Feeling Blue About Blue Decks

Netrunner General
441

Medium is better than RDI when it’s affordable to run R&D over and over again. Temujin helped medium a lot, as did ice destruction encouraging corps not to run big ice.

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442

I think that hunter seeker and the upcoming obataku protocol agenda pretty much necessitates film critic as a key runner card over this cycle.

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443

I think Critic definitely will become bigger, however I think some of the hype over Obokata and Hunter Seeker is overblown, especially the stuff about Hunter Seeker wrecking Criminal. Yes it’s really strong, but currently most Weyland decks just roll over and die when opposite a good Andy. You can’t win the money war, and they lock down the remote. I’d be suprised if Hunter Seeker even brought parity, although obviously it looks like there are some good cards with it.

Obokata seems pretty well designed to me; the corp is encouraged to score it as well as back it up with a kill threat, and unlike food and TFP it will only rarely help you if the runner is on 4 pts. Still REALLY strong, but I doubt it will be an auto-include, or do as good a job as Fetal for asset decks. Sweet with Punitive though.

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444

It IS worth pointing out that Hunter Seeker is only 2 influence, so non-Weyland glacier decks will splash it to kill Sifr, I think.

445

Looking at the new toys that Jinteki are getting, would it be prudent to slot in a Feedback Filter as well?

446

I hope Aaron and Temujin don’t end up on the MWL. It would be sad to have Criminal get penalized when the faction has just gotten the tools to bring it back into contention. Raise the influence cost of the cards, but don’t make it so that their home faction gets penalized for using a card that is too easy to splash in other factions.

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447

I think Temujin will go onto MWL and Desperado will come off, for a net neutral for crims.

I think crims were back on the map as soon as Temujin was released, and wouldn’t mind seeing Aaron get hit tbh. He’s so efficient at getting rid of tags, and unlike some tech cards, isn’t super narrow either - it’s just a bit too obvious of an include for my liking.

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448

Temujin/Aaron on, Desperado off. Gordion --> Abagnale.

Criminal will still come out way ahead with those changes as Temujin/aaron are being splashed in all factions. Desperado off would bring back some cool archetypes like Desperado Val and Stealth run based shaper.

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449

Yeah, Criminal already had a favorable winrate even before Aaron was released, it’s gotten ridiculous since then. Crim will be fine most of the time with Aaron on the MWL because they have hostage in house, but it does mean that corps that succeed at getting rid of Aaron will generally have gotten rid of it for good. Whereas now if a corp manages to trash it, it’s still probably coming back because everyone plays 2-3 copies.

450

I’ve been messing around with a Los deck this last week, and so far it’s been doing fairly well. Getting paid for people rezzing ICE feels pretty sick, and it makes me think that maybe I should play Faerie so I can facecheck with a little more impunity vs Jinteki, but deck slots are already kinda fullish at the embarrassing 46 cards. Here’s the list; I’ll discuss it more afterwords.

Shut it Down, Los

Los: Data Hijacker (Station One)

Event (20)

Hardware (3)

Resource (14)

Icebreaker (5)

Program (4)

12 influence spent (max 15-3★=12, available 0)
46 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Station One

I might be going too deep with 3x Crescentus and 2x Emergency Shutdown, but they’re both very useful. Shutdown is good for letting them have their sense of security, and then shutting down their key ICE after a siphon or something. Crecentus is great because it’s an active threat, making the corp question whether they really want to spend 5c on that Ichi 1.0 only to pay you 2 credits, knowing that you’ll just shut it down again.

I went for Medium + Turning Wheel over double RDIs, because being able to shut down key R&D ICE means I have the chance to make those key, multiple runs per turn that Medium likes. Originally I had all 3 Dirty Laundries, but I figured with all the shutting down I can do, I should at least try out a High-Stakes Job, since I can almost always control what happens with it. So far it’s been great, and is hilarious with a Crecentus out, since they’re very tempted to not even bother re-rezzing the unrezzed ICE.

It’s a fun deck, but probably not perfect (46 cards lol). Thoughts?

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451

Here’s how I think of Aaron: if he had been a 2-cost resource that said “when an agenda is scored or stolen, put two power counters on Aaron. 1 power counter: draw 1 card. 2 power counters: remove 1 tag and draw 1 card.” he would still would still see play. It would mean Siphons wouldn’t be “free,” or at least not unless the corp was ahead of you by two agendas. I think, even then, Aaron could use a Masanoriesque downside such as “trash Aaron if…”

So yeah, he’s way way too strong and doesn’t really require a lot of good play. Ban, MWL, or do whatever, I think it’s a shame criminal gets shafted again.

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452

Crim was fine before Aaron, we will be fine without him :wink:

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453

What is your metric for saying Criminal was fine before AM?

How many Crim made the cut at worlds?

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454

Fair point.

What I think I’m saying is that the worlds meta is due to other problems in the game. I think Criminals are fine at tier 1, but there are ‘tier 0’ decks that are blatantly ridiculous.

In my mind Aaron is a tier 0 solution to a tier 0 problem. But designing this way does not make a good game.

You’re right though, but I’m holding to my statement that Criminal is fine, but the game is not. I admit that this is a question of perspective however. Hopefully new MWL will fix the tier 0 problems and let the real game back out.

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455

Well, there were a few more packs between World’s and Aaron Marron that helped criminal.

Granted we don’t have big tournament data, but as soon as Citadel was released there were a variety of criminal decks making a splash on the competitive scene.

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456

What do you think of En Passant in a de-rez heavy deck? Ultimately one of the greatest things against a derez deck is a cheap ICE that’s annoying/expensive to go through (Pop-up, Spiderweb, Eli) so perhaps a way to permanently deal with a piece of ICE is a good answer?

(Note that you can run HQ, Shutdown an HQ ICE, and then En Passant that ICE. En Passant is worded very interestingly.)

457

It seems pretty strong, my only issue is the influence. I could fit 1 in if I go to Corroder and Zu.13, but I feel like Emp Strike is too strong to drop atm. Who knows, it might be worth it, somehow? What I really wanted to do was use spare influence on Clone Chips, but it turns out Crim has very, very little influence! Who knew?

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458

Yeah, Power Tap Andy was probably the best runner deck before Sifr and Aaron came out.

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459

Pacer and I were pretty damn close (20/21st). I missed out due to time being called the turn before i would have won a game… since then citadel at first, and specifically aaron have been huge power boosts particularly against the strongest corp deck. I expect TD will push them even further ahead (Abagnale + unknown cards) and then they in theory should come out ahead post MWL as well (although the corp meta may shift to specifically target crim with rigshooter/glacier which is another thing).

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460

The other day, I thought I had built a pretty good blue deck and felt good about myself. Then I realized that all I had done was shove a bunch of power cards into my deck: Temujin, Aaron, Account Siphon.

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