Exploring a Stalling Metagame: Nasir Meidan StimShop by El-Ad David Amir

CyCy’s make me think scavenge! Good thoughts tho. I’m under no illusion that Nasir is a labor of love. But I’m keen to optimise him nonetheless. I found he builds really fast, and the cheaper memory makes you 2 creds off workshops. Strangely I’m not feeling to deck space limited at the moment. If anything I do want more draw…

I’m not currently using the levy as a ‘end of deck’ reset. Mainly, I’ve used my diesels and popped some tech writers, please can I have them back kind of idea. Cos a lot of stuff stays on the board, it’s great to pop your econ back in just after a big tech writer.

At the moment, not too many, but it’s still a free sure gamble if you run on 0. I remain constantly amazed by how many times Nas get’s free centrals access in the early game, most people even seem unwilling to rez ice walls and architects against him. The space bum takes what he can get!

While I thought that most people would play glacier-y stuff again after MWL2, I’ve seen lots of rush and FA/rush hybrid decks around, and NBN is still a thing too. With all the things that cost 0-2 to rez that are commonly played, I think Nasir might be in a pretty bad spot right now. Your experience may vary though.

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He absolutely is. Just curious about what his best build is currently.

His best build plays rebirth, and hope to see it in your opening hand.
Same as Exile.

Thanks for that dismissive, valueless post. Appreciate the time taken to post it.

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ditto to @Badeesh. If you don’t like jank, don’t come to a jank thread?

you bring up an interesting comparison, though: I don’t believe Exile is in the same boat as Nasir at all.

While Exile was poorly conceived and will probably never receive strong card support, he will never get worse, strictly speaking; he can lose ground relatively to other green runners, certainly, but at the end of the day he always at least a blank green ID. And, he could easily get better at any time with the release of any synergizing card.

Nasir on the other hand actively suffers from reverse power-creep: without extremely specific card support, new releases tend to make him weaker. As corps get more and more low-cost ICE options Nasir’s ID becomes less and less of a potential benefit and more and more of a major liability.

Though he is my absolute favorite runner, Nasir stays in my binder until they release a runner-side sealed bank vault or something.

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Hmm, the visible part of the Algo Trading spoiler looks like a Shaper version of CI Fund so maybe we are getting a place to stash credits and retrieve them at paid ability speed. Don’t know if it’ll be good in general or good for Nasir in particular but it’ll be fun to test.

hmm, hadn’t seen that- I look forward to it, for sure, but a 1-for-1 CI fund wouldn’t do much. What he really needs is a way to stash credits at paid ability speed and a repeatable way to get them back (if that means clicking for them, so be it) basically a way to say to the corp: one way or another, I’m keeping the credits from every ICE you rez. no more “i’ll rez this tollbooth now because it’s a scoring run and the next ice is pop-up”

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I think the closest thing to this is the tech writers … But you’re right, it’s the instant speed requirement that is letting them down. It’s either that, or recurring credits, and a dirt cheap rig.

Off course everybody loves Nasir. I would love to see him top tier one day because playing with/against Nasir is a lot of fun and some of the best interaction in the game. Sadly he never was really good, and to be honest right now I think he is in his worst spot ever.

  • Like people said nothing new got released to support his ID. While other decks always get a little bit extra choices.

  • Less temple (MWL) means less big ICE. I mean those temple decks ran at least some assassins, which are ideal ICE for a Nasir player with a single sharpshooter.

  • Vanilla became an auto include in a lot of decks. Yes it’s cheap with an inti, but wouldn’t you rather have them rez a wraparound or WoS. Vanilla etr if you don’t have something like ghost runner or a parasite.

  • The corp meta is unfortunate.

    • CI: plays a few cheap ICE, you’re not that different from other shapers but just slightly worse because it’s harder to make that power turn.

    • HB/Jinteki hybrid: smart ICE placement in combination with defensive upgrades is a real pain.

    • Asset spam: While shaper has a hard time anyway, Nasir is packing less flexible econ. He never needs to be really rich because of his ID. So he has a hard time trashing important assets because he lacks a normal econ engine.

  • Sandburg: New popular deck with cheap ICE and massive strength. Hmm that might be a real problem. Even when you’re packing D4V1D you’ll have a harder time compared to other runners.

  • (Midseason Weyland/NBN)???: Yeah we all know this one, even with film critic.

While I love the PW and Order of Sol shenanigans, they are just not worth it right now. And if I somehow would get forced to play Nasir in an upcoming tournament I would probably pick DDOS Echo ( I guess with rebirth). Because I think it’s better right now to play a blank shaper ID than try to work around his pros and cons.

One random, yet constructive thought. What about Apocalypse in Nasir? Kate can play it so why can’t he? You get more triggers (so more value) out of him and you keep the game in your early game play area. Just good stuff like SMC, CC, Aesops, Lady, CyCy, Ghost Runner, …
I’m not an apocalypse fan myself. But that seems to me one of the potential interesting Nasir builds atm.

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If only Hernando Cortez read “The rez cost of that ice is increased…” instead of “as an additional cost”. That card would be absolutely sick for Nasir.

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Yeah Apoc is a possibility to explore, but Nasir Apoc is super hosed by Crisium Grid. Maybe if you pack some Councilmen? Even so, having 3 creds at all times is pretty tough for Nasir.

Also like the idea of apocolypse. He is inherently a face check ID, so there may be some criminal tools worth investigating that allow expose and so forth. Au revoir engine is a thing, though I haven’t tried it with him.

Nasir I think is meant to be ‘recurring’ credit shaper, possibly also the silver bullet guy and his ability allows you to set up very fast. Maybe that’s the route to consider too.

Spitballing now, but I do think Solidarity has been traditionally closest to what felt strongest.

I’ve been playing Cams in Nasir. It’s actually pretty good. Influence is 6x Cams, 3x Trader, 3x Clone Chip, 1x Faust.

Breakers are Pancha + Sharpshooter, Faust, Gordian, and Inti.

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What makes this better in Nasir than it is in Haley, though? What benefit is the ID giving you?

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The answer to this is almost always “set up time” However as of late we see lots of resistor, vanilla, quandary, etc, so Nasir gets hurt there.

It used to be with lots of medium to large ice, you could very quickly get set up as Nasir…sadly, his day probably came and went just in time for him to rotate.

Faust.

But seriously, you get to be a hipster and beat decks with Nasir. It’s fun.

As for the actual list: there are plenty of things I want to do to tweak it before I go out on a limb with it. Firstly, I have been playing Gordian Blade, but am probably going to swap in Study Guide as a good money-sink. Everything is basically cheap in the deck, so there’s little reason to have Workshop, unless I wanted to play Toolbox or something. Not a horrible idea, but probably slows set-up time. I’m guessing that Study Guide is probably good enough for this Tier 2 deck.

TBH getting through the ice is the easy part, its what you do at the next one that is a challenge lol

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