It’s fun, but I think you’ll find yourself at a disadvantage when you play against Anarchs that Medium dig with Employee Strike. If they have any defense on top of that for meat damage, I don’t think there’s a reasonable way for you to win the game. Doesn’t help that Boom is trashable, so I don’t know that it’ll help at all - you’ll want Archived Memories.
Also, in my experience, when playing this kind of deck, you don’t really care about Hard-Hitting News, since it’ll only land if your opponent doesn’t know what you’re doing, and only if you haven’t drawn Midseasons by then. I think the first things to cut are the Ravens and the HHN, and what you really need is a way to punish Medium and/or Employee Strike. I can think of a few ways for the former, but for the latter, you gotta be really lucky.
Keyhole + money is also often a problem. As could be DLR decks. Since you’ll have to rely on scoring out for the most part I think, and I doubt DLR decks will let you have enough money to trash their resources. Though the beginning could get you far enough ahead that it won’t matter.
That’s my two cents. Feel free to correct my opinions based on a vegan variant I played a few weeks back.
Your out to Strike is scoring a 2/1. Not great, I’ll admit, but if you’re in on Haarp, you’re assuming the cost of a format where every deck is playing 2+ Strikes. Like I said, it’s not ever going to be a top-tier deck. But if they don’t have Strike (and they aren’t Ed Kim), the value of Medium drops precipitously, since they’ll only get one of those agendas and the odds go up they’ll do themselves collateral damage thanks to TGTBT/QPM.
HHN’s big advantage, like in most decks, is purely punitive. It likely won’t set up a kill, but it’ll take their entire turn and a thick stack of cash. And the big upside of meat over vegan is that kill doesn’t require they go tag-me; merely that they fall far enough behind in money that you can compel them to keep the tags. So I’m not sure what you mean by “it’ll only land if your opponent doesn’t know what you’re doing.” What, like, if they stop running and let me score my Profiteerings? I think I can tolerate that.
Ravens are principally there to be scary and click-taxing; unlike most ice, they aren’t rendered useless by Profiteering BPs.
I’ve seen the vegan lists; they suffer from exactly the problems you’re speaking of. I think of the twelve games I’ve played so far, I scored out in only one of them, and that was only because my opponent Medium-digged into a TGTBT followed by a QPM, when I already had the kill in hand. Usually killing them is more than adequate. You score agendas for the benefits they give and to encourage your opponent to run so you can kill them.
The other big upside for kill-based lists these days is most everyone seems to have traded their Plascretes for Sports Hoppers, which you can force them to cash in for a single Traffic Accident. Consulting Visit means that if they float tags, you quite consistently can land TA into Scorch. So it’s actually rather consistent. Of those twelve games, I’ve lost only two of them, one to my own incompetence.
I dunno. I tend to run at least two Sports Hoppers when I do run them, and I’ve Had Worse is a card. I feel like there’s not enough kill? That’s behind a lot of my thoughts. If most of your games are won from meat damage, I can’t help but think that it’s because they got a little reckless. Which this deck wants. I will not deny that the deck is fun, and absolutely, it can be very effective, but I’ve personally moved away from lists like this because of my experience playing the vegan variant at the Toronto regional, where though I did well, and I had a lot of fun, I felt like I could lose due to my opponents being able to see through me, and having packed the right hate that is actually good against multiple styles of decks.
I feel like Plascrete might become more necessary once Boom comes along and people start testing it out, mostly because the other defenses are not enough anymore, which means you really want that Boom to fire, maybe twice, once you include it.
I dunno. I like the deck. And I’ve seen low ICE Haarp perform very consistently, kill or not, but if you’re not threatening a scoring plan, then I think it’ll start to lose effectiveness eventually, particularly if your opponent knows your list. But every game is probably pretty close. Seems like a ton of fun.
(Leela + Plascrete sounds like a nightmare though. But any deck has a number of “nightmare” matchups :P)
I think that, absent something that is released that rewards haarp’s ability, it’s just never going to be as good again. I played Convience shop at regionals and I did well with it, I lost no games. But I scored out in 2/3rds of my games. Astroscript is necessary to make it work from my perspective. You need some way to threaten fast advance and kill otherwise it dies to modest meat defense.
Yeah, runners who just money up and let you have early agendas will beat you unless you get lucky now you don’t have 3 Astros. I’ve tried to make it work again, and come to the conclusion that the only reason it ever worked is that it was first around when PPVP Kate was dominant in the meta - and she was a decent target. IHW means Anarch walk all over you, and the rise of Employee Strike is way worse for Haarp - where it often might as well read “the corp loses the game” - than for anyone else.
I had great fun with Haarp in the SSCI and it worked really well. Losses I remember were to Spy Camera Hayley (thanks @bblum ;)) and to Val with Rebirth -> Kim and Turntable in turn 1. But I was still able to play the 3rd Scorch and I used a 20 agenda suite.
If lots of people play Employee Strike then the value of Haarp drops a lot but I think it is still pretty strong.
yeah I don’t think it’s viable at big competitions atm. You should expect double employee strike in most runner lists right now, and film critics as well. And with just one astro it’s really not that threatening. Can still win but v a good pilot with an ok start and a deck that has answers it’s not good enough. Def still fine for gnks and the like. But hey, maybe national season will prove me wrong
I just had a great idea for a Haarp deck with boom
Here is the influence spend:
3 breaking news
3 shipment from kaguya
3 boom
Allowing you to kill the runner on your 2nd turn with the following line of play:
Turn 1: Breaking News, Breaking News, Shipment from Kaguya
Turn 2: Advance and score a breaking news, Boom!
Shipment can also help out with the usual “1 agenda for me, 1 for you” thing that Haarp can do.
Also, you can have Consulting Visit for free in this deck, which can tutor for Midseasons, and can also tutor for Boom to get around the trashability drawback.
Obviously I’m giving you the best case scenario when I present my ideas. They don’t even need siphon anyway, they can do normal hq runs and trash the boom before you can cast it. But the deck doesn’t get any weaker if you have to play normal netrunner for a couple of turns first.
Here’s my list. It can win by double BN, by BN behind ice, by midseasons with meat, by midseasons with psychobeale, or by scoring a few agendas early, then trading 1 for 1 till you get to 7 points.
Turn 2 Flatline (convenience shop)
Haarpsichord Studios: Entertainment Unleashed
Agenda (12)
1x 15 Minutes
1x AstroScript Pilot Program
3x Breaking News
1x Character Assassination
3x Explode-a-palooza
3x Project Beale
what about two profiteering and an all-seeing-I, and then dropping the character assassination and restructures? Tag decks like these need economy and I feel like character assassination doesn’t hit super hard.
2 restructures will give you roughly same amount of credits as trading profiteering 1 for 1. Character assassination can break you out of a scenario where the runner has both a film critic and a new angeles city hall.
