Let's make a pact - Faust discussion

Netrunner General
61

Well, at the moment I’m running neither; I’m trying out Brain Cage in that spot. Only played it once so far, but I’m already a fan. Starting a turn with 9 cards gives you a lot of flexibility in running, and doesn’t punish you for taking Liberated/Kati turns. I’ve had a lot of turns where it’s just setting up, and keeping 7 at the end of my turn really helps facilitate the eventual running.

2 Likes
62

I ran a Quetzal deck last night that appeared to work pretty well (though both corps were a it flooded both games so who knows). I was running Vigil for almost constant three cards a turn but somehow neglected to put E3 in during deckbuilding…Ended up not mattering but the deck seems fun. This is my most recent version with the E3 oversight corrected.

Sympathy for the Devil

Quetzal: Free Spirit (First Contact)

Event (13)

Hardware (6)

Resource (12)

Icebreaker (6)

Program (8)

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

I’ve gone with Spooned to deal with Lotus field and Quest completed for a little anti-caprice jank that could easily be changed to something more practical. I feel like I’m going without a net by not including more parasite recursion but when you draw that much and Levy it may end up being enough.

63

How has Vigil worked for you? When I played it a while ago in my old non-Faust Quetzal deck, everyone just played around it. It was good and bad; them having 4 cards is better than 5 obviously but you were playing a glorified Mem Chip. Quality Times might be nice as a weird Stimhack type card for this sort of deck, but I love having 3 Clone Chips.

On an unrelated note, I broke my previous record of 4 discards in a run with 7. Good times.

64

I’ve played this deck more or less exclusively since you posted about it, since it looked so fun plus having wanted a good Quetzal list for a while now. It has surprisingly good matchups, as you say. The RP matchup is still kinda rough, but I’m sure some of it is simply me being new to the deck. Anyhow, my experience with RP is that the deck ends up feeling kind of poor, which can be exploited with Tollbooths and the like. If you don’t see Parasites and cash early and your draw engine, E3, and Faust in the mid-game, it feels hard to get started making useful runs with cash left over for NAPDs and Psi games. That being said, in the games where you see things in a good order, it feels like you kinda run rampant over the corp’s corpse. There’s a lot of pressure to be had in the deck.

However, there was a game where I would have pretty easily won had I found a Faust sooner to be able to break some mid-range ETR ice, but kept getting my Fausts trashed by Inject with no clone chips in sight. I finally found one, but they had scored 2 Nisei’s and the game was fairly locked up at that point, even with me drawing fairly hard for it. Since Inject was the reason I couldn’t get a reasonable breaker online, right now I’m trying a slightly modified version with IHW instead of Inject, which has the fringe benefit of making kill decks have to try harder as well. Since this causes me to need less recursion, I dropped down to 2 clone chips to see how that feels.

The deck also sometimes has money problems; it feels like it costs an arm and a leg to get set up, since everything seems to cost an average of 3 credits to install, and you really want the Wildside/Pankakes combo online quickly in order to draw cards to break stuff. Career Fair just feels amazing every time I draw it because of this, so I upped it to 3x. It always sucks if Career fair is at the bottom of the deck, since you weren’t able to make use of the economy earlier, but it’s still usable as accesses for Faust (although it does suck when Street Peddler hits it). This left me with a spare influence, but I wasn’t sure what to add, so I threw in a Crescentus to try out. So far I’m not sure if I like the inclusion, but I’ve only had a couple games with it so far. We’ll see how it does; I might go back to the third Clone Chip if it doesn’t seem noticeably better.

Anyhow, those are my thoughts.

4 Likes
65

Has anyone tried Faust in a Geist deck. I know it doesn’t trigger his ability, but he might have the card draw to support it?

66

Yes, it was insane (in terms of fun anyway). I think it was quite effective, but it was competing with the makers eye for a spot, so I’d have to test with both. Here’s the list:

Street Fighter

Armand “Geist” Walker: Tech Lord

Event (11)
3x Account Siphon
2x Emergency Shutdown
2x Legwork
1x Levy AR Lab Access •••
3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (5)
2x Clone Chip ••••
3x Forger

Resource (16)
2x Decoy
3x Fall Guy
3x Muertos Gang Member
3x Off-Campus Apartment •••
2x Same Old Thing
3x Street Peddler •••

Icebreaker (10)
3x Crowbar
1x Faust ••
3x Shiv
3x Spike

Program (3)
3x Crescentus

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)

Faust with Muertos is great, as it draws 2 cards. I’m actually looking at swapping sure gamble for easy mark, as it provides faster money when you need it. Also it’s a bad card and therefore synergises with faust :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
67

I only have 3 games with it so far but my feeling is that it has done some work each time I have seen it. Honestly, if the corp is changing their behavior to make sure I don’t draw cards, I count that as a win in itself.

68

Interestingly enough i had a chat with one of the players at our local group last night who was saying faust in geist is the new hotness. I really like this list, think ill give it a whirl.

69

Thanks! I assume you weren’t in Bristol? Would be kinda awkward.

70

hahaha, yes i am, small world :wink:

71

4 Likes
72

Or you win all 5 games you play with it. :wink:

1 Like
73

I’m in the same boat as you at this point; the couple losses I’ve had were to either not finding Faust until the final 1/3rd of my deck, or getting it lost through Inject and never finding Clone Chips. I don’t even want to use them on Faust; my Datasuckers always get lost as well and it makes Architect, Caduceus, and every Bioroid pre-E3 a pain in the ass. I’m lucky and find Kati early most of the time, so While there are turns I’m somewhat poor, once I take Kati for even 9 or 12 I’m set for a while.

I don’t think I’m aggressive enough with Parasites. The reason’s probably two-fold; I’m still used to playing the Bootcamp deck that I treat every Parasite as needing to kill the ICE the same turn, and it’s my desperate need to want to play Shaper bullshit with Faust by having an active Sucker, discarding Parasite for Faust, then Clone Chip to kill the ICE. It’s awesome when it works, but not when it takes too long to pull off.

It’s due to just finding things in the right order, but you’re definitely right about the RP matchup; my losses against Jinteki have been to a combination of non-RP killteki decks and just not finding Faust. It’s probably wrong but I also never trash an MHC if it’s up; it’s helping me a lot more than it is them and I’ll only absolutely trash it if they’re under 5 credits.

IHW has a lot more appeal over Inject right now, also for the bonus that you don’t tip the Corp on what you’re doing yet either (although almost anyone playing me on OCTGN at this point knows if I have Quetzal out, it’s Faust). For that last Influence pip, how about Utopia Shard? Works well with the third Career Fair you added, and breaking up kill/Biotic combos seems positive, even more so at 4 credits.

1 Like
74

Actually, Utopia makes a lot of sense here. Good call =)

75

Also, Kati helps the deck’s early econ problems a LOT, and I’m thinking of jacking it up to a 3-of, but I’m not sure what to cut. I’m honestly considering cutting an Adjusted Chronotype for it, since it’s more important that I see a Wyldside than the Pancakes. Plus, if @nobody’s Val deck can win tournaments while getting away with running 2 of them in a 50 card deck, this deck might be able to handle the same.

76

I think I’m probably heading towards one IHW over one inject, but not towards a straight replacement. One plas, one Brain Cage, one IHW is a very solid anti-flatline package, especially with Levy.

I’m also thinking of adding the 3rd Kati over the 3rd Liberated, and it may be in place of the 3rd Chronotype. I only had two Chronotypes in the original version, but I found myself losing very close matches against NEH (Where I did most of my initial testing) when I found Wyldside early but not getting Chrono up. Three click turns vs. NEH will lose you some games, but it may be worth looking into again.

1 Like
77

I’ve changed the list a little bit but you can actually get Faust very reliably 1st turn with all the burst draw cards you have. (Here is the new list)

Noise: Hacker Extraordinaire

Event (17)
3x Diesel ••••• •
3x I’ve Had Worse
3x Inject
2x Levy AR Lab Access ••••• •
3x Quality Time •••
3x Queen’s Gambit

Hardware (2)
2x Grimoire

Resource (12)
3x Adjusted Chronotype
3x Armitage Codebusting
3x Daily Casts
3x Wyldside

Icebreaker (3)
3x Faust

Program (11)
2x D4v1d
2x Datasucker
1x Imp
3x Medium
3x Parasite

15 influence spent (max 15)
45 cards (min 45)

1 Like
78

Take this shell and do it in MaxX. No need for Shaper draw cards, just 3x Inject, Peddler, Wyldeside (with 2 Pancakes).

I also splashed 3x Levy, 2 Clones, and 2 Shards. Struggles against Butcher Shop, but not bad against Glaciers. Haven’t played Haas yet.

MaxX Faust

MaxX: Maximum Punk Rock (Order and Chaos)

Event (15)
2x Déjà Vu (Core Set)
3x I’ve Had Worse (Order and Chaos)
3x Inject (Up and Over)
3x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]••••• ••••
1x Retrieval Run (Future Proof)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (3)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]••••
1x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)

Resource (16)
2x Adjusted Chronotype (The Valley)
2x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set)
2x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Hades Shard (First Contact) [color=#708090]•
2x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)
3x Street Peddler (The Underway)
1x Utopia Shard (All That Remains) [color=#708090]•
3x Wyldside (Core Set)

Icebreaker (2)
2x Faust (The Underway)

Program (12)
1x Clot (The Valley)
2x D4v1d (The Spaces Between)
2x Datasucker (Core Set)
2x Imp (What Lies Ahead)
2x Medium (Core Set)
3x Parasite (Core Set)
15 influence spent (max 15)
48 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Underway

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

1 Like
79

After playing it all night tonight, I think you’re probably on to something here. In the one Butchershop game I played tonight, I only needed 1 IHW to fire to save me anyhow, and it was the last one I drew (I used the other 2 as card draw). I had the Brain Cage out, and then the IHW drew me into my Plascrete, which I played the next turn. It was pretty damned nice, but the other 2x probably could have still been Injects and things would have been just fine.

I think I’ll try this out and ditch the Utopia/3rd Career Fair that I was playing tonight. It seems like with 3x Career Fair, one almost always finds it’s way onto a Street Peddler, which is something I don’t really want, since I usually draw through the entire deck in non NEH matches (and sometimes then as well). The Utopia was usually pretty nice, as it always is, but more Parasites and mid-run Mediums are always great too, so I think it’s back to 3x Clone Chip for me as well (plus it helps with the Inject shenanigans). And, odd as it sounds, I kinda miss the slight bit of extra cash Inject usually provides. I’ll give the 2x Chronotype a shot, since I usually like seeing the Liberated a lot, and I’ll see how much I miss it. It might be a lot, but I’ll have to see.

80

This interests me, because my testing has me wanting to try the reverse. Career Fair has so many targets, and I’ve experienced a few starts where key cards are front-loaded and economy is slow to kick in. If I drop a clone chip, though, I’d have to go 100% IHW over Inject to get extra mileage out of the chips. I find myself playing Parasite off of Street Peddler more than I expected, as well. So that threat feels on par with 3 chip / 0 peddler.

That said, I think these observations are the effect of variance in a deck that relies on several keystone cards and a fairly predictable game plan. Trying to optimize around anecdotes will lead to chasing shadows. The grass looks greener when the cards flop in exactly the way your other version was ready for.

Can’t complain much, though. I’ve had some extremely tight games, but the deck has pulled through far more often than not. Solid.