Gagarin Appreciation Thread

Netrunner General
341

You will actually lose the Takeover a lot of the time. This deck looks like it could go pretty long. If you go through half of your deck then the Takeover will be in play quite a bit of the time. GT decks always feel powerful because they get a ton of deckslots and agenda density benefits for free, but you can’t dismiss the random losses. I’d be curious to see if you could make this work without the Takeover, given that you have absolutely to way to score it.

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Haha, you have a way to score it if you have a great read on scoring windows. Otherwise, no, but I did score it once. It’s totally possible, replace takeover with Oaktown and replace the cyberwalls with GFI and lose a field

343

Seems vaguely doable with some early premiere shenanigans… still don’t like the include though. Especially true with all the 1 pointers; at least in a 6 agenda build they still have to find one of only 5 other agendas. 2x high risk seems like a way better slot imo

344

Once you cut those 3/1s it’s going to be hard to get to 7 points just off of the shell game. A runner who ignores most naked remotes and camps a scoring server will be trouble.

Sorry if I’m coming off as a big aggro about this, but I really think horizontal shell game is a trap for a lot of people learning the game. They always look fun, but are totally un-instructive to play.

345

sorry, should have been more clear; not suggesting cutting the 3/1s. I was suggesting that their presence makes GT even more likely to cough up an auto-loss, hence cut GT. (and I agree with you, the shell game route is a tough/impossible row to hoe in weyland)

edit @CJFM summed it up perfectly:

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346

10 agendas AND one’s a Gov’t Takeover? Eww.

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347

That list looks a LOT like my vegan list, which has been doing really well for me lately. I agree, Launch is much better than I thought it would be, and is what I used to replace my Investors as well. I’ve been running 2 Ash, but have been really, really tempted to go to 3. Vegan has given me more card slots and influence, so I’m on 2x Team Sponsorship and 2x Interns (as well as 2x The Future Is Now), so only having 2 Ash has been okay, but I think about the change a lot. Eventually I’ll have an article up talking about the deck, but the holiday season and a couple other complications has delayed the publishing of it, but hopefully it’ll be up in a couple days.

I was toying around with a 6-agenda kill deck from Gagarin for funsies, but I might like yours more. Here’s the one I was working on:

The Ten Year Plan

Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon (Order and Chaos)

Agenda (6)

Asset (14)

Upgrade (4)

Operation (13)

Barrier (4)

Code Gate (4)

Sentry (4)

348

IMO Gagarin can’t consistently beat Whizzard, whether it is one remote or seven. I say this as someone who has played a lot of Gagarin and an awful lot of Whizzard. You set Atman to 6 and you camp their remote til their hand is flooded. It doesn’t matter if you have to pay 8c through their remote every turn. You have the money to do it. Scorch isn’t an out because you’re an Anarch with Plascrete. These are just my opinions, but I personally find it very difficult to lose to any Gagarin builds. I don’t intend to rain on everyone’s parades; I like that we are still experimenting with this ID. Have my experiences on both sides of the Gagarin versus Anarch match-up been outliers?

tl;dr I remain unconvinced by Gagarin largely because of Whizzard and Valencia being well-represented.

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349

Whizz and Desperado Val are hard matchups, for sure. I actually fear Desperado Val a good bit more, because 2 free credits a run are usually better than 3 credits (just for trashing) a turn. I need to spend a LOT more of my ICE protecting assets than I usually do, which leads to slightly weaker centrals. If I can help it at all, I prefer to not ICE HQ until I absolutely have to, but that only really works against decks that I’ve played against. Against rando Anarch decks, Account Siphon is too real a threat to be lackadaisical with HQ.

What can help against these decks is to get a Jackson behind some ICE and use him to build your board state faster than they can trash it, throwing smallish ICE over assets to make them spend real money. Things like Launch Campaigns that I’d usually sometimes throw out naked or in a smaller disposable asset server almost always get thrown in the scoring server instead, because I usually need the money more, and since it’s not draining real credits for them to trash it, it doesn’t work as econ denial either.

Against almost all Anarchs, Corp Town is a godsend, and rezzing one will grind their game to a halt until they can go deal with it. Resources make up a majority of most Anarchs econ in terms of both credits and cards, so it really hoses them if you can get it out and protected. Even Whizzard actually needs real money to get into servers. It’s harder against Val, naturally, since Blackmail can get her into the Corp Town server to get rid of it, so Ash is really nice to be able to throw on it as well.

Overall, I had to play against a LOT of Whizz and Val to get somewhat comfortable with the matchups, and even then, sometimes it’s just crazy hard. Drawing cards in the right order matters a LOT more, as does the opening hand. And god help you if it’s some stupid Whizzard deck with Desperado, Account Siphon, and Scrubber. This is an actual deck I played against, and it’s not even like they did it on purpose. It was like a literal hell. But that’s a huge outlier; I feel like most Whizz and Val decks are closer matches than I did the first several games I’ve played against them.

That being said, if they’re everywhere in the meta, it might be a good idea to switch to the decks that do better against them. At least around PDX, there aren’t a whole lot of people playing Whizz and Val. @JohnnyCreations was playing Whizz since before he was cool, and @nobody is OG Val, but aside from them most still like Kate and her Shaper bullshit, which I feel generally fine with.

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I agree they are terrible matchups, but I recently bested a Whizz with Gagarin, with many of my assets out in the open. You just have to somehow tax the clicks and forcebreakers it. Val makes me salty everytime I see her across from Gagarin, especially in a deck with no upgrades or EBC. At least Gagarin negates the bad publicity, so if you think of it that way, it’s not a total loss.

351

this just makes it where she still gets her ability on centrals and you’re now playing a blank ID. I consider it pretty bad for Gagarin.

352

[quote=“Four_Leaf, post:351, topic:4134”]
now playing a blank ID
[/quote]I agree with a sentiment, but your ID isn’t completely blank - the gagarin tax is still per card, meaning upgrades cost an extra credit to access still.

Personally, I’ve been running 1x Lizzie in vegan team sponsorship gagarin (mostly for the location trash, which is hyper crippling to a few strong decks). So nice to score a turn 2 TFIN and blank valencia turn 3… :smiley:

353

Lizzie’s good. Turning off Blackmail is a huge deal, and sometimes you can blow up a Wyldside. Despo Val is such a terrible matchup. It’s close to DLR Val in how terrible it is.

Gagarin’s influence should probably be tied up in Jackson, Food x2, Team Sponsorship, and Turtlebacks. So that leaves only a few options from then on out: 1) add Ash in some quantity and make the remotes more stable 2) add Tollbooth and make the centrals more stable, 3) add SEA Source in some quantity and make both centrals and remotes weaker.

All three of these options kinda suck.

354

Any Drip-Asset deck needs a way to leverage a huge money pile should the runner ignore your trashables. The only good way weyland has to do that is with SEA Source.

355

I’m actually not a huge fan of Turtlebacks, I’ve found. The 2 rez cost means that it takes 2 installs for it to even break even with itself, and seeing one in the later game is usually bad, since there most likely isn’t going to be enough remotes left to install in the game for it to be worth the click to install and the 2 to rez. I’d prefer to have Launch Campaign in that econ slot, and use the influence for something better.

Ash is super duper good, as it gives a way to leverage the drip, as @TheBigBoy mentions. It’s also double good, since it costs 4 to trash from a remote, and you only need to trace them to the point to where they can’t afford the Gagarin access any more. I love the 2 that I run, and (as stated above) am really thinking about a 3rd.

Total agreement on the Sponsorship, Food, and Jackson, though. Sponsorship is a beast, Jackson is Jackson, and Food is basically the Jackson Howard of agendas for decks that want a 3-pointer.

I’ll really have to consider that. I run Atlas and The Future Is Now, so finding it shouldn’t be too hard, hopefully. The matchups where I want to see it, I really want to see it. I’m going to have to dig for space to see if I can get one in. Corp Town serves a slightly similar role in a lot of situations, but killing Val’s Bad Pub might be worth the inclusion (plus, I don’t have to sac an agenda for Lizzy).

Ugh, finding room though. =(

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I’m fine taking this out of my gagarin too, though it has been helpful. You always have fodder for it, and are never really sad to see it. Though, you are probably right about launch campaign.

357

Launch Campaign is real good. Being able to play it naked occasionally with the ID ability really ratchets up the utility.

358

the eternal struggle :smiley:

I also agree with your assessment on turtlebacks. Especially against runners with the econ to contest the proliferation of naked assets (whizzard, some kates, most Vals), this card becomes dead if you have to switch over to the “2-3 single ice trashing-tax servers” game plan.

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359

Might this be a case where expanding to 54 cards is a reasonable option? Add in Oaktown, Lizzy, maybe another piece of ice and a couple more assets. With TFIN and Atlas, you can search your deck for the key cards you need. It’s a thought, anyway.

360

I’m honestly not sure it’s ever worth going to 54, simply because this also lowers the chances of seeing things like Atlas and the like while making tutoring for things more necessary. It’s probably better to just cut a card instead (Launch? Interns? Probably Interns?).

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