trap to backchannels is something close to trashing rezed ice for money.
And thats not even to cover the fact that most terrible PE decks that i see run it never have anything to spend the money on makes it even a worse option.

The only real use I see of back channels is in a scoring server oriented trap deck like a biotech rush, weyland tax stopper, or the like. In that case you can Xanatos yourself into a win-win, hyper advancing a failed trap to secure your credit lead then improve the server with the money and install an agenda.

4 Likes
23

Even in the single remote deck I still have issues with Back Channels. It means the runner has you on lock and you just keep installing cards anyway. No Mushins allowed either. When the card was spoiled I got excited, but then I realized how much I like to have 4 advanced cards on board. I don’t have to tell you of all people that, though.

24

Cambridge PE was my first ever corp deck, and was an incredibly forgiving way to learn the game, as people kind of just killed themselves. Since then I’ve never really played anything except horizontal decks, and nearpad (snares, drts, psychic fields etc) and jinteki PE are still two of my favourites ever. My butchershop deck at nationals (went 6-0 on day 1) had a lone snare, which won me at least one game on the day, and has helped me in many others. I have gotten out of many seemingly unwinnable games through bluffs, including acting nervous, peeking at cards, putting a second ice in a server that already has a data raven to lure the runner into going in to hit the snare sitting in there…I like how many ways there are to trick people into running specific remotes as well. Getting them to hit cerebral is never a high priority, as them taking 2 or more brain damage from one is usually game winning, so can’t be too upset when they don’t go for it. Also what I’ve found is that many PE players that aren’t me are not aggressive enough with their scoring. You should be scoring points when you get the chance, as getting to four or five agenda points puts immense pressure on your opponent. Also scoring agendas like profiteering, hok, gila are all good…

As an aside, turn 1, two remotes…surely if we were to collect data, we’d find the runner to go for the outer remote 75-80% of the time? :wink: Anyway traps are awesome

2 Likes
25

Playing a heavy ambush/poker face deck (i.e. where your opponent is also expecting it to be a significant part of the game and it’s not a “surprise”) I think a great, not to mention entertaining, way to avoid the “pattern problem” you mention is to install blind!

If you have a Mushin No Shin in Jinteki PE, pick two cards from your hand, shuffle facedown then Mushin one of them. Return the other one to HQ unseen and leave your cards facedown on the table. Likewise for an install, advance, advance turn. There can be no tells if you don’t know the installed card! Well unless you shuffled two agendas or two ambushes obviously, but even then if you do give a tell your opponent is less likely to trust it.

It should work because you should be installing in a situation where an agenda or an ambush is an equally good play. If you find you are more happy for the randomly chosen card to be the agenda or the ambush, you’re maybe not pushing the guessing game in the optimum situation (and thus you’re informing your opponent’s reaction).

You can even notch it up a level and occasionally pick three cards to shuffle (Why are they using three cards now rather than two? What does it mean? Does that mean 1/3 chance of an agenda? Or 2/3? Help!).

26

the main scenario I can see it working in is:
Runner is threatening a remote lock,
Install Advance Advance a trap in a server, best ghost branch, shattered remains, or agressive secretary in this case (something that can be used to break lock rather than kill).
Look at runner,

Outcome A) Runner Runs Trap, spends a lot of resources to get in, hits trap, boardstate is broken.
Outcome B) Runner Reads Trap, passes turn back to you, you continue advancing the trap. and that turn or the next cash it in for 12+ credits on a back channel, then use the 12 credits to strengthen the remote enough to break the remote lock. The issue is really in the tempo though, with 4 hard advances back channel is worth 12 credits at a cost of (1 card, 1 click, 8 advancement tempo) leaving it to only be a +2, or on par with a hedge fund in terms of raw gain. Its only a super level tempo play (like say boosted lucky finds +4-6) after 5+ advancements.

If only BWBI was advance anything…

27

I was playing a Blue Sun Punitive list today that I threw together which plays the standard 6 agendas Weyland Punitive builds do, with the idea that I could either score 1-2 agendas and a Public Support for the win using Ash to help the final agenda, or kill them with Punitive Counterstrike if they try and steal my shit. Either way, I get to use my Blue Sun cash as a win condition.

Because I run Government Takeover, I think it’s a good idea to run a couple advaceable traps, because otherwise anything I spend more than 1 turn advancing without scoring it is exactly Government Takeover. In this deck, one of the two traps I run is Shattered Remains, for the expected reasons that a kill deck would run that card.

So this is usually a slow-as-shit deck. Also, both win conditions usually rely on traces to succeed. So you can imagine my dismay when I see my opponent is playing Kate after just hearing him talk up Nexus Kate to a friend before our match. 5 link and Security Nexus makes both my huge ICE and my trace cards strait up bad. Naturally, he finds MOpus, Rabbit Holes, and Nexus almost immediately. He also finds and plays a Plascrete and two RDIs, and is pounding R&D, getting an agenda. This is now a 95% lost game. However, I had Shattered Remains in my opening hand, which is exactly my 5%.

Basically, the game was riding on how hard I could sell this Shattered Remains as an agenda. If I could snipe off the Nexus, at least, I might be able to score out. On a turn where it looked like I might have a scoring window, if I was being risky, I IAA’d it. The next turn, he ignored it in favor of more R&D hammering. Sadly, this made sense. I was at 0 points, and me scoring an agenda doesn’t even really matter to him. I hadn’t gotten a Public Support up yet, so I would only be on 3 points, rather than 4, which is game point for this deck.

So now this thing can not look like a 5/3 any more. My only choice is to make it look like a Government Takeover. I spend the next turn installing another ICE in front of it and advancing it up to 4. I’m trying to look a little nervous, but not super nervous. Like I’m nervous, but trying to contain it. I just want to make it look like I care about it.

He’s wondering WTF I’m doing now, but spends another turn smacking R&D instead of running. This is my last shot. I advance up to 6, the magic number. I check my ICE over the remote, look like I’m thinking about rez costs, then take a credit on 3. 6 is the magic number, because if it’s a Government Takeover, I get to score it next turn. He needs to deal with it immediately, if he’s going to deal with it at all. I am no longer trying to act like I’m nervous and trying to contain it, because that’s what’s really happening here. If this fails, I’m basically done for, as there’s very, very little I can do to get back in it.

He credits up on 1+2, and runs R&D on 3. I’ve failed my job selling the trap. Game’s over. However, he doesn’t use Nexus on the run, instead opting to SMC for an actual breaker for R&D. He gets another agenda, putting him at 6 and me still at 0. He eyes the remote. “Now what the fuck could you possibly be trying to do there,” he ponders. A few seconds of thinking, and then: “… You know what, fuck it,” and points at the server, indicating a run.

And he gets in. And he accesses. And I blow up Nexus, all three Rabbit Holes, the Plascrete, and an RDI. I have 2 Punitives in my hand, and he stole an agenda last turn, and his Link is reset back to 1. And I’m rich. And I win.

It was one of the greatest trap sells of my life. Thinking back, if that had been a Junebug I also would have won. Cerebral too. These actually would have been safer traps to have in that situation, since they end the game on their own. Either way, I had to sell the shit out of that. Luckily I was playing a deck where advancing something 6 times isn’t a dead giveaway that I’m full of crap. If he hadn’t fallen into it, my only play would be to Blue Sun the Shattered Remains back to my hand and then play a “Did I do it again?” game with it and the agenda I was holding, which comes down to a 50/50 on him running or not, which is a shit gamble to get a single 5/3 out of as the prize, especially when R&D lock was going strong.

With Nexus Kate being a thing right now, I think I’ll be shelving this deck. Having both win conditions reliant on traces does not a good match make when the runner sits on 5 link all day.

But man, I sold the hell outa that trap.

7 Likes
28

This is the best way to bait HQ runs :smiley:

29

[quote=“whatisthistreachery, post:17, topic:6517”]
Against strangers or in tournament games, I always run the first Mushin no Shin. Always.[/quote]

This is really interesting to me, because I do the opposite. My reasoning is that if I don’t run it, worst case is it’s a Future Perfect or an economy agenda like Gila Hands or Profiteering (admittedly the latter is pretty bad), which aren’t particularly bad outcomes, whereas the worst case if I do run it is that it’s a turn one Cerebral Overwriter and I massively increase my chances of getting flatlined later on.

I’m aware that I’m a pretty cautious player generally, though, and if someone has a good read on that then it’s very exploitable.

More generally, I don’t think I’ve ever lost to PE on jinteki.net because the general populace there are absolutely horrible at playing it. I get accused of being really lucky against those players a lot, but it’s simply that changing your running patterns tends to wreck them.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to good players piloting those decks, but it brings me on to my actual point that at smaller events or against strangers, I find a big problem with landing traps (or forcing bad runs) is that I have no idea how capable my opponent is, which means that I can’t guarantee that they’ll make a reasonable assessment of best/worst case scenarios and then play on that assessment. In those cases, I think it can actually be harder to land traps on less experienced players because they’re so damn unpredictable.

(I will admit that this did once work in my favour as a runner, because I forgot that Mandatory Upgrades is a card and hence had no intention whatsoever of running a naked Mushin’d card out of HB. Turns out it was an AggSec that would have wrecked me if I’d remembered that the threat of a scored ManUp was a thing.)

1 Like
30

Coming from a Mushin PE player, the largely deciding factor is honestly what I draw at any given moment. Obviously if they have a specific counter card I’m not going to play whatever random thing I draw, but I try to trust in my deck building, and it makes it very difficult for the runner to predict a pattern - because there isn’t one.

31

re back channels: its good to have ability to double scorch from zero credits.

1 Like
32

Regarding poker-faces and tells. There are tons of books and theory in poker on tells, how people breathe, how people shift tehir eyes, how tehy bet etc. Some say you can read bluffs/no-bluffs that way.

Others, on the other hand, say that tells are nothing to go by, people act differently and a person can smirk for a number of different reasons, or hold their breath, or look away etc. The peopel that subscribe to/promot this view say that you should only base your reads on the game state and the game actions your opponent takes.

If someone “bets” high, that means something, it is “change of gamestate” and you can start interpreting it. That someone looks away when you ask a question or smirks does not.

I think you should base decissions on game actions and game state, not on a persons behaviour, which could be due to a number of factors, both game and external.

So I would base the credibility (Beale or no Beale) on game state, not on behaviour :slight_smile:

5 Likes