Fast HB

Deck Archetypes
1

I thought it was about time we had a thread to discuss the new style of “fast” HB decks. This is the style of deck exemplified by Bwent’s SSCI deck that carried him to second place, and I think it’s what Ben Ni piloted into the top 8 at the Reading regionals, although I haven’t seen the decklist, so its already proving to have some punch.

The idea of these decks is use HB’s burst econ and taxing ice to set up fast and then score out using some combination of never advance, rush and FA. It’s a bit hard to characterize the deck because it has so many scoring strategies. Sometimes you rush behind a turing and eli, sometimes you never advance and dare the runner to run your remote over and over, only to find advanced assembly line or Jackson, and sometimes you FA out a fair number of points with biotic labor. That’s why I’m just calling, boringly, fast HB. Here’s my current decklist just to give us a starting point:

Haas rush V.10

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

Agenda (11)
3x Accelerated Beta Test
2x Chronos Project
3x NAPD Contract ☆☆☆
3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (6)
3x Advanced Assembly Lines
3x Jackson Howard ●●●

Upgrade (5)
2x Ash 2X3ZB9CY
2x Crisium Grid ●●
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite

Operation (11)
3x Biotic Labor
2x Blue Level Clearance
1x Fast Track
3x Hedge Fund
2x Lateral Growth

Barrier (3)
3x Eli 1.0 ☆☆☆

Code Gate (6)
3x Turing
3x Viktor 1.0

Sentry (7)
3x Architect ☆☆☆
2x Ichi 1.0
2x Vikram 1.0

5 influence spent (max 15-9☆=6, available 1)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Fear the Masses

Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

One thing about this deck is that it is great at both setting up quickly and at rebounding from low money. I often start the game with lateral growth into advanced assembly line, ending turn 1 at 11 credits with 2 ice installed even without a hedge fund. Later in the game, blue level into lateral growth can burst you up from 2 credits to 8 while still letting you install an agenda or new piece of ice.

Your ice is all really taxing, although it tends not to actually end the run. I plan to find room for some fairchild 2.0’s as soon as it comes out, perhaps swapping out viktor. This helps with the never advance plan. If they spend their turn to check the remote, it will cost them, so they have to pick and chose, which gives you windows to jam in agendas. And if they insist on checking everything, you can sit back and biotic out the win.

The Crisium grid is a new include, but feels pretty important. Siphon recursion decks are increasingly prevalent, and can really ruin your day, plus pre-paid kate often tries to race you with high impact R&D runs like maker’s eye and indexing, so shutting those off makes this matchup much better.

Another nice thing about this deck is the opportunity to biotic out a chronos project, which can be game-winning at the right moment. The agenda suite is designed for NA/FA, with the NAPD’s just there to tax the runner, although sometimes an ash+NAPD install can open a safe scoring window to score the NAPD.

I honestly can’t figure out what the spend the last point of influence on. There must be something, but I’m drawing a blank.

That’s what I’m on, but there are lots of different ways to build the deck. Both Bwent and Ben Ni were running global food initiative, and I’ve seen others running a few jeeves and shipments to threaten the FA that way, although I haven’t been a fan of that plan.

The reason I like this archetype is that it gives you a lot of options in different matchups. You can rush against the late game combo runners, like panopticon Haley or au-revoir Andy. You can also turtle against siphon spam decks or criminal’s relying on security testing, shutting off their run economy and going for more of a FA plan. And best of all, not that affected by rumour mill. Losing Ash and Jackson is a pain, but you’re likely to score and force them to recur it, and you can still use ash and jackson to bait runs, and neither is central to the strategy.

What do you all think? What the best way forward for this archetype?

Edit: definitely check out Bwent’s description of his version of the deck at Android Netrunner: [SSCI] Jammy HB - YouTube, he does an amazing job of laying out the strategy and explaining his deck choices.

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Nice thread, we probably need one for this archetype. No meaningful contribution right now, but just thought I should point out that bewnt is Ben Ni :slight_smile:

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Faast:Bioroid is right there! :wink:

On a more serious note yeah I’m personally liking this style of deck and I think the biggest question is the ice choices, and personally I’d go for 2 GFI over NAPDs to get up to 17 ice to get better Assembly Lines and beta tests

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But then I’d need to figure out what to do with 2 influence points :slight_smile: This is definitely worth testing–the thing is, some games you really want to draw agendas, and lose if they’re too far down, which has made me reluctant to cut the number of agendas down too much. Plus, NAPD opens scoring windows on the strength of the runner not having money to beat an ash trace and steal NAPD. On the other hand, GFI takes advantage of a scoring window much better, giving you the threat of jumping up 3 points if the runner gives you an opening, and I do have the fast track–plus, another ice would be nice, especially with early ichi’s being a bit of a pain.

And I’m kicking myself for missing Faast: Bioroid!

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Don’t forget the NAing a GFI for the win with double biotic :slight_smile:

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Yeah right, next you’ll be telling me that Mediohxcore and Dan D’argenio are the same person and he just won worlds twice. :smile:

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You can change thread titles can’t you?

Bewnt used the two influence on tollbooth, and you could use some of it to convert project V’s into NAPDs as well.

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I was trying to build a similar deck today and lo and behold, this thread appears! I have a strong feeling that as soon as blood money (rumour mill) comes out, Valencia is going to be everywhere, meaning NAPD really sucks. For that reason I’d also go with GFI

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To free up some influence, any thoughts on Advanced Concept Hopper instead of the NAPDs? Gives you 3 more influence and with the one floating from the original list above, you could possibly find a way to sneak in a Caprice or (if Rumor Mill is a worry) swap some Viktors for a Tollbooth, a Lotus Field and a Targeted Marketing to knock out a Rumor Mill or get all the money against Cams.

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I don’t think it’s worth splashing a single targeted marketing for cams. Odds are they’ll get them all out before you even see it. And as much as corporate sales team is almost always better than hopper in my opinion, I’m so tempted to run hopper just to troll cams…

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Another nice splash if you free up enough influence is a singleton SanSan city grid–plays perfectly into the hybrid NA/FA plan. That said, losing the NAPD’s without lowering the number of total agenda points the runner can steal (by replacing them with GFI’s for instance) makes your R&D much more vulnerable.

If you still want to go that way, I’d think efficiency committee might be worth a try instead-- add one or two shipments from SanSan and you can supercharge you’re FA plan if you manage to score one. Even using the 3 counters to purge or dig a few cards deeper on a crucial turn can be pretty great.

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Me and Ben have been building this deck together over the last couple of months - i’m sure he would be happy to come on here and verify at some point.

Anyway, neither of our most recent lists (which are almost identical) are running NAPD. We have been on 2x GFI. This is a big deal. Firstly, it saves an inf. Secondly, it reduces density. Thirdly, it can be incredibly useful to score with ash if you spot a window. It’s really useful to essentially only need to biotic 2 agendas to win once a food is scored. They do sometimes end up being annoying in HQ, but losing them isn’t the biggest deal if it was one of the games you never intended to score them.

We have been running 1x Tar Mar. It does a lot of work. Siphon vs crims, parasite or other annoying things vs anarch and spy cam vs anyone who uses it. I am almost always happy to have it appear, and these days there isn’t really much that is interesting to spend 1 inf on.

You probably want another cyberdex and an archived mems, AM can be whatever you need - v useful for getting biotic or cyberdex back. Cyberdex is needed to stop clot but also big medium digs. Medium can be a real bugger to face with this deck.

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Is the second Vikram better than a Ravana?

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@Frost_Duty: I’d love to see your list! I’ll try the GFI’s and archived memories. Of course, then I have 2 influence I don’t know what to do with. I’m currently considering trying either sweeps week (a slight upgrade on lateral growth), inazuma (pretty good with bioroids), or archer (for the surprise blowout, plus you do have chronos project to ditch to it). Or just run a targeted marketing and still have 1 influence spare, I guess. As for cyberdex, I see a lot of anarchs on keyhole these days, maybe as a response to EOI, and shapers are dropping clot, so I’m not sure 2 is a good use of deck slots, but I could just be misreading the meta.

@moistloaf: Good question! I feel like you really need an ice early to start never-advancing, and with 16 ice, and 2 ichi’s that are pretty dead early already, its already sometimes an issue to find the ice you need early. Ravana makes that worse, but mid to late game its super strong, so it might be worth it. Worth trying both and seeing what works best–I might try to squeeze 1 extra bioroid in alongside ravana, so I’d have 10+ravana, maybe cut a turing.

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How’s something in the lines of this?

Rush HB MWL2

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future (Core Set)

Agenda (9)
3x Accelerated Beta Test (Core Set)
2x Advanced Concept Hopper (Kala Ghoda)
2x Global Food Initiative (Data and Destiny) [color=#708090]●●[/color]
2x Project Vitruvius (Cyber Exodus)

Asset (6)
3x Advanced Assembly Lines (Business First)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) [color=#FF8C00]●●●[/color]

Upgrade (3)
2x Ash 2X3ZB9CY (What Lies Ahead)
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite (Order and Chaos)

Operation (13)
1x Archived Memories (Core Set)
3x Biotic Labor (Core Set)
2x Blue Level Clearance (Fear and Loathing)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
2x Lateral Growth (Fear the Masses)
1x Restructure (Second Thoughts)
1x Targeted Marketing (The Spaces Between) [color=#FF8C00]●[/color]

Barrier (4)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof) [color=#8A2BE2]☆☆☆[/color]
1x Wall of Static (Core Set)

Code Gate (8)
2x Fairchild 1.0 (23 Seconds)
1x Lotus Field i[/i] [color=#DC143C]●[/color]
1x Magnet (Fear the Masses)
1x Ravana 1.0 (The Liberated Mind)
1x Tollbooth (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]●●[/color]
2x Turing (Breaker Bay)

Sentry (6)
3x Architect (Up and Over) [color=#8A2BE2]☆☆☆[/color]
2x Ichi 1.0 (Core Set)
1x Sherlock 2.0 (23 Seconds)
9 influence spent (max 15-6☆=9, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to 23 Seconds

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

18 ICE, lots of opportunity to fire ABTs; an ok mix between cost-efficient ETR and taxing Bioroids. Lotus Field is getting better again with Faust on MWL. Might still be too expensive for what it provides.

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Looks Solid, though I would swap Hopper to Corporate Sales Team, and maybe one Fairchild and the Wall of Static into 2 Vanilla. Gearcheck-Ice can be really good in early game to rush some points, especially in this kind of ETF.

And maybe -1 Biotic -1 Restructure +2 Team Sponsorship.
Its great in this deck, with ABT to feed it (making your ABT quite save without an Installer Jhow, especially with one in HQ or Archive) and Advanced Assembly Lines.

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I have a Jeeves list where I include Team Sponsorship. I would argue TS shines more in a list like that with more assets, where the runner has fork over the credits to trash them. Adding TS there, can overload a non-Whizzard ID - and if they don’t trash it, you get insane value from it.

Here, on the other hand, it would be the only must-trash asset in the deck, which results in it just being a slight speedbump to the opponent. Idk, I think you’d only rarely be able to fire it.

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I use it to a great success in this kind of decks. It gives a huge acceleration, installing the next agenda in the scoring remote while having a scoring window, making ABT safe even without an installed jackson and if none of the two is needed, installing an Advanced Assembly Lines for four credits and a free install from hq later.

And if your opponent goes to trash it, its all you want. Even whizzard has to make a run, go through an ice (installing it unprotected isnt too good) and pay 1 to trash it.

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Regarding the agenda suite, seeing as you say GFI over NAPD reduces density, does that mean you’re running the six 3/2s, two GFIs, and a 4/2? Part of me really wants to make that last slot 2x chronos project…

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And a general question - why magnet over enigma? Are the games likely to go long enough that the bonus magnet ability could snag a parasite? If you’re rushing isn’t making the runner lose a click to enigma just better?

1 Like