I got 2nd in Seattle(77 players) with a variant of this deck last night. It was a very significant change from the deck I won Portland regionals and a few store champs with, although it’s still NBN cards and Astroscripts, the Ash plan really changes thing. Restructure and Green level clearance and Tollbooths! instead of my beanstalks and subliminals also make things play out very differently.
It creates a lot more $, but it’s worse at sustained money and I spent a LOT of $ on ice, where my other deck seemed to spend most of it’s money on actually scoring out agendas quickly before the runner could interact. This deck was significantly slower, but it was very safe and methodical and won games.
I made changes of course :). Green Level Clearance is imo significantly better. It’s 3 less influence(most important part) it doesn’t take 2 clicks so it’s better on turn 1 , and it’s much better at recovering from 0 credits. You can click for a credit and green level, but can’t with blue level. I think that blue level is a fine card and I play it in HB, but I was not really looking to splash it out of faction.
I also cut the Shinobi. I didn’t even test it, sorry guys! I know it looks fun. I just felt like it was going to be good when people make mistakes, but so many ice are. People should be expecting/playing around 4-6 strength scary sentries no matter what faction they are playing. Sometimes you can force people to make calculated risks since you put so much pressure on them, but other ice will blow them out just as well, that don’t cost 3 influence + 1 bad pub. These cuts gave me 6 influence so I played 2 caduceus, and 2 eli. I also cut a closed accounts for a Bastion, but in retrospect I really missed closed accounts in several of my games.
I think If I had tested this deck more between last week and now I might have had a slightly more efficient game plan going in to some of the tough matchups and a slightly better build but the core of the deck is really solid so it worked out.
Moving away from Making News to the new NBN ID now after a short break to recoup from these regionals. If the new pack is out by California’s regionals I might be there playing a new NBN, we will see.
Congrats. 2nd is awesome in what i have to imagine is one of the toughest regional fields in the US.
Shinobi is a luxury pick for sure but i think the value comes from the fact when the runner messes up against shinobi he is dead. no glory runs, no hail mary plays and none of the monkey business that comes when you back the runner so far into the corner all they are left with is blind aggression that sometimes just wins games.
Shinobi was mostly to give mimic problems, as most nbn decks are pretty soft to mimic if they go for caduceus. That was the theory at least, in play the runner goes broke a lot so it winds up flatlining a lot. I’d highly recommend testing with it if you haven’t.
As far as just flat out beating it? not much. Sneakdoor is annoying, as is very deep R&D dig and shutdowns. Those all help a lot, but most of the decks that run those kinds of things are still ~50/50 because astroscript is a fair card.
Right. I feel like this is basically a “Top Shelf Liquor NBN” variant in the current meta: as the runner you’ve got to play a tight, compact game that attacks without recklessness and maintains board presence. Then you get par-or-hopefully-better on your random checks.
@bluebird503 - I almost ran Green Level instead of Blue Level as well, but decided on the 2 Tips and 1 Celebrity Gift. Gift was definitely an all star, but with only one of them, I think 3 GLC would be more consistent.
I’d also recommend keeping a one-of Shinobi (won two games for me and was one credit away from a third). You ONLY rez that thing if it kills so the bad pub is a non-issue. NBN Astros cause the runner to get desperate once you are at 4 or 5 points, which turns Shinobi on against even the best runners.
Can’t wait to revamp this deck for Cali Regionals! #PDX4Life
[quote=“Remorhaz, post:42, topic:1310”]
Congrats. 2nd is awesome in what i have to imagine is one of the toughest regional fields in the US.
[/quote]You’re right. The PNW has some of the best Netrunner players out there. It was such a good time!
I am done with the deck for now, but I have yet to see a good argument for Blue Level Clearance. Do you mind presenting some evidence for why BLC is the best? I piloted a similar deck to 2nd place without them, and lacking BLC is not the reason for my 2nd place finish.
Here are my arguments for why Green Level is better, I would love to hear evidence against them.
Green Level costs less to play(1 credit vs 2)(so it is significantly bette after account siphon), and it saves you 3 influence if you are choosing to run 3 of each. 3 Influence in modern netrunner is at least 3 elis, which is arguably one of the strongest pieces of ice in the game. I haven’t played a corp deck without Eli since the card came out in tournament play. Sure decks have started without Eli, but they always end up with Eli by tournament time. Green Level is significantly better as a turn 1 play, allowing you to ice HQ + R&D, or HQ + Archives against sneakdoor decks, and still gain a few credits.
Drawing 2 cards can sometimes be a liability, there was a game against a player using sneakdoor that I had to instally my agendas into my scoring remote the second i drew them.
Green Level lets me choose to use the follow up clicks after getting the information from 1 additional card. I have +2 credits +1 card, and can now choose how to follow that up.
BLC is strong, but it’s not worth the influence.
On the Shinobi case. I think this is a matter of deck building preference/play style. I’m not looking to win fringe game states/cases, etc, with very narrow cards like Shinobi. My experience with the card is that it’s a win more card, and I have yet to have it successfully used against me. I’m sure it’s put in some work for others, but for my play style, I’m not looking to boost my win percentages in fringe cases, I’d prefer cards that are useful in every game. If it was in faction, this would be a different story, but it isn’t.
Interesting. I suppose I could counter saying that Yellow Jackets was piloted and took 1st and 2nd at San Antonio and 2nd and 3rd in Tulsa! …and we ran BLC!
But you know, it’s not totally about BLC. AstroTrain is a thing… choo choo.
Hmmm, well Yellow Jackets just goes to show you that Eli 1.0 doesn’t have to be an auto-include.
Sure, GLC could be a better turn 1 play. BLC allows you to get above some R&D lock. If you’re not icing Archives (which appeared to be the case for you) then yes Sneakdoor can give you some problems.
Shinboi gives the deck some teeth. The timing is key for when to rez this card and has flatlined multiple players in both San Antonio and Tulsa (some of which were on Turn 1) because people are not afraid to face-check ice when playing against NBN.
GLC is efficient, but it’s not worth the card slot. With all of the corporate economy options out right now, I want something much more high impact for my card slots, and BLC is quite literally a bigger GLC. It’s been noted that the deck makes money easily but spends it really fast, blc’s pro contacts click is a significant help with this. Also, for siphon recovery, credit, green level credit puts you back into siphon range, whereas gaining into blue level and then a turn of blc + likely an econ card since it’s been 4 draws is very strong for bouncing back.
From the general tone I get the feeling you haven’t tried the blue levels, because in play it has been the most powerful card in the deck, and I’d rather blue level any turn of the game unless i’m flooded first turn.
The upside of the glc would be adding eli. I can live without the elis, between e3 making a comeback, or decks built to not care about clicking through an eli (siphon anarch), eli isn’t as great as he once was, and should morning star become a thing he gets even worse. we’re good on taxing ice, and you’re a lot less likely to get siphoned if you can put something other than an eli on hq.
Regarding Shinobi, I guess for my influence I’d rather have something I can always rez and have it do something useful for me. Viktor 2.0 comes to mind. As Bluebird says, though, that’s probably a playstyle thing. Was something replacing Shinobi at first before you splashed it in during testing? Just seems so corner case and definitely a “win more” card.
‘Win More’ is only a bad thing in games with snowballing mechanics. Most of the ‘Win More’ cards in netrunner tend to be some of the strongest cards in the game, Astroscript, RDI and Desperado would be considered ‘Win More’ in most card games. The game state doesn’t snowball, so any card that does it for you is very strong. I believe there’s an old alexfrog article on the site if you want to read into it more, but win more is good in netrunner.
I was looking for sentries above mimic, that lowered it down to a few cards, but flare got blown out by knight, I wasn’t running enough astro fodder, and ichi (both) wound up being super awkward early on, while shinobi is super strong there.
Shinobi, especially outside of Jinteki, is surely a ‘win now’ card, not win more. You can leverage an economic avantage to an instant victory, what’s not to like? In Making News, the economic advantage required isn’t huge. If it were in all NBN decks, it wouldn’t be that potent, but as a surprise I’m convinced you’ll pick up flatlines against a lot of players. I think this is exacerbated by the presence of Astroscript, maybe I overrate the astrotrain, but I want to run every installed card vs. NBN, which means I’m more likely to be running without a huge bank.
In my experience Shinobi is very often not a Win More. It’s a Win Now. One game at the Seattle Regional I was waaaaaay behind on board state in this early game, which just caused the runner to be more and more aggressive (get as many points as you can before I can rez my shit). He hit a Shinobi and died. I don’t think he really made a mistake and Shinobi allowed me to win quick without having to crawl back.
I agree, I haven’t heard any argument by BLC is better from an analytical point of view, just anecdotal evidence. Anecdotally, my 2 Anonymous Tips and 1 Celebrity Gift worked great over 10 games at Seattle Regionals, but I can’t make a great case for it when looking at the numbers (biggest point being less consistency with two different types of cards out of the three).
@bluebird503’s argument for why GLCs are better than Blue are very convincing. Just saying “Trust me, it’s better!” isn’t really an argument.
I’m also done with this deck for now and will be running a purple Jinteki for nor cal regionals. Although, I will be testing an updated version of this with the new NBN identity as well.
My analysis on BLC vs GLC is that GLC nets you 3 clicks of activity for a card and 1 click, BLC nets you 5 clicks of activity for a card and 2 clicks. When deck space is tight simply the magnitude of effect of the card makes it superior. In my opinion it’s worth a close look. I think the advocates of BLC are saying ‘Try it, it’s better!’ Which is quite different to ‘Trust me, it’s better!’ and I think is worth doing.
