Eternal Deckbuilding

I’ve been thinking about this a bunch lately, with the Data and Destiny spoilers. At this point we have a pretty solid reason to believe that we know more or less every rotation-proof card. As we move forward into the Mumbad Cycle and beyond, I have to wonder if telling new players to pick up the deluxe boxes might be more valuable than “grab What Lies Ahead and Opening Moves” just because of how those will cycle out before a casual player might be ready to step things up to tournament level.

To that end, I’d kinda like to throw together some decklists that only use rotation-proof cards. Ideally, I want to do up 3 lists for each faction (ideally using at least two different IDs, for variety), with one for each of the mini-factions (though with the huge cut in neutral cards they may have it the roughest by far already).

This yanks most of the biggest Corp IDs out of the game (no RP, no BS, no NEH, though ETF survives), but also takes away some of the tools that make other IDs less viable. Even if it doesn’t end up being useful/viable for new players, I think it could be a neat format for a tournament or two every now and then just due to the interesting deckbuilding and meta challenges it presents.

  • Jackson is gone. Shannon Claire is 2 inf. There is much fear and alarm.
  • Everyone loses a 3/2, making pure FA somewhat harder (and leaving poor Weyland with none).
  • I’ve Had Worse and Crash Space are about the only Scorch Protection around.
  • No Midseasons to make stealing agendas scary. Or Punitives, for that matter.
  • Shaper is back to having few good breakers and no VoicePads for Kate.
  • Clot and Film Critic are both gone.
  • NAPD, Batty, and Caprice likewise vanish.
  • Lots of shakeups with regards to Ice options.
  • Sunny loses Underworld Contacts, sadly. At least she keeps Data Folding?
  • Val likewise loses Blackmail.
  • The only Runner currents are for Anarch (with Bad Pub required) or cost influence. Corp-side, only Weyland and NBN have them at all.

Rough ideas on the different factions and IDs under the circumstances:

Anarch on the whole remains fairly strong, I think, because they mostly got power in O&C and the Core Set.
Noise, obviously, is the stand-out Runner. Without Jackson to keep him in check in every matchup, and with access to things like Eater? He’s a credible threat.
MaxX should still have her Reg-Ass legs, mostly. Oog.
Edward Kim might have the edge over Val since there’s more Ops reliance and she loses Blackmail.

Shaper loses a bunch of their supplemental stuff, and while C&C was good to them the Core Set was… less so. Worse for them is that most of their common archetypes draw heavily from datapacks, and they’re suddenly the only ones needing to (pay influence to) import Scorch protection if they want it.
Kit or Kate with Atman seem like the most obviously viable things for Shaper.
I don’t play enough Exile to know what could be done with him here, but he seems more viable here than the poor Prof if all those mem boosts and programs get yanked away.

Criminal is probably happy enough. They have a lot of power in the Core Set alone, including one of the only ways to protect against meat damage, and they keep Desperado-Security Testing.
Gabe is probably the standout for Criminal, with his solid ability.
Tenma miiight have enough run events left to be viable-ish, and has the extra influence.
Silhouette’s decksize advantage is more significant in a field without other 40-card runners or Andy to compete with.
Stirling might be too slow, still, but without a strong FA presence… I dunno, never played much of him to start with.

I dunno how the Mini-Factions would do in this environment, I dunno how they’d do now. Losing so many neutral cards is a bit rough on them, though.

NBN comes out okay. They end up needing more agendas than they might like, but they’ve got some ways to protect and to land/take advantage of tags.
MN remains a solid choice with so many meaninful traces to make, I’d say.
New Angeles Sol becomes even more preposterous given that there are so few Runner currents.
Spark and Sync might both flounder due to lack of core pieces, but Sync’s ability to slow down tag removal helps in a Scorch build.

Weyland’s a bit unhappier about agendas and the lack of punitives, though unless Showing Off becomes a thing there’re ways to mitigate that with Shannon Claire and Government Takeover. Two factions still have some meat damage protection, but big W has more ways to give it out and there are no Plascretes to supplement things with.
BABW’s strong transaction econ is probably tolerable, I guess, but they have to splash for Successful Demonstration and/or Medical Research Fundraiser, neither of which are ideal.
Gagarin might actually have enough assets to work with to be playable, if it can import enough of NBN’s money denial…
Titan is… doable? It only has two agendas to select that might care about counters. Still, the 17 influence is nice.
Argus might be one of the better IDs at that point. Meat damage is hard to avoid, and tags are pretty costly to deal with when they can still import Data Raven and Snare.

HB didn’t get the most help from C&C, either, but they still have EtF and a strong presence overall, I’d wager.
EtF is maybe the best Corp ID in the game, and it’s not like that changes, exactly.
NEXT doesn’t have access to as much cheap ice, but could still try for Mushin shenanigans with what it does have?
CI may have trouble from the one Runner current, but beyond that it’s probably got what it needs for non-Combo builds to be worth a shot?
Custom Biotics has access to a bunch of decent Weyland and NBN cards. With the smaller card pool, that might actually give them something of an advantage, because there’s less Jinteki stuff to feel the hurt on passing up. Especially with the NBN cards from D&D.

Jinteki is also sitting pretty happily, though the loss of RP and Caprice is a bitter one.
PE has all the tools to make Cambridge work again, as even with Eater around Keyhole is out.
Harmony Medtech gets Future Perfect and Global Food Initiative. It’s the happiest they’ve ever been.
Tennin still has plenty of advanceable ice to steal, but no commercialization or tricks of light, so… maaaybe some kind of glacier?
Nisei just doesn’t have enough Psi stuff, I don’t think. Maybe I’m wrong, but some of the best of it is gone either way.

On the corp side, Medtech, Making News, and Argus interest me most, while I’m drawn to Noise, Kim, and Kit on the runner side of things. What about you? What decks would you try putting together for a format that doesn’t include the datapacks?

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One thing I’ve taken a small note on is that the deluxe boxes seem to alternate which side of the game gets the larger boost. C&C is for Shapers, H&P is for Jinteki, O&C is for Anarchs, and D&D is for NBN. Because of the benefits for the alternated side from each box, I would go with Jinteki or NBN as my corp and Shaper or Anarch for runner. The others get some good boosts too, but I think these four get the largest boost of anyone.

As you’ve stated, Cambridge doesn’t change very much. I think I would go for that route first. As an example, this is what “Eternal Cambridge” could look like.

[URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/jinteki-core]Jinteki: Personal Evolution[/URL] (49 Cards)

Agenda (12)
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/gila-hands-arcology-creation-and-control]Gila Hands Arcology[/URL]
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/house-of-knives-honor-and-profit]House of Knives[/URL]
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/medical-breakthrough-honor-and-profit]Medical Breakthrough[/URL]
1 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/philotic-entanglement-honor-and-profit]Philotic Entanglement[/URL]
2 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/the-future-perfect-honor-and-profit]The Future Perfect[/URL]

Asset (16)
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/cerebral-overwriter-creation-and-control]Cerebral Overwriter[/URL]••••• •
2 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/melange-mining-corp-core]Melange Mining Corp[/URL]
2 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/project-junebug-core]Project Junebug[/URL]
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/psychic-field-honor-and-profit]Psychic Field[/URL]
1 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/shi-kyu-honor-and-profit]Shi.Kyu[/URL]
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/snare-core]Snare![/URL]
2 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/zaibatsu-loyalty-core]Zaibatsu Loyalty[/URL]

Upgrade (1)
1 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/sansan-city-grid-core]SanSan City Grid[/URL]•••

Operation (11)
2 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/diversified-portfolio-honor-and-profit]Diversified Portfolio[/URL]
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/hedge-fund-core]Hedge Fund[/URL]
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/mushin-no-shin-honor-and-profit]Mushin No Shin[/URL]
2 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/neural-emp-core]Neural EMP[/URL]
1 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/scorched-earth-core]Scorched Earth[/URL]••••

Barrier (3)
2 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/ice-wall-core]Ice Wall[/URL]••
1 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/wall-of-static-core]Wall of Static[/URL]

Code Gate (3)
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/enigma-core]Enigma[/URL]

Sentry (3)
3 [URL=http://netrunner.meteor.com/card/pup-honor-and-profit]Pup[/URL]

As for the runners, I generally favor Anarch and I don’t expect that to change for me in the eternal meta.

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The “core set and big box only” format would be a lot slower than normal netrunner, partly because there’s a lower power level overall and partly because there’s no fast advance. So shaper with SMC and Magnum Opus seems like a good archetype. You might need to use Medium though because most of your multi access is missing.

Surveillance Sweep is pretty much all Making News has ever wanted. with few runner currents to easily turn it off, it’ll have a field day.

losing Gutenberg and Popup Window is sad, but Archangel, News Hound, and Turnpike fill the voids nicely, and Tollbooth will continue to be one of the best pieces of ICE in the game. losing Beale is probably the biggest hit, but it still has some very strong agendas (and Astro is still the best agenda in the game).
NBN is on solid ground

also, Criminals will only have Passport as their in-faction decoder and lose access to importing Zu.13. so they lose Rex, the keymaster, and (lol) Peacock, but they have some options.
influence free, they won’t have to rely solely on Crypsis, as they can use Overmind as well

in general, Yog.0 / Datasucker remains a great option against code gates with the loss of Lotus Field. gets past Viktor 1.0, Enigma, and Datapike by itself, and for only 1 counter, Chum, Builder, Rainbow, and Minelayer.
Wormhole is probably the scariest, and i’d maybe worry about Inazuma, Tollbooth, Viktor 2.0, and Shiro, but they just need an extra counter. also, Checkpoint and Archangel have traces you can pay for in lieu of breaking though. not worried about Cell Portal at all

also, stealth as an archetype pretty much dies as it loses Lockpick, Silencer, Refractor, Switchblade, Ghost Runner… everything but Cloak and Dagger.

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I guess it’ll be fun once or twice to see just how broken Noise is in this format.

Then we can all go running back to Jackson Howard like nature intended.

I don’t see why noise without cheap viruses (cache etc) and good draw (Chronotype) should be that insane. He struggled in Genesis pre workshop, and will just go back to being too slow for a fast Weyland / Next (/ Medtech?) deck.

He does get Progenitor, Hivemind, and things like that to help deal with being wiped, at least. I think he’ll likely be strong, though not in the same way as now.

He’ll also get Technical Writer, though, which should help significantly. Wyldside/Aesop’s might still be a bit on the rough side without Chronotype, but I think Clone Chip will be of similarish help to Workshop, and he still gets access to those. Might not be the same level of busted, but instant-parasite will still be a thing he can work toward.

[quote=“dr00, post:4, topic:4658”]
also, Criminals will only have Passport as their in-faction decoder and lose access to importing Zu.13. so they lose Rex, the keymaster, and (lol) Peacock, but they have some options.influence free, they won’t have to rely solely on Crypsis, as they can use Overmind as well
[/quote]And they can probably still afford the influence for Gordian Blade, I’d wager. It’s only one more than the Keymaster, and might actually be better with NBN’s various code gates from D&D.

That said, Yogsucker is probably better in most situations there, yeah. No Lotus Field really means there’s little reason to run other things.

[quote=“dr00, post:4, topic:4658”]
Surveillance Sweep is pretty much all Making News has ever wanted. with few runner currents to easily turn it off, it’ll have a field day.
[/quote]True, and might force more runners to spend the influence on the new current, alas. On the bright side, it’s a pretty good current, and hurts MN particularly because of how much that deck relies on traces. Same Old Thing also helps there, since runners can use it to recur their current more easily than MN can.

Link might end up being more valuable, though, which means that Sunny might stand a chance of being relevant even without access to UWC. Access to Globalsec and Rabbit Hole both exist in Core (even if the former is trash even for her), and if Link is that common/threatening she doesn’t end up minding too much, I wouldn’t think. Combine with the new current and MN has a very hard time doing anything if they go in on the Surveillance Sweep/Trace plan – though with 2/1s they can break the runner current more easily than some.

IMO no Ronin is quite a big deal, as the strategy of ignoring advanced remotes and hammering the centrals most of the time becomes way better.

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Hurts some, to be sure, but with Snare! and access to other R&D traps I think it might be doable. There’s no Keyhole to empty out R&D so safely, and even if Fetal’s gone… I dunno. “Cambridge-esque” might’ve been the better way to phrase things. Could see using Space Camp, even, to advance things in remotes as a result of big Centrals accesses and make it a bit easier to use Medical Breakthroughs and the like.

Great topic, @GreedyGuts, this is gonna be helpful for newer players who want to look long-term in the game.

I thought about it for a minute, and immediately went to Reg-Ass MaxX. Her ability is going to be so strong will less card draw available, and most of her tools are in boxes already. All that becomes necessary is to replace what’s lost as best we can.

Before I share the list, let’s run through what Pre-NRE Reg-Ass lost without data packs. We lost Queen’s Gambit, Lucky Find, Kati Jones, Liberated Account, D4v1d, and Imp. Almost everything here is an economy card in one form or another! That means many of our replacements will have to fix the void. Losing David also hurts as it is an amazing icebreaker. So with that in mind, I present this probably not-so-great attempt at RA MaxX, minus data packs.

MaxX for Eternity (45 cards)

MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock

Event (18)
1 Account Siphon
2 Deja Vu
3 Dirty Laundry
1 Forked
3 I’ve Had Worse
1 Knifed
1 Legwork
1 Levy AR Lab Access
1 Spooned
1 Stimhack
3 Sure Gamble

Hardware (5)
3 Clone Chip
2 Grimoire

Resource (9)
3 Armitage Codebusting
3 Daily Casts
3 Same Old Thing

Icebreaker (6)
2 Corroder
2 Mimic
2 Yog.0

Program (7)
3 Datasucker
1 Medium
3 Parasite

At least a few things are gonna stick out here, so let me explain choices. Dirty Laundry was thrown in as easy-to-use economy. Most lists only run a singleton knifed, but we’re going to rely on fixed breakers and Datasucker to see us through ICE, so a Spooned and Forked was added to get rid of big or troublesome Code Gates/Sentries. These cards also double as economy, in a sense, particularly if it’s R&D. 3 copies of Armitage Codebusting were added as more economy, aiming to replace Liberated Accounts and Kati Jones as best we can. Finally, 3 Datasuckers so we can get counters up and going ASAP.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, Account Siphon. I was re-building this deck, throwing in as much economy as I could find that made sense - we lost a ton, as you can see above. And I noticed I still had one card to go in the deck, as well as 4 influence to spare. So it all just came together, and I saw Siphon like a bad, bad memory from childhood. Going tag-me is not particularly appealing, so I’m hoping this splash would have the potential to swing the game at the moment of truth - using a SOT to recur it or playing from hand, to swing credits to either prevent a rez of ICE, or keep the corp too poor to score next turn - something that will give you the opportunity to swing the game in your favor when it all hangs in the balance.

Possible changes include putting in a Scrubber for assets to replace Imp (this is a pseudo-meta call), or finding another economy engine besides the cards listed here.

EDIT: Nope.

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Scrubber’s a Data Pack card, alas. The only recurring creds for trashing in the eternal card pool at this stage I believe are Paricia.

No worries, @GreedyGuts, I didn’t forget about this topic. Allow me to bring it back with a big news story.

Your News Source, Forever (49 cards)

NBN: Making News

Agenda (11)
1 15 Minutes
3 AstroScript Pilot Program
3 Global Food Initiative
1 Improved Tracers
3 Quantum Predictive Model

Asset (10)
2 Adonis Campaign
2 Launch Campaign
1 Melange Mining Corp
2 News Team
3 Shannon Claire

Upgrade (4)
1 Cyberdex Virus Suite
1 Keegan Lane
2 SanSan City Grid

Operation (8)
1 Archived Memories
1 Closed Accounts
1 Fast Track
3 Hedge Fund
1 Psychographics
1 The All-Seeing I

Barrier (4)
3 Resistor
1 Wall of Static

Code Gate (4)
2 Archangel
1 Tollbooth
1 Viktor 1.0

Sentry (6)
1 Archer
1 Assassin
2 Data Raven
1 Ichi 1.0
1 Turnpike

ICE (2)
2 Special Offer

Going with core NBN, I’ve come back with everyone’s favorite news station, designed to work for all time. The general theme of this deck is to slowly tax the runner with a large number of oppressive traces. Eventually, to stay in the game, the runner will be forced to go tag-me, and we can use our few tag punishment tools to lock the game up. Let’s get into details.

Agenda composition was pretty straight-forward. Astro is our only remaining 3/2, unfortunately, so we had to go with a large number of one pointers. GFI helps us even out agenda density, and if we get the chance to score it, that’s just money in the bank.

Assets are primarily based around making money, and are solid choices on their own. Launch Campaign might be inferior to PAD Campaign here, but I think you’ll put it behind ICE and it’ll be OK. The same for the singleton Melange. If we can get it even once, it’s pretty huge. Shannon Claire is our influence-free Jackson replacement. News Team helps us with tags, and might force the runner to have to steal 5(!) agendas to win if he takes the -1 points and gets a 1-pointer at some point.

Cyberdex helps because Datasucker is going to be monstrously good with this “eternal” style, so let’s make sure we cover our bases there. Keegan can trash a critical program to let us score out, and SanSan is always good.

Archived Memories probably seems like an odd choice, but it gives us further agenda protection against Noise. Closed Accounts is just a one-of, but it might help us win in the critical stages. Psycho lets us FA from hand with any agenda (no Clot, remember), and All-Seeing I gets rid of resources, which will probably be an important form of money.

Let’s talk ICE choices. Tracers were given some attention, but they need to be good on their own, too. Resistor is fine with less Parasite recursion, and with the tags we plan to land, will become resistant on it’s own, as well as taxing. Archangel is incredibly taxing for it’s price, regardless of how you deal with it. Viktor might seem out of place, but it’s expensive to deal with repeatedly. Archer isn’t a tracer ICE, but a mid-game landing of it, sacrificing one of our many one-pointers, might just win right away. Data Raven and Turnpike turn on Quantum Predictive Model, so we want those on R&D. Special Offer gives us some much-needed money, Corp economies are really bad in this format.

I’m not completely confident in my ICE choices, although I don’t think they’re full-on bad, just perhaps not optimal. I also had a hard time getting influence; I originally had PADs, but dropped them for Adonises when I realized I had influence to spare.

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Hey, @GreedyGuts, got another one for you. Time to rip some mad beats!

Eternity’s DJ (45 cards)

Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire

Event (13)
2 Deja Vu
3 Dirty Laundry
3 I’ve Had Worse
1 Legwork
1 Stimhack
3 Sure Gamble

Hardware (5)
3 Clone Chip
2 Grimoire

Resource (15)
3 Aesop’s Pawnshop
3 Armitage Codebusting
3 Daily Casts
3 Same Old Thing
3 Wyldside

Icebreaker (3)
1 Corroder
1 Mimic
1 Yog.0

Program (9)
3 Datasucker
2 Medium
3 Parasite
1 Paricia

Too bad his console isn’t available, not that we’d play it anyway. But let’s get into this deck.

Noise is gonna be great with Jackson Howard gone for good. Pre-Jackson, Noise was in something of a golden age, and there’s no reason to think he can’t re-kindle that in this new meta. Jackson’s replacement, Shannon Claire, is two influence to Jackson’s one, and less useful overall; I don’t think we’ll see her outside of NBN decks, in general, although I could be wrong. With limited ways to respond to Noise’s powerful mill ability, Corps will feel completely oppressed when they see him on the table.

That said, we definitely lost some stuff, so let’s talk about this big things that are gone now. I went with a standard Noiseshop shell, and filled in missing pieces. Critical cards that were lost are Imp, Cache, David, Faust, Adjusted Chronotype, and Inject/Street Peddler.

Imp is a huge loss for us. Imp saves you no less than 17 million credits over the course of a game, and is terribly disruptive to the Corp. Cache hurts because it was money, and Aesop’s fodder, and milling, all in one; it was truly a beautiful card for Noise. We’ll have to make do. Aside from that, we’re missing some card draw, a way to save our first click from Wyldside, and two hyper-efficient breakers. Lamprey is a card some use to great effect, and it’s also closed off to us.

So, our choices. Let’s talk about differences between modern Noiseshop decks and this one. Three spare influence lost from Cache gives us the opportunity to put in a Legwork for some HQ pressure. Wanton Destruction is in faction, but the click cost is rough with Wyldside. Stimhack is always great, and Dirty Laundry helps us out a bit with economy from Cache.

Hardware is straight-forward and easy.

Resources got a few cards added in, let’s take a look. Armitage lets us click up for money - again not playing nice with Wyldside, but we can see it off to Aesop for an extra buck, and economy is limited in this format. Daily casts is pretty common and can also be sold, we’ve included three copies here. With limited cards available that have strong effects, I went with Same Old Things, to recur Deja Vu, Legwork, Stimhack, or anything else when crunch time comes.

For programs, what better than the most efficient system in the game, and in-faction, no less. Corroder, Mimic, and Yog for our breakers, with Datasucker making everything cheap and awesome. One copy of each because that’s how we roll in Anarch. 3 Suckers and 3 Parasites is an easy include with our ability, 2 Mediums for R&D pressure, and finally, an odd choice, a singleton Paricia. As @Icedman pointed out, this is the only source of recurring credits for trashing stuff. With Imp gone, Noise is gonna need some way to affect empty remotes so Corps don’t feel too safe just putting stuff out and counting on him being broke. Paricia solves the problem, and is Aesop’s fodder when we need it.

Possible improvements include putting in more draw, probably taking out an Armitage/Laundry for it. Unfortunately, draw power is pretty limited, with Diesel looking the most attractive. Independent Thinking from Adam is a possibility, but trashing stuff doesn’t seem great when you have Aesop’s. Taking out Legwork for Diesel is possible, but I tend to advie against it. I suggest using mulligans aggressively for Wyldside.

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