New Player, Questions/Thoughts on Asset Economy

[hotfuss]

Hello everyone, me and a group of 6 friends have picked up Netrunner recently. We collectively own all cards up to genesis cycle and are still trying out decks/finding out how the game plays.

I’ ve noticed from streams and decklists that most people (especially at pro level I 'd say) dont rely that heavily on assets for their economy. From what I understand its mainly because cards like Celebrity Gift came out, giving you more options.

My group of players on the other hand love assets, and tries to squeeze as many of them into a deck as possible. The result? We always have sick rich corps in our games (especially HB and Weyland) and poorer runners. As runners, we hardly bother trying to wreck the corp’s economy anymore. We just accept that the corp is gonna have tons of money, and we will do our quality runs to get through their ice anyway.

As an example, I played a Data Leak Reversal Whizzard the other day (mostly fun build) against HB. My friend had 3 Eve and 3 Adonis campaign in his deck, 3 Pads and 1 melange. I told him thats kind of an overkill but he insisted. Having Whizzard I actually trashed 7 of those cards without him getting to even use them and siphoned him twice. The hilarious thing is he still had so much money that I lost the game with him actually doing double biotic labor and using Private Security’s force click for meat damage ability 5 times (I had 4 cards in hand) and killing me.

So my question is -obviously- what am I (or we collectively) as runners doing wrong? Was that how the meta worked in genesis cycle? The most I see in decks posted now is some pads that corps play naked on remote servers. Laying down an asset and getting money off of it seems very efficient even if it gets trashed halfway through from the runner, since it costs him a lot. Why dont corps rely on this more?

[gumOnShoe]

If a runner has money (opus/account siphon/etc) they tended to be able to trash a majority of that asset econ back then. Once Andromeda came out, andy-sucker was borne and emergency shutdown really played hard against HB’s big ice. You’re not quite up to date, but here’s a list from just after your time period that won worlds:

http://www.acoo.net/deck/674/worlds-2013-1st-jens-erickson-andy-sucker/

Desperado + Datasucker + Fixed Anarch Breakers. Then having shutdown and account siphon was generally awful for the corp back then. You can certainly play against it, and eve was a big part of that strategy. But tag-me plascrete was the thing for a long time.

[MasterAir]

Asset econ, especially the HB advert cards are very strong. I don’t necessarily think you’re doing anything wrong. In short, assets are typically more productive but more vulnerable. Operation econ is more reliable, instant, but generates fewer credits.

One huge disadvantage of running assets and upgrades is it makes your R&D more porous. If the runner can get cheap looks at R&D they can often see more cards than they would if R&D was mostly operations and ICE. I think the reason assets don’t get played more is the lack of consistency.

Most Assets have a window where the corp loses money on their investment. It’s sometimes, but not always, wise to leave the assets on the table until they are rezzed.

Having said all that, the current metagame has shifted back towards asset economy. The (pretty much undisputed) top corp decks are NBN Fast Advance out of Near-Earth Hub with a full set of PAD campaigns and Marked Accounts and Jinteki:Replicating Perfection Glacier with some combination of Sundew, PAD, Mental Health Clinic, The Root and Melange Mining Corp. Typically these deck also have 6-9 operation econ cards. Your assessment that asset econ is win-win is pretty much spot on. You have to pick your poison as the runner - rich corp or poor runner. Deciding which is best is very situational and part of the joy of Netrunner.

Hope that helps some!

[hotfuss]

Thanks for the answers guys.

You are right about the R&D point you make. Truth be told R&D lock is not something we are really doing atm, and I 've seen a lot of matches where runners keep hammering R&D even if they only get to access 1 card.

[MrMint]

In netrunner, taking the right decision is really important. You’re most likely to take that right decision with proper information. A cheap run on R&D or HQ, even if it’s to see only one card, means cheap information thus better decision making.

[Remorhaz]

when i first started out i lumped all drip econ assets in one category but they all have slightly different niches.

adonis campaign is fantastic for your scoring remote because if the runner wants to trash it he will have to pay through the remote to do so and when its done it will clear itself out the remote for your agendas.

eve campaign is solid but it takes a long time to pay out. not great for a scoring remote but good in a secondary remote with one piece of ice or naked when you are sitting on 5 credits as a place to dump your credits to deny a profitable account siphon.

pad campaign - can be installed in naked remotes. these are especially favorable in HB engineering the future because of the free credit you get for installing them. even if the runner comes to trash them unless he has imp or is whizzard its favorable credit/click swing for the corp.

melange - at on point i could never imagine playing with less than 3 melange in my corp decks. now its often just a 1-of at most acting like a 4th celebrity gift or a card to induce the runner to run when they start playing a passive game. even though there are many other economy options melange is still awesome if you are running cards like corporate troubleshooter and SEA source which can require a truckload of credits to use successfully.

diversify the portfolio. i personally like playing a balanced econ package of 6 transactions and 6 drip assets.if you look a popular winning corp lists you will a nice balance of econ options. NEH usually runs 3 hedge funds/3 sweeps week + 3 marked accounts, 3 pad campaigns and has 3 more slots for pop up window which acts as 3 additional econ cards.

if you look at RP glacier they have 3 mental health clinics/3 sundew + 3 hedge funds and 3 celeb gifts for a nice balance. they can overwhelm the runner with sundews and mental health clinic and crawl back into games with gift when the runner is able to trash the assets and/or siphon them.

hope that helps.