It’s kinda weird, I’d only ever consider Virus Breeding Ground with Hivemind. It’s the only time you’ll be able to get value out of them over Surge. And Surge is pretty damn good with Hivemind.
Basically VBG is a hedge against the Corp clearing viruses. If you play with only Surge and the Corp keeps immediately purging every time you use it, you may want to consider VBG instead.
VGB are nice but I don’t know for yourself, they always end like Cyberfeeders sitting in my hand.
“I’ve got something more important to do… I’ve got something more important to do…”.
Until it’s too late 
Anyway 3x VGB here would be 1c -> str 4, run clic 4 past a str 6 ice with Null.
But VGB x3, of course.
In a more reasonable way, VGBx2 gives you a str 3 Darwin and a str 6 Darwin the turn after. So you can pass a str8 ice with Null.
This is nice !
If the corp manually purges, this is still interesting, because the corp will have hard times doing something the turn after they purge (but FA, so why they purged ?).
Yeah. This is why you’d run VBG. If they purge it doesn’t matter because you can just get it back to strength quickly. Generally they’ll stop purging in this case.
If you want them to spend a turn purging, Surge is better.
So with Black Orchestra, we are 100% certain that there’s going to be a full install-from-heap suite. Neat.
I’ve seen some janky builds out of Exile (like this one, not mine) that use Paperclip with sahasrara + scheherazade for free installs from the heap and Aesop’s to gain credits. Probably won’t have the influence to bring in the rest of the suite.
I’m thinking that a full suite of the install-from-heap cards, plus aesop’s/sahasrara/scheherazade/LLDS processor would be pretty fun and potentially good out of Null-- dump the relevant breaker in the bin to give the ice -2, then install it and go.
Thoughts? Is this interaction with Null even legal (e.g. have you missed the chance to install if you have already started trashing cards to lower strength)? Is there enough synergy for this to be anything more than a gimmick?
edit: No, this interaction is not legal (discussion here). But you can toss a from-the-heap breaker for the outer ice of a 2-deep server, and then install it on the next one.
Eh, I wouldn’t say 100% certain, given that we haven’t seen a sentry breaker of the same ilk yet (to my knowledge?) , but it seems fairly likely.
IMO Yog is the reason to play Null, so I don’t see Black Orchestra helping him much. I’m just generally not impressed with the card at all, though. Null on the other hand is looking better and better with every big code gate.
The problem with all this glacier support is that the better glacier becomes, the more likely DLR is to be played at the competitive level. I don’t know if this will be fixed until rotation, honestly. What glacier needs right now is a strong answer to DLR, not better ICE. That’s just my opinion. Blackmail and False Echo decks are two others that threaten to rise if glacier has a resurgence.
https://netrunnerdb.com/en/deck/view/747319
This one’s mine, I never published it because it doesn’t work. The corp gets wise to what you’re doing and puts a non-barrier on the outside of every server. That said, it’s hilarious when it works.
For Null, though, he doesn’t want these.
[URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/decks/37JhYK7YCnYAyxTT5]Corporate Sifring[/URL] (45 cards)
[URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/null-whistleblower-23-seconds]Null: Whistleblower[/URL]
Event (15)
3 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/deja-vu-core]Déjà Vu[/URL]
3 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/dirty-laundry-creation-and-control]Dirty Laundry[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/en-passant-intervention]En Passant[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/inject-up-and-over]Inject[/URL]
1 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/levy-ar-lab-access-creation-and-control]Levy AR Lab Access[/URL] [color=#6da045]●●●[/color]
1 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/retrieval-run-future-proof]Retrieval Run[/URL]
3 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/sure-gamble-core]Sure Gamble[/URL]
Hardware (5)
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/clone-chip-creation-and-control]Clone Chip[/URL] [color=#6da045]●●●●[/color]
3 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/sifr-quorum]Şifr[/URL]
Resource (10)
3 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/daily-casts-creation-and-control]Daily Casts[/URL]
3 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/liberated-account-trace-amount]Liberated Account[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/same-old-thing-creation-and-control]Same Old Thing[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/street-peddler-the-underway]Street Peddler[/URL]
Icebreaker (7)
1 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/black-orchestra-escalation]Black Orchestra[/URL]
1 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/mimic-core]Mimic[/URL]
1 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/mkultra-martial-law]MKUltra[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/paperclip-blood-money]Paperclip[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/yog-0-core]Yog.0[/URL]
Program (8)
1 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/d4v1d-the-spaces-between]D4v1d[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/datasucker-core]Datasucker[/URL]
2 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/medium-core]Medium[/URL]
3 [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/card/parasite-core]Parasite[/URL]
Built with [URL=https://meteor.stimhack.com/decks/37JhYK7YCnYAyxTT5]https://meteor.stimhack.com/[/URL]
Trying a Null Sifr deck. I think the stronger option is to drop Clone Chips for Temuijin and just let Deja Vu be your Parasite recursion. The mid-run Parasite trick is very strong, but you need money, too.
What I can’t decide is whether to go Faust or Reg breakers. Null’s ability makes Yog so strong that it seems like reg breakers is the best choice, but Faust is good.
Null’s ability is mostly useless if you have SIFR, and completely useless if you have SIFR and Faust. If you absolutely have to do a SIFR-Null deck, don’t do Faust.
I don’t understand this. Null and Sifr do similar things, but why does that make his ability useless? Unless the Corp runs only one piece of ice, how is getting to reduce ice strength twice bad?
As for Faust, I see your point. You have to pitch a card whether it is to Faust or to his ability.
Because the ice you care about is already at 0.
Sure, if there are multiple ice on the server you’re interested in you can use Null on the ice you haven’t Sifred, maybe to bring it into fixed breaker range, but is that more impactful than being another Anarch ID?
You can also use Sifr on one server’s single ice and Null on the a different server, making the Corp’s position much less secure in the process.
I am not making the case that Null is better than every other Anarch ID. I don’t have enough information or expertise to make that argument. I’m just trying to build a good Null deck and see what it can do.
If you’re running SIFR, you should be parasiteing all their big ice and killing them. Why do you need Null’s ability to get anything within yog/mimic range? How is the corp getting enough money to rez more than one piece of big ice a turn?
And the reason not to use Faust is that Null’s ability is completely redundant with Faust. It actually works quite well with SIFR outside of Null, as you don’t care about the reduced hand size after you pitch a card to Faust.
I was thinking not of the hand-size reduction but of the fact that Null has to pitch a card to reduce the strength of an ice by 2. His ability is exactly the same as pitching a card to Faust.
[quote=“StephenE, post:75, topic:7844”]
If you’re running SIFR, you should be parasiteing all their big ice and killing them. Why do you need Null’s ability to get anything within yog/mimic range? How is the corp getting enough money to rez more than one piece of big ice a turn?
[/quote]The main advantage that I see to using Null with sifr and the fixed strength suite is greater ability to aggressively challenge rush decks. Sifr is a major tempo hit, which may open up scoring windows against an aggressive rush/FA deck. As one of the main ways people are talking about going against Sifr is go fast I think it is worth a look, that and allowing you to contest 2 ice midrange servers with out datasucker tokens.
This is my current Null build. Yes, it has way too many copies of the breakers, but this is meant to off-set the traditional Anarch problem of no tutoring. Also, I am trying to test the basic framework of the deck and don’t want to bog it down with too many tech cards or other things. I’m sure it will evolve.
Early testing on Jinteki is interesting. Too little experience to draw any conclusions. I will say that between Null and Sifr, it is a deck that could put a lot of pressure on a Corp.
Null: Whistleblower (23 Seconds)
9 influence spent (max 15, available 6)
45 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Blood Money
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
So after a handful of test games, it is clear that my Lotus Field answer needs to be more than a 1x card. Every Corp deck right now appears to be slotting Lotus Field in. I have gone to 2 x Black Orchestra, which is a totally dead card when Lotus Field is not on the board. On the upside, Magnet is a terrible Code Gate to play vs. Yog.
I could imagine dropping down to 2x on the main breakers to make room for some special tech or other cards, but since this deck has zero ability to tutor its breakers, I hate to put myself in the spot where I can’t get in some place because I can’t draw my breaker (Anarch problems) or I have to waste my Parasites on sub-optimal plays.