I really believe stimhack is what sets this deck apart from other, more clumsy Nasir decks. In addition to the workshop combo mentioned by CobraBubbles, it counters a major tactic to create a scoring window against nasir which is to throw a low-to-no cost ICE out in front of a stack of taxing rezzed ICE: the little guys saps all your cash then you can’t recover quickly enough to break in that turn.
Stimhack can completely ruin this plan: you run, lose your money, then next click stimhack in (against rezzed ICE now). Against many players, all they need to see is one stimhack before they stop even bothering to use this tactic (which even with cheap ICE can cost a lot for clicks and install cost)
Nasir often manages to get stuff off Personal workshop so quick that Stimhack is overkill. What I meant by it disappearing is that if the corp rezzes a low-cost ice, you can’t use the money to break the ice after it.
That makes sense - you do have to worry about click compression that way, though. I still feel like the influence could be better used than as an upgrade to Kati.
I definitely concede your first point, I very rarely end up needing to use it to build.
That said, I don’t feel it’s “just” an upgrade to Kati. To get the same “fast recovery” effect after a small ice is rezzed, it would take 5 clicks over 4 turns, versus zero clicks for stimhack (as it “gives” you a run). This ability to respond rapidly when an agenda is at stake is perhaps Nasir’s greatest weakness, and stimhack is the best answer out there, in my experience.
Another thing to keep in mind is Nasir tends towards being fairly broke on the corps turn, and I’ve been running into a lot of decks splashing Snatch and Grab.
I just had to stop in and mention one other thing; as a long time Nasir player I was extremely dubious about Order of Sol, even in Nasir. I’ve been playing this deck a lot recently, and it had been such a workhorse that last game we decided to count… 28 credits in one game! This deck is still surprising me, and definitely the first real taste I think we’ve had of what Nasir could be, competitively.
I’ve played with this deck over the weekened (around 10 matches or so) and I must say I’m disappointed. It’s just really really, really inconsistent. Half of my games I didn’t start with Personal Workshop even though I mulligan’d for it. Some other games I didn’t mulligan for it, as the article said that if you have draw prowess you should be fine. Well, I thought that a starting turn consisting of Earthrise Hotel and Astrolabe would be enough to draw my Workshop quickly, but boy was I wrong. All I did was draw more cards that I had to discard because I couldn’t host them on my non-existing Workshop. It’s a cool deck, don’t get me wrong, and when it gets rolling then it really gets rolling, but it’s just so unreliable. I don’t mind playing it in casual settings, but I’d never bring it to a tournamnet of any kind.
That’s why I’m waiting for a Professor Primer. I love decks that no matter what RNG throws at you then you can find ways work with what you have. Kind of like Noise Cache.
It’s occasionally useful to prepare for the worst by practicing a deck without a key card. It’s possible to win games with Nasir without installing a workshop. Hard mode, for sure, but possible. One of the hardest things in netrunner is to know when to dig and when to use your clicks with what you have now.
It sucks not to find your workshop if you’re running it, but you can make it work, so long as you find other pieces.
Nasir can be fine even without Workshop. It’s an incredible card for him but he doesn’t fail without it. You can pour your credits into SMC before you encounter or something.
Noise is most certainly not consistent by nature. The reason Inject is a 3-of these days is because of his inconsistency. Trying to play Noise without Aesop’s is horrible. Noise can work sub-optimally without Pawnshop, but he’s not nearly as good as with it (turns out three credits a turn is a good thing). The difference is, Noise has more ways to find the card he needs (Inject, as mentioned), but Nasir has different ways to spend his money if you’ve not got a Workshop (like SMC).
tl;dr - There are some IDs that get considerably better when they see a key card (like Nasir or Noise). This doesn’t make them bad IDs and they still work without those key cards - they just play differently.
I suspect we might have a different definition for “consistency”. The reason I like this build is because unlike other Nasir builds, it’s pretty consistent even without Workshop. I agree that Workshop smooths it significantly, but you should be able to leave a nice dent on the Corp without it. For example, while I almost always double dip into Order of Sol if I have Workshop, I oftentimes manage to get the drip on my turn even without it.
An aside, I won the Compleat Strategist store championship with this and NEH (both decks went 4-1, and Nasir had to face NEH in four of his matches - went 3-1 against NEH). With that said, it was a pretty small event (35 players), so the jury is still out on whether this is a competitive build.
Frees up influence for 1 Clot once it’s released. Clot also makes this deck, and a lot of other Shaper decks competitive. Once you can slow the game down, in faction Shaper econ becomes more than adequate. I think the card pool is soon evolving to a point where you won’t have to spend influence on economy. O&C will do it for Anarchs, and Clot will do it for Shapers (and Anarch if they splash SMCs and Clone Chips).
@IirionClaus: Can you elaborate a little on how you more-or-less dominated NEH with this archetype? I tested an NEH build against a couple different Nasir builds (one sorta like yours, one ice destruction) for GenCon and had no difficulty on the yellow side barring the expected occasional variance splat.
Also, re the Professor subtext:
Seems Professor would require one of two criteria to be met in order to be a desirable choice for tournament play.
A) There is a combination of programs that is very powerful but influence-prohibitive to other IDs.
B) The diversity of Corp threats can only be answered by a toolbox as diverse as what the Professor can assemble.
Of these two, the latter has always seemed closer to occurring. FFG seems quite wary of combo degeneracy (although some sweet CI stuff slipped through). However, the Prof seems to lack a lot in the speed and consistency departments, so the need for “toolbox-y-ness” would have to be quite high. (Unless FFG releases some [possibly overpowered] really efficient memory solutions.)
Then again, I haven’t played or really even thought about ANR since Gencon Saturday, so… who knows if any of that is true anymore. Felt the first twinges of real Netrunner interest in awhile while randomly scoping out some of the Order and Chaos cards this morning. Just in time to start getting ready for store champs… Hmmmmm.
EDIT: Forgot to say awesome article. Awesome article, thanks! Stimhack still rocks, apparently. (EDIT: Both the card and the website… I was talking about the website, but then I was like, oh, yeah Stimhack is a card too and, that card is in this deck!)
, this deck teach me how and when to play MO a card that I never ever understand before XD