HB:EtF variants in the SanSan Cycle

I searched for an appropriate topic to post this, but didn’t find one - apologies if a new topic isn’t warranted.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen a number of Store Championship and Regional winners piloting HB:EtF. But even within those decks, there’s a fair bit of variety in underlying strategy, and supporting influence / ICE spread. It feels like good old core HB has maybe the widest range of strategy options (FA, Rush, Glacier, mixed/midrange), and subsequently the most room for deckbuilding choices (and in my case, the indecision that results).

With the new stuff available to the corp in this cycle (Brain Taping Warehouse, NEXT Gold, Turing, Breaker Bay Grid to name a few), along with the new threats presented by the runner side (Clot, Hacktivist Meeting and Net Ready Eyes + Yog.0 spring to mind), does finding success with HB:EtF come down to predicting your meta and choosing a strategic path wisely? On a related note, is anyone prioritising any particular flavour of EtF in their testing gauntlets? Will NRE+Yog.0 demand particular ICE choices?

I’ve been playing some FA Archer ETF with Crisium Grids and Cyberdex Suites. It’s been doing well, you can effectively get around Clot a fair amount of time. An added bonus of having them waste Clone Chips on bringing out Clots (which you can bluff to begin with) is that you can make it so the runner is unprepared to hit an Archer (for example, no Clone Chip available to nab a Sharpshooter or Atman or David).

Turing has been fantastic, better than I expected. I’m running the Next ice (only 1 Next Gold) and NRE Yogsucker is probably going to be a headache. Might find some inf to spare for a Power Shutdown or two.

This is still my shell. I have some changes I made but the concept is the same. - Main HB - as of Valley · NetrunnerDB

Handles everything well imo. I think HB is best when it can play fast and be flexible. Thats my goal in my style of HB. Bury you in speed and economy exchanges.

EDIT:

As far as NRE-Yog goes, I just run a little less Code Gates that aren’t 5 strength. My current Code Gate suite is 2x Turing, 2x Viper, 2x IQ… and I’m just running a little more Barrier heavy. Bonus points that its helpful vs Stealth also. If you run NEXT, don’t run any Code Gates that won’t be 5 Strength most the time imo. If you don’t run NEXT, I wouldn’t have more than 3 that are 4 Strength or below, unless you are on a fierce gear check rush style deck (which is better out of Next Design probably)

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Don’t you want to be using Breaker Bay Grids for free Eves now? Seems too good to pass up in any current Etf

Breaker bay, awakening centers for the win. 3 cost Janus. Actually, 0 cost heimdalls are where it’s at

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Seems a bit janky, not sure how much that lands. As opposed to Eves that don’t get trashed and then rezzed for free the following turn.

Eve is invited to the bioroid awakening party, she’s the hot one. Also, it’s less about it landing, it’s more about having ridiculous tempo swings if they do run it, and it makes your scoring remote so much more secure with a caprice and ash gaining free rezzes from breaker bay. It’s an awesome combo, and I approve this message.

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I feel like Awakening Center is win more. Caprice & Ash is really secure.

I won Warsaw regionals with this decklist:

In the SC season I had huge problems against @Matuszczak’s HB, so I decided that “if you can’t beat someone - join them” and it was a good call. I took a look at his and @Selverin’s decks and tinkered them a little bit.
I played RP for nearly a year and I feel that EtF is better (at least in my hands). With Breaker Bay Grid it’s economic powerhouse, easily getting from 0 to being rich. I didn’t know what to expect at the regionals so I just decided to counter them all - Blacklist, Crisium Grid, Cyberdex and of course Caprice - she has every runner’s name on her list. But the best card was Turing, not only on a remote, but also on HQ.
Ash also did a great job, in last game of swiss against @hsiale at 4-5 points, at run on R&D for 4 cards he was disappointed to see him and not Caprice - against Caprice he at least had 33% chance, Ash gave him none.

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I think the moral here is that regardless of your overall strategic approach, 1 free credit per turn is a pretty solid advantage. It helps, of course, that HBs agenda suite and indigenous ice/upgrades/assets allow for a variety of approaches from FA to Glacier, but the economy of EtF is just brutal.

HB is also well positioned to play through many of the new threats you mention. Yog/NRE hits Viper pretty hard (and eases the datasucker tax on Ichi/Viktor 2/Turing), but most of HBs ice is still severely taxing relative to its rez cost. Likewise, HBFA is better suited than NEH to play through Clot, I think, since a taxing scoring remote means that checking every install --even just behind Eli/Turing-- gets cost prohibitive in a hurry and makes floating a Cyberdex on the table quite a bit easier. Hacktivist certainly does some work against HB’s sex bots and the Caprice/Ash/Breaker Bay setup, but every corp is running its share of assets/upgrades these days, so it’s not like they’re alone in having this problem (and Archived Mem makes you a little more resilient to the random discards).

Lab Dogs time.

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I took HB:EtF glacier with Melange (which is the real star here) to the UK Nationals. It went 6-1 in Swiss (my Noise went 5-2, losing to two RP decks). I went straight out in the Swiss, but I misplayed my corp game. I think it’s strong. Ash is frightening when the corp is able to take 7 per turn, and many runners now are unable to challenge it early.

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With parasite and yog becoming heavier in the meta, I believe the NEXT suite’s time has passed. It’s unfortunate because the thing I loved about HB was being able to rush or glacier depending on the matchup. I don’t think HB is well suited to one extreme or the other due to clot and crummy 5/3 agendas. Any suggestions on working “hybrid” ice compositions that avoid the NEXT suite?

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Viper IQ and Turing are all good in faction Code Gates.

Eli and Heimdall, along with neutral Barriers.

Architect and Ichi 1. And Rototurret feels kinda nice sometime recently.

Thats a reasonable starting ice core, with the biggest issue being notable weakness to Atman 4.

Then spice it up, and switch things you don’t like spending influence.

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I like putting in wall of statics in a non-next suite. No credit tax for lady, but credits not really what you’re taxing with lady anyway. Outside of lady it’s a legitimate, 2 credits for 3 cost on corroder, not atman-4’able and can hold up to parasite without suckers for a turn or 2.

I like it as well. 3 Cred is also really easy to swallow for a tax. When you get to the 4 or 5 range, its more of a decision.

Is there a viable Efficiency Committee build waiting to happen? I scored EC in a few games playing the Fast Archer deck and it was cruise control after that. Being able to use Shipment from SanSan to score from hand with 0 credits was really strong. Obviously getting the 1st one scored is the challenge but with all of the rush/glacier builds it seems doable. Maybe keeping Biotic but using the inf/slots on Caprice/ash instead of SanSan City? Thoughts?

I score Eff Com in decks with Ash/Other upgrades all the time. Very reasonable to score them, the fear of NAPD makes scoring it in like a 2 ice remote with an upgrade reasonable (especially vs anything but Calimsha Kate). Or flat install, then Biotic > 4x Adv.

If you are gonna follow up with a FA from hand with SFSS, no real issue burning the Biotic to score it non-advanced on the board.

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This won the Belgian national. It’s a mix between @SimonMoon’s Philly regional deck and the HB list @Calimsha gave me when I started. The good part is that it seems to have at least an even match against Kate!

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future (Core Set)

Agenda (11)
3x Accelerated Beta Test (Core Set)
2x Chronos Project (First Contact)
3x NAPD Contract (Double Time)
3x Project Vitruvius (Cyber Exodus)

Asset (10)
3x Adonis Campaign (Core Set)
3x Daily Business Show (All That Remains) [color=#FF8C00]•••[/color]
2x Eve Campaign (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) [color=#FF8C00]••[/color]

Upgrade (5)
2x Ash 2X3ZB9CY (What Lies Ahead)
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite (Order and Chaos)
2x SanSan City Grid (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]••••• •[/color]

Operation (6)
1x Archived Memories (Core Set)
2x Biotic Labor (Core Set)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)

Barrier (5)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof)
2x Wall of Static (Core Set)

Code Gate (6)
2x Enigma (Core Set)
1x IQ (First Contact)
2x Tollbooth (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]••••[/color]
1x Viper (Cyber Exodus)

Sentry (6)
3x Architect (Up and Over)
2x Ichi 1.0 (Core Set)
1x Sherlock 1.0 (Trace Amount)
15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

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Here is a FA variant with EC and SfSS that I used to win a 48 person Store Champ. It was early in the cycle when everyone was playing anarch. Kate wasn’t really present at the time either nor was clot. Been thinking about updating the ice to handle the threats.

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Good to see someone else rocking it!

I was debating changing wraparound/lotus field into 2nd booth/3rd Wall of Static. What are your thoughts on how that performed?

Also, did you run into any stealth andy on the day? I find that match up absolutely terrible, and you’re running more Sentry’s than I was.

Good to see someone else on team 2 Jackson/3 DBS.

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