Unless you have reason to believe otherwise (Jackson flush, Daily Business Show, repeated empty accesses), you should operate under the assumption that HQ is more agenda-dense than R&D. Especially if the corp just installed several ICE or played several Operations.
Against Glacier, shit like Caprice and Ash also tends to pool in there for a while. Sniping Caprice can be very, very helpful against RP.
âHQ lockâ is not a thing. I remember a particular game that I won as Blue Sun with only an Ice Wall on HQ (I was testing Sealed Vault). After the game, the runner complained that he had gotten 20-30 accesses on HQ and not seen any agendas! What are the odds?! Well, considering that all agendas I drew were immediately dumped into my scoring remote, pretty damn good.
I think this is actually one of the coolest parts of the game design, that R&D and HQ have fundamentally different natures. R&D is something you just hammer as frequently as possible; HQ is something you fatten, and then slaughter (Legwork/Wanton) at just the right moment (before they draw a Jackson). In a way, it makes sense that special run events like Account Siphon are there, too; HQ is a server you access only once in a while, but when you do, you want to make it count.
Unless youâre Gabe, I guess.
By default, cards in R&D will become cards in HQ if left untouched, thus itâs more valuable to attack RND then it is HQ. That doesnât mean you can leave HQ untouched however.
This however, hints at burst HQ pressure rather than a real lock, as HQ will not be juicy the entire game, where RND will almost always have agendaâs somewhere.
I try to include HQI over legwork in some decks, as on paper itâs pretty good, but the install cost usually kills it for me
Kinda, but R&D lock is easy to import, whereas hq pressure that canât be played around usually involves siphon, vamp, or shutdowns which are extremely influence heavy or require an economy most shapers donât have. As someone who plays mostly different nbn builds, seeing a shaper tends to be a sigh of relief as I only need to throw cheap ice on HQ until I flood, and archives sometimes doesnât matter at all. That luxury doesnât come up against criminal and anarch. Octgn data reflects this, as it seems to be Criminal â gap â Anarch/Shaper. Anarchs are even slightly ahead in win percentage, and theyâre known to be underpowered/in need of their big box.
Lady is very good and freed up 2 influence, but itâs not always better than corroder. 4 to install can be very relevant against rush decks.
Legworks can win you the game if the corp canât score early, but it doesnât get them to spend money protecting HQ and slow down quite like most criminal builds, and for every game winning legwork, thereâs usually a few whiffs.
You can make a functional shaper build, and probably do well with it, I just think youâre better off with the other two factions at the moment, and the big box should solidify that even more
Just one tiny nitpick: doesnât Lady shine more against rush decks? Sure, youâre paying two more to install, but saving at least one on the first use, so presumably in the standard Shaper situation of ânot installing until actually needed, thank you very muchâ youâre at +1 at worst on first install/use, and are breaking even on second use at the latest. In the usual case of âEli on RnDâ, youâre actually 1 credit ahead on first use, and it only gets better from then on.
I can see how her limited uses and recurring costs are a problem vs glacier, sure. But rush?
Thatâs the point. But you CANâT score early against shaper because theyâre the best faction when it comes to make a remote-lock during the entire game. Iâve won a tons of games against NBN because the corp was forced to fast-ad to score an agenda during the early game. You just canât score early on against shaper, thatâs why legwork is that strong in shaper and not so good in other factions.
The analysis that Shaper is worse than Anarch is most certainly incorrect at the moment.
Kateâs very well positioned, and though Noise is pretty strong too, his consistency levels worry me, even with QT + Inject.
I think youâre greatly underestimating Lady - rush decks like GRNDL arenât really popular right now, but GRNDLâs a deck Iâve played a bit recently and it doesnât stop Shaper having the best matchup against them. Against everyone else, if you want them to be infinite, they pretty much are.
Itâs incorrect to say theyâre in a worse state than Anarch, and I fear that thatâs only a product of not playing the right builds.
To echo what others have said, I think the debate just summarizes to the fact that R&D guarantees seeing new cards, HQ does not. Iâm probably not the only one who has been in the hilarious situation of having 1 biotic labor in hand and having the runner access that same biotic labor 5 times in a row.
I hope they continue to print more cards that pressure HQ like Wanton Destruction. One of my favorite styles of play when I used to play Magic (over a decade ago) was hand destruction style decks. Iâve always wanted to make Hemorrhage work, but have never been successful.
Worth pointing out that Anarchâs win percentage is tilted by Noise (46%, 5% above his Whizzard and Reina, and 2% above Quetzal). Kate is barely below Noise, but stands head and shoulders above every other Shaper (Kit 43%, Chaos Theory 41%). Andromeda and Leela are at almost 54%, despite a Criminal average of 49%.
I donât know how seriously to take these stats. NEH has a whopping 68% win rate (to be expected), but PE of all things is sitting pretty at 61% next in line.
Lets be honest, those stats not only show how strong a deck is, but also how easy it is to make mistakes against them/how easy it is to capitalise on such mistakes. You donât have that much margin for error against NEH. One astro can do you in depending on matchup. Iâd love to see after the stimhack league ends if that same number was made in the top of the league as well. I hope/expect that with NEH being the big threatening corp for a while now, the good players amongst us have found ways to limit it a bit 
And Iâd love to know how to do it, but my statistics arenât up to scratch, to use one of db0âs data dumps to figure out what the best corps/runners are depending on how good of a player you are.
Anyway, made a long post out of this, but I wouldnât just go on that data, use a little caution.
Iâd love more data. But this is the only data there is. Well, we have tournament results I suppose, but thatâs small numbers.
If I were to take your argument further, all of the top corp decks (based on the above stats) punish mistakes badly. NEH gets an Astro scored, RP gets a Nisei scored, and Blue Sun or PE kills you (or trashes an important card perhaps).
Itâs also worth noting that, believe it or not, almost half of all Netrunner players are below average.
That alone makes data like this a lot more difficult to use when finding whether X or Y is better.
The only reason to relentlessly attack HQ is if you can destroy the cards there. Imp, Demo Run, and a couple new O&C cards will make it plenty threatening. Combo decks usually have early-midgame ice, and destroying combo pieces can be an auto-win if you have a somewhat efficient rig.
Obviously. Threats are what helps make a good deck. But thereâs a difference between âoh god I ran into a snare last click jinteki is stupidâ or âoh god he advanced once lets not run that server, whatâs the worst that could happenâ. Jinteki PE has had an inflated winrate in those stats forever.
Hence, all I advice is caution. You arenât just looking at the strength of decks, also how easily people play with and against it. You can interpret the data, in stead of taking it for granted.
RnD Lock is essentially HQ Lock. The big problem with HQ is that you can see the same card over and over. On RnD you know if the card is new or not. Thatâs why itâs a bit more valuable for decks trying to control the late game.
HQ is better than R&D early usually because people will play nonagenda cards like econ and ICE from their hand first. Then, before they can score, they will draw some more cards, furthering the possibility of agendas. Then, they either start scoring or Jackson away agendas. A single legwork before this point is all the HQ pressure most decks really need. This sort of highly variable HQ agenda density paired with the fact that repeated accesses become less likely to hit is what makes Legwork better than Nerve Agent/HQI whereas RDI/Medium are the preferred method of R&D pressure, (outside of decks that reward you specifically for playing the run events like Prepaid, Ken, and Oracle May).
Noise and Gabe are the only two runners, currently, that have good ways to put additional pressure on HQ. The benefit of Gabe is that he can leverage his ability and Sneakdoor to make it more important to shut the runner out of HQ, forcing the corp to use more ICE on centrals, delay scoring, and maybe even have to use Jackson twice before they can stabilize. The benefit of Noise is that, like Gabe, he can force the corp to delay scoring by pressuring Archives, overload Jackson, and on top of that, 3 Imp mean that lightly protected/unprotected remotes can be vulnerable as well, delaying setup, and the nonagendas in HQ become somewhat vulnerable.
I think this is the reason Legwork is not seen as much in Gabe or Noise as in Andy or Kate: Gabe and Noise prefer to get into HQ on a regular basis, whereas the Kate and Andy just want to Leg in once or twice and otherwise will largely ignore HQ accesses outside of maybe a couple of rez-inducing probing runs or last-ditch snipe attempts before the corp can score an agenda that they may have drawn going late.
I think people overvalue R&D lock against glacier, and especially against RP glacier in particular.
Iâll leave a single Pup on there until they get multi-access or enough money to steal an NAPD without crippling their economy. My impression from the RP side of the table is that it seems better to spend the first couple turns on economy and then go looking for Caprice in HQ and that R&D is something you should only run if you can get in for free or close to itâŚ
Could you explain why this is the case? Iâd really like to improve my game against RP, and the fact that R&D lock currently seems like the best plan to me might explain why Iâm doing badly. My reasoning had been that agendas wonât pile up in HQ as long as they see a Jackson early, and once Caprice is in a remote youâre basically never stealing from it, even more so if Nisei gets scored - so taking creds then hitting R&D every couple of turns (with at least one R&DI) doesnât seem terrible.
Whatâs wrong with what Iâm doing here? Does early HQ aggression significantly delay the ability to set up the remote?
Thereâs a few reasons why HQ is good. First, they take forever to score, so even if they Jackson, sometimes they canât ditch them all. Second, sometimes they donât draw Jackson quickly, and then they pile up. Sometimes, like, A LOT. Third, even if they do draw Jackson, itâs often good for them to keep a Nisei because itâs so nuts to score, and thatâs the best one for you to steal. Lastly, R&D becomes the target going into the late game, so you want them to be overprotecting protecting HQ early so that when you shift to R&D after they Jackson, itâs easier to get in.
You shouldnât necessarily always go for HQ early, then R&D. Its always going to depend on how much they protect each one. You donât want to give them a free ride on either at any point, so you should maybe run R&D a little bit, even early, (though taking a tempo hit to install a quick RDI isnât usually great). Also, you need to be able to read the game state. Sometimes there just arenât agendas in HQ. Gifts helps a lot with getting this sort of info.
To those arguing about whether or not Shapers are crap and Anarchs are better. Anarchs have impressive and massive stuff that does a really great job. However, they lack tools. Simple, usable tools. And thatâs what shapers are the best at. They might not have a ton of awesome stuff that makes the corp want to flip the table but they do have tools. They have recursion. They have tutors, They can make money. They can draw cards. Other faction have specific talents but shapers are talented at everything, however they might not be very great at everything. Their stuff DOES work bananas when coupled together but requires thousands of puzzle pieces to work.