I’m looking for other current builds of IG; The last topic is 191 days old and, for that reason, isn’t very relevant to our meta anymore. The last deck posted involved SanSans which is a galactic waste of resources and doesn’t factor in any of the new stuff or refined strategies that we’ve seen in these lists.
Anyhow, for a long time I’ve wanted to play IG and just haven’t thrown a deck together. Now, I have and I’d like to get discussions of this sleeper ID rolling as I believe it to be a lot better than we’ve seen and I believe it’s back in a good position now that eater as faded from the meta (and I don’t think we’re likely to see a resurgence of eater).
Let’s talk first about what IG is good at: Assets and Upgrades assuming you have cards in the bin. I think that means that no matter what you’re doing you want 3x caprice and probably 2x batty. Also, since you plan on throwing away a percentage of cards into your bin, Jackson remains necessary and going to 54 cards has been a common theme. Next, both shock and shi-kyu gain value like what they had in tennin decks. No one wants to run archives over and over to be able to trash your stuff if those are in your bin. To help turn on IG’s ability and make this portion better we often see Jackson over draws, full click turns on melange + discard, and power shutdowns. All of these synergize with program hate/rush/and hiding agendas for long glacier games which is why these decks are so flexible.
The second thing IG is very good at is work compression. Harken back to @hollis’s post on BGG about PE work compression. He taxes cards in that deck. In these decks you probably have the choice of taxing cards or money. And some unique builds can do both in a very excruciating way. Most IG decks should seek to create situations that cost the runner so many credits or cards that they can’t function to respond to the threat you just established. Nisei MK II is the click compression we commonly see in RP; but, here we can do better economic compression by running extremely taxing ice that has to be run multiple times thanks to caprice or needing to hit archives to then deal with remotes. While you may eventually get to a lock, putting pressure on in bursts is how you open scoring windows. This has become easier with time for Jinteki decks, but the philosophy has never changed. My secret love affair with Jinteki: PE
This means we actually have access to several archetypes
If you submit deck lists to me, I’ll put examples of each within these archetype bullets. I haven’t done the research to find them all.
Fast advance - Hybrids
TOL->Space Camp->Advanceable Ice {braintrust/medical breakthrough/philotic/future perfects if you’re a jerk} or SanSan City Grid. This is ok; but expensive and at risk currently to clot shenanigans. The good news is that if you’re keeping archives deep, CVS is going to keep clot from sticking and its unlikely your opponent will trash it. These decks ultimately have to score something the hard way, but they usually FA at some point. They’ll probably have something in common with the below archetypes.
Decks
- Stark Industries - ID Draft Tourney Winner - Attrition Splash
Shell Game Death
Ronin is the common kill condition because its soo expensive to trash. EMPs, 3 pointers, Punatives, Snare!. The important thing about snare is that it should be often left in hand since it’ll cost creds to trash. Mushin No Shin. House of Knives. It plays a lot like PE, only your opponent can’t trash most of your kill cards. Very effective.
Decks
RP Style Glacial
One of my favorites. This one you just go in on nisei, money assets and basically port the RP shell over. They may get an extra run on the remote, but your caprices become a lot harder to trash from deck and become more reliable.
Decks
##Attrition
This one is the new thing, imo, and I’ve got my first draft down below. [Note since posting this more people have submitted similar stuff, renaming to attrition and no longer taking cred]. The common theme is blacklist, highly taxing centrals/archives; Sometimes Ashigaru, sometimes ichi. You establish a control lock of some sort and then score out with caprice. This can look a lot like shell game or a lot like RP; both taxing types are options.
Decks
- Blood Lock - The original attrition list. Store Championship winner.
- ANRPC 2nd Place Winner -@Tr33beard - Passchendaele
- X3r0H0ur’s Blacklist Attrition
-
Gum’s Attrition Original post follows: It’s RP Style Glacier with a twist Blacklist and IT Dept + Batty and destroyers. This has been particularly effective against faust decks because blacklist is a huge pain behind a 5 sub ashigaru, and forcing them to run archives is also a problem. You use IT Dept to drain their cards/creds wherever, but the IT Dept is really hard to trash if they don’t run archives. Typically you protect R&D early, HQ a bit, and Caprice Archives. Yes, you caprice archives. Then, midgame you’ll get a control remote set up and start trying to tax them out and hurt their economy. Somewhere in here you’ll need to stabilize and score agendas. You’re hunting for Nisei Mk IIs but whatever you need to do. (scroll for deck)
The rest of this post will be about the theory behind this deck and its card choices. (Please consider this post 2 or something)
Archiving Perfection
Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions (The Source)
Agenda (10)
- 1x Fetal AI (Trace Amount)
- 3x NAPD Contract (Double Time)
- 3x Nisei MK II (Core Set)
- 3x The Future Perfect (Honor and Profit)
Asset (14)
- 2x Blacklist (Breaker Bay) ••
- 2x IT Department (The Source) ••
- 3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves) •••
- 3x Melange Mining Corp. (Core Set)
- 2x Shi.Kyū (Honor and Profit)
- 2x Shock! (True Colors)
Upgrade (5)
- 3x Caprice Nisei (Double Time)
- 2x Marcus Batty (The Underway)
Operation (7)
- 2x Celebrity Gift (Opening Moves)
- 3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
- 2x Subliminal Messaging (Fear and Loathing)
Barrier (4)
- 2x Ashigaru (Up and Over)
- 1x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof) •
- 1x Himitsu-Bako (Opening Moves)
Code Gate (7)
- 1x Inazuma (Honor and Profit)
- 3x Lotus Field (Upstalk)
- 1x Quandary (Double Time)
- 2x Yagura (Fear and Loathing)
Sentry (6)
- 2x Ichi 1.0 (Core Set) ••••
- 3x Rototurret (Core Set) •••
- 1x Tsurugi (True Colors)
Other (1)
- 1x Excalibur (The Source)
15 influence spent (max 15)
23 agenda points (between 22 and 23)
54 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
Agenda Suite
All 2 pointers excepting future perfect + Shi Kyu means your opponent often needs to score 4 agendas to win. There’s nothing really innovative here, but I go to 54 and the fetal is there for a bit of random net damage that still costs money to steal, which matters occasionally.
Asset Control
Caprice + Batty should be pretty self explanatory. The twist is that I often protect archives with caprice. Blacklist and IT Dept - You often have to choose between these. One of the two will be the more appropriate card per game. Leading with one and trashing it for the other is often appropriate. Use IT Dept to tax your opponent down and then drop the Black List when they’ve used up their options. IT Dept is a great Faust taxer. With caprice protecting archives neither of these will be great targets for trashing. If you get an IT Dept set up, then caprice should probably go on the IT Dept server.
2x shock and 2x shi kyu making running archives un-enticing, which makes your other cards more enticing. Also, random net damage is very good with blacklist. I’d go to 3 of each of these if I could figure out how to get those slots, but I’m not sure it’d be worth it. Often 1 or 2 net damage is enough reason not to run there. Both also help vs R&D digs. If they are expensive enough to trash, the runner won’t want to access them with medium several times.
In general a lot of these things are safe in your R&D so your porousness goes way down, so long as you’re willing to dump enough into archives.
Burst Econ Jumps
I kind of count melange in this section with the few operations in the deck; it’s about a whole turn to go +7 which is celeb gift without needing to be at a the full 5. It’s a good card and with the trash cost mitigated it’ll often go off a few times, which is all you need. Subliminal Messaging has a dual purpose. It helps smooth by dripping, but it also let’s you reset back to a base +2 to trash costs if you can keep them from wanting to run for a turn. These cards are often face up in archives and are primary jackson targets after agendas and some trashed ice.
Ice
There’s a mix here of ice. I’ve been impressed with Ashigaru vs lady and vs faust; I’m aware it’s a parasite target. You’ll want to bait parasite onto other ice if possible. Tsuguri is there for similar reasons. Ichi & roto are multi subroutine ice that are less stressful on an economy, but work well with batty to create bad situations for the runner, and that multi sub is particularly valuable at the moment. Inazuma is great vs zu, as is lotus field. You need to prioritize all of the ice based on what you’re expecting to come at you and for what server.
Playing defense with this deck means sealing up centrals early and starting to fill archives. You want a decently taxing archives that deals either net damage or forces re-runs via caprice. R&D you want to be a moderate taxer. HQ depends highly on what you plan on seeing, it’s pretty safe vs the average shaper if you can get it to tax 3-5 credits. R&D and Archives you want to cost in the range of 4-8 credits to run. Ashigaru is mostly for your remotes. It’s great to protect IT Dept as d4v1d won’t be chewing through it without IT. It’s also very good with blacklist if you’ve gotten them to a point where their deck is thin or they’ve pitched stuff they were relying on. Forcing shaper to draw for breakers is a win; keeping them from resetting Lady. Keeping their singleton parasite in the bin. Etc. If you aren’t playing blacklist these days, you’re probably playing your corp wrong.
Defense priorities: Turn 1 → R&D & HQ. Turns 2-5 the targeted central, if there is one, and archives. Switch to building some econ to establish a remote and get a control asset down. When you’ve got control, start looking for scoring opportunities.
(Take advantage if you have the rush option, of course)
Scoring Out
At some point you need to win via scoring. It’s going to be late in the game usually. You’re looking for a point where you’ve opened a window by bankrupting them and you can get that nisei into a remote. You need to worry about inside job; And you likely want to be scoring behind a caprice, so this usually happens after you’ve stabilized your centrals. After you get the first Nisei Mk II there’s usually enough momentum to get the next two agendas. like you would in any RP game. A common trap I set to enable this is to make it possible to trash the IT Dept or Blacklist, but only if they spend nearly all of their credits (including whatever they have banked) or whatever their breaking resources are. If they do this to themselves without trashing the dept or blacklist it still may be appropriate to clear out that server and use it as your scoring server. Occasionally you can construct 2 remote servers, but this is harder than it looks if they haven’t let you go in on IT. IT Dept and Blacklist are mainly used to slow the game down so that you can get to the standard RP position of scoring in a taxing remote with caprice. This means you need to be aware of siphon, vamp and other issues that can occur to ruin your day.
Takeaways
1
Protecting Archives early with Caprice is a valid strategy
2
Forcing runs on archives to be effective elsewhere is as strong as RP, and sometimes stronger since it lets you focus your punishment on a single server while merely taxing on the others
3
If you aren’t playing blacklist these days, you’re probably playing your corp wrong.
What I’d like to see, aside from suggestions on my particular deck is a state of IG today. Where are you now? What lessons have you learned. Which decks are performing well in tournaments? What is the core of a good IG deck?
