Gagarin Appreciation Thread

Netrunner General
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This is why I love Scorch in Gagarin. Faust is lovely for any corp trying to kill the runner. Please, use up your cards. If you are messing with Faust you already have a pact going with Death.

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142

Anarch Faust, especially noise, is for sure a brutal matchup, but as others have said it’s tough for just about everyone. One thing I’ve had pretty good luck with is pushing Town out as hard as I can, attacking Aesops and pancakes aggressively to keep them sputtering and to throw off thier pace.

It does also seem a decent argument for the scorch package though…

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In my experience, it’s not hard for Noise to Imp or selectively mill the combo pieces, or deny your economy and be rich. I don’t think Scorch helps here.

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144

I think I already posted this, but I have more games under my belt so I’ll post it again. Eh I’ll spare the full list and just slap the link:

http://netrunner.meteor.com/decks/FAWCwKhmwuWaBJZKE/

Been dedicating all my Corp games on OCTGN to this build for about two weeks, and brought it to the LGS Monday and Tuesday night. It continues to perform admirably. I would like to find room for another Ash and another Interns, but it’s tough. I am so far very happy with the ICE suite. Quandary and Tour Guide are great for defending Assets. I rarely find myself leaving Assets naked for too long. Tour Guide is an all-star at eating Faerie/Shiv. MVP so far is Spiderweb, taxing Faust, Lady tokens, and Corroder for 3. Granted, both fold to Parasite, but that’s a pill you just have to swallow IMO. I have still been able to beat Faust Noise lists and even a few Whizzards. The list has a great Criminal match-up unless you get hit by multiple Siphons early. I need to test against PP Kate; I anticipate it being rough, but that’s mostly because I just assume that deck will roll over anything I build.

All in all, I have not missed the kill package except maybe in 2 games. The only card I am considering cutting right now for my next iteration is the single The Root, although it has come in handy some games. If I cut that I would probably cut the second BBG, too. Chimera is game-saving sometimes and tossed to Archives others; it’s staying for now.

I haven’t tried Corporate Town yet. Theoretically I am struggling to see how others are finding success with it. With my build (very different from others posted so far I think), it’s often a grind to get to 7 points; even more so when you need to get to 8 after an Archer, which is often necessary on the bluffing/scoring remote. Corporate Town seems like it would make it that much harder to score out. Moreover, it requires protection, and against decks where it is going to do damage, it doesn’t seem like a single ICE would be enough, as they would surely prioritize trashing it. Sure, 5(+1) is significant, but it’s more palatable than never having a Kati Jones.

I’ve gotten the impression that many others playing Gagarin are installing most Assets naked. I’m not sure how they’re getting away with this. Anarchs and Sec Testing Criminals will trash everything without opening scoring windows. In any case, I’ve been having a lot of fun with this deck, and am going to continue playing Gagarin for the foreseeable future.

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145

I think w/r/t corporate town, your build is not the one it’s going to shine in. In a build with TFIN (and atlas ofc) to tutor your one copy at a crucial moment and Sponsorship to continually spam it back out to the field, it becomes an excellent include, both for its effect and for the threat of its effect generating a hefty tax.

I like the look of your list. Surprised you haven’t been liking the root, it seems very powerful - if you can stick it behind one of those cheap taxing ICE that just get parasited when they’re on centrals, you have a good chance of it sticking around for a bit, I bet. If you decide to drop it (and the breaker bays with it) what about expo grid? stacked on top of a pad campaign it makes a sundew with 9 trash cost :smiley:

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I’ve been finding The Root better than Pad Campaign, frankly. You can’t afford to spam out Pad Campaigns anyway, as others have pointed out - they just get trashed/Bank Jobbed/Sec Tested. So you need to defend them. So you may as well play The Root instead.

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@voltorocks It’s not that I haven’t been liking the Root; it’s just that I’m not sure a singleton is worthwhile. When I do find it, it generally gets me one surprise ICE rez and gets trashed with a vengeance within 2 turns. People are more likely to leave PADs behind ICE alone than Root behind ICE, I’ve found.

I agree you can’t leave them naked; I’ve been defending my assets as soon as possible. The Root’s initial rez of 6 is steep, though; without a BBG it can’t be too much to stomach in my build.

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148

Just popping in here, thinking at work. Gagarin seems the best candidate for glacier in the current meta- imping your assets still costs a real credit, and you have access to the sleeper silver bullet for Faust Noise: Housekeeping. I had housekeeping played against my noise in Chicago at Chilo, and I had pretty much forgotten it was even a card, but it wrecked me. Wyldside was essentially only drawing 1 card a turn in order for me to keep Aesop’s fueled, and even with an 8-counter Trope in play I did not have enough cards left to power Faust.

I think a Gagarin glacier deck running housekeeping is looking good right now considering you can now run TFIN. Thoughts?

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149

You marvelous bastard.

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I recently put something together for Gagarin, not sure if it’s going to work, but after looking at Early Premiere, I just had to try using it:

I put Paywall Implementation in to be an annoying prick, and I’m afraid I won’t get Housekeeping quickly enough for it to be a problem. Ice has been the biggest problem because of the 3 influence cost of EPs. I want to get rid of Hive and Negotiator but I’m not sure what I’d replace them with.

Earlier versions of the deck I made before publishing had Breaker Bay Grids for my Roots, but I got rid of them for more ice.

Thoughts?

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My initial impression is that you’ll almost never have enough money to double punitive the runner, especially without High-Risk Investments being in the list, but maybe I’m wrong about that. I’d also almost want to go to 2x Paywall and 2x Subliminal, just because I think if you’re going to be on Subliminal, it’s worth seeing earlier. The ice suite looks maybe a little heavy for the econ. If you’re worried about Hive and Negotiator, they could easily just be another Ice Wall, Spiderweb, and Caduceus. I’m also a fan of Changeling against Shaper, since it can be a Str 4 sentry, which gear-checks for both Mimic as well as a Datasucker.

As for the Early Premiere gameplan, I don’t think it works very well with 5/3s unless you have 2 of them out, which is almost never guaranteed, especially with a 2 trash cost (3 in Gagarin). I think it would work better in a never-advance gameplan with 4/2 agendas, but even that relies on the runner not checking servers. Either way, if the runner is actually checking servers, you’re left with a super awkward turn of an agenda in a server without enough counters to score it when your turn rolls around. In the best case scenario it’s amazing, but the worst case (and ultimately the more likely scenario as well) it’s probably better for the runner than it is for you, since it just makes agendas stick around for longer.

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You know, I’ve been running Paywall in my Gagarin just because I don’t think I’ve ever built a Gagarin without Paywall, but I love the idea of Housekeeping.

I’ve been playing the following with some success (mostly scorch, sometimes points); I would not be averse to switching the PAD/Investors setup to The Root/BBG, I think. Public Supports are there mostly to allow me to rez an Archer or Corporate Town without needing to take a bad pub from Hostile; they’re also good for occupying the scoring remote while I find something else to score.

a better tomorrow

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

Agenda (10)

Asset (13)

Upgrade (3)

Operation (8)

Barrier (8)

Code Gate (3)

Sentry (4)

15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Data and Destiny

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

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The Punitives are a plan B in case I get screwed by lucky accesses or something, but you make a good point regarding my econ vs. a runner’s. I might need to remove them to focus on econ.

The Ice suggestions are good, and I think I’m going to go with -2 Hive, -1 Negotiator, +1 Ice Wall, +1 Caduceus and +1 Changling.

My hopes are to use Paywall to make it less appealing to go after unknown remotes, but I’m not sure how effective that will be in practice, since I’m still just building it. I don’t expect EP to stay out the entire game, but I think it should allow me to sneak out an important Agenda I can’t risk just putting in a scoring server. Utopia comes to mind, or Hades if I’m playing against a mill deck.

Of course, I could just forgo the EPs and use something more reliable like Ash or Caprice, but I wanna be cute and cheeky, which is unfortunately a common problem with my deckbuilding.

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I’ll let others try it; personally I am loathe to try TFIN and/or Housekeeping. I don’t think glacier can spare slots for kill threat and I don’t see much value in TFIN outside of that. I’d rather use Fast Track/Atlas to find more agendas, and Chronos is the only 3/1 I would play in Gagarin right now. Housekeeping is good versus Noise and Kate but it’s not cheap and I think you want to find it early, meaning you need to play 3. Understandably I don’t think 3 Housekeeping is anything remotely reasonable. I think I’m more likely to experiment with Housekeeping in Sol honestly, but these are just the opinions of a curmudgeon.

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155

Looking at your scoring mechanisms I’d think you’d score out faster than me with 3x Oaktown and 3x Public Support. How slow is the slog and how many cards are left on average? I end up with 10-25 left. Big range, I know, but sometimes Batty and Ichi can win on their own.

Have you ever played against Corporate Town? My deck flies it out so quickly that it might as well have an average table hit on turn 4-6. The prospect of playing a breaker, and threatening that your ProCo or Liberated or Wyldside will vanish for my 1 pointer/Support means that not only do you lose your card you paid for, but now you have to pay 6 + ICE + Breaker + possibly Ash or have a dead 1/4th of a deck. It gets rid of Sec Testing too. If you don’t play resources, I tutor for the Crisium. Easy enough.

The people who aggressively check remotes get taxed to hell just to access TS, Expos, and Supports that cost me nothing, and got me a dollar. Kate literally can’t compete with the assets and if she digs R&D, I can quickly get a Recurring Magic Crisium that keeps flying back onto R&D every time I score.

In summary, Team Sponsorship and Corporate Town mean that Ash always wins without vamping myself, and trashing assets is futile and a big scoring window*. Plus, I can recur the silver bullets over, and over. So far, I’m 6-1 against PPVP Kate. 2-2 against Noise. Exciting matches at all times and half of the Kate wins were soul crushing blowouts (recurring Batty/Crisium).

I’m just describing my win condition, but our decks are a bit different. If I would say one thing that’s not just if-then-else talk, I would say Team Sponsorship is strictly, objectively better than Interns in Gagarin, strong opinion. Let me know what you think, I think Crick could go in their place.

@ItJustGotRielle That’s a sick way to play 1x Housekeeping, I’ll try it one day in place of Corporate Town. I don’t have a good feeling about it and think Housekeeping is better fitted in a 6-agenda Weyland, but we’ll see. It certainly is nasty against Noise and a lot safer than Corp Town.

*Paywall included.

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I’ll have to play your version some time. It blows my mind that your Corporate Town is online by turn 4 to 6. That means that you’re actually scoring a Public Support before then. I find it nearly impossible to score them that soon. Are you committing 2 ICE to them? I always commit a single ICE to PS, but even then, if I’m rezzing one early it’s just to pressure the runner; I rarely ever score them until mid game and onwards. Rezzing multiple Corporate Towns a game seems unsustainable. Team Sponsorship may be worth exploring, but they don’t trigger off PS and it’s just another Asset to defend. Personally I haven’t had a ProCo installed against me in a single game in like 8 months, that’s online and off-line.

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157

TFIN can be my 1 point as well. Driving, brb

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158

Looking back at your list, I think our differences are largely ideological/play-style related. I will never play Fire Wall in any deck. I consider it one of the worst pieces of ICE in the faction. Same goes for Hollywood Renovation: unpalatable. I do think it’s cool that Gagarin is slowly getting enough support to be played a number of ways, and that it could soon be winning some events. Mostly, I’m happy to hear others dedicating real time to Weyland right now. <3

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I also think the Hollywood slot is better suited to Utopia Fragment.

Gotta day corporate town is brutal and fire wall is generally worth it. No complaints on my end.

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Shout out to @TheBigBoy for the Hunter call out. It’s awesome.

It kept Security Testing off of Archives and ate a Parasite for a whole 3 turns.