One plascrete definitely doesn’t feel like enough. I feel like I run through Gutenberg’s and Data Ravens, trashing their DBS, and then only to eat a Mjdseasons… Its rough.
Play a very careful money game. If you drop below their credit range, it becomes very dangerous. If you have Imp, go and trash the kill pieces. Utopia helps as well.
If you’re Criminal, Crash Space is equally as good as Scorch, as long as you don’t float tags of course.
And beware of Breaking News. It’s the most dangerous card in the deck.
I’ve been having an unexpected amount of success with Butcher Shop variants in casual games on OCTGN, and the thing with it is that most of the time people lose against you rather than you winning against them.
Don’t steal a single agenda you don’t have to. You only need to steal agendas when they’re going to win, or if it’s a Breaking News. Being 5-0 up means nothing, really - their primary win condition cares not for agenda points. It’s very difficult for these decks to win by agenda points, so they’re really looking for a credit advantage to land the Midseasons, or Breaking News shenanigans.
So money up. Don’t cut Plascretes. Hold IHW in hand. Play Utopia Shard if you’re really worried about it. Don’t ever steal an NAPD. Only steal agendas when you have a credit lead, or any of the above cards in play/in hand, and pray it’s not a Breaking News.
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The idea to never score is good. However, Unless you’ve got Clot, Butcher shop can put you in a tough spot by putting out an Astro. So it’s not quite as simple as you are making it sound.
This is sooooo true. I personally think it’s strictly better than TGTBT in that build. When your opponent are aware that you play Butchershop, they will never run last click anyway.
I faced one during the third Euregio in Aachen last sunday. I had one plascrete installed, he had the econ lead (I had a rough start econ wise) and he just installed one agenda on unrez sansan with a advancement token on it. If I go to steal the BN, I’m dead because of midseason if I don’t I’m dead because he can play Trafic accident and double scorch anyway.
That play alone makes the Breaking News way more useful than TGTBT.
At some point, you should just go TagMe especially if you have a plascrete on board. The corp will pay a massive amount of creds just to be certain to land his midseason and it will just screw his econ engine after that. Except if the corp got the kill, you should never remove token from your plascrete anyway in this matchup.
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Sure, the deck wins games by putting you into lose/lose situations. But running a face down remote when you’re in Midseasons range (or close to it - beware Sweeps/Hedge into Midseasons) in case it’s an Astro is almost always going to be a worse call than not running it and accepting that it might be an Astro. The latter case means that you’ll be easier to kill later on, but the former risks losing the game right now. Maybe it’s an acceptable risk if it’s early in the game and you don’t think they’ve got the kill cards in hand, but it’s still borderline at best.
As for Breaking News vs TGTBT, I’m running 3-2 in favour of BN, because it really is the most dangerous card in the deck (other than, y’know, the kill pieces), and I’m thinking of cutting the TGTBT’s altogether. Their purpose isn’t to catch someone out last click as such, it’s to punish someone who’s run through a Data Raven and/or Gutenberg and thought they had one fewer tag to clear than they’ve ended up with. It’s probably marginal at best, and might be better served by running Beale instead such that the threat of scoring out is more credible.
I 100% agree. At some point it’s better to go for the agenda, hoping they don’t have all the pieces yet to going through the plascrete and that you can win before they do.
My point was that Breaking News is better than TGTBT because it can give you the possibility to set up a situation of inevitability (die if you run, die if you don’t) in a way TGTBT cannot. 
BTW, I went 5-1 on the day with a classic neh fastrobiotic + 2 cyberdex virus suite. It’s like people already forgot how to play against the deck. That was really unexpected.
In fact, if you run to get an agenda, the worst case scenario who could happen is to be flooded in tag afterward. Assuming your opponent has a midseason in hand, enough money to land it and still be relevant for a double scorch or traffic accident into scorch. Compared to outright losing because your opponent managed to score a breaking news on board, I think it’s a risk you should take.
Well in this case I was at two points and my opponent at 0. I wouldn’t have lost the game without the double scorch + traffic accident already in his hand ^^
If they put a card on a sansan and advance it once, it probably means that he has the kill in his hand despite you having a plas on board. Which also means you should have ran the server to steal the breaking news, even on click 1 if it’s needed to remove the raven tags. It still better than just being outright killed by the double scorch + traffic accident. Being hit by a midseason means that you still have at least one turn to win through a central since he can’t kill you on the same turn. And your opponent still need 6 creds to do so, something he probably won’t have if he landed a huge midseason.
But TGTBT gives the runner a tempo hit and also makes multi-accesses much more deadly. I think Niclas variant where he runs 2BN/3 TGTBT is really good.
I got to agree the 2BN/3TGTBT version is the bomb, i took my take on it to sydney regional and it only dropped 1 game all day more due to my bad plays then anything else
besides the tempo hit TGTBT can give, the normal scoring remote i had was DR->DR, double advance. pretty much means the runner has to go in, click one or they are tagged, with clearning droping there credits for midseasons, or they go into panic mode and cashup/run every where. Because if they dont access and its a breaking news its over as well! so Loose Loose
for my secret tech i took Yagura and Universal Connectivity Fee, yagura shores up your rnd forcing out a decoder after tags and the 1 netdamage can clear the IHW, could be swapped for cortex but i think forcing a decoder and safer rnd(dam you parasite) is better, Also doing data raven ->UCF->double advance gives you evil giggles when PPVP Kate with endless money explodes
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Now it protects against lab dog. 
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So I took an NBN FA deck to the recent UK nationals. I ended up finishing second on the day. Of the 13 runner decks I played I faced 9 shaper decks all with clot (!!). I went 6-3 over these 9 games, which I was pretty happy about given people on here and elsehwere saying that matchup is almost an autolose for NBN. There was another NBN FA deck in the top 8, and he must have encountered a lot of clot given the amount of Kate being played. While I think RP is definitely the best deck at the moment, I think that these kind of results show that NBN FA is clearly still a tier 1 deck.
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If most Kate plays ProCo instead of QT and Vamp instead of parasite, no wonder that you did an amazing job with your Grail NEH.
It’s like putting a strong hate card then shooting in their foot twice to compensate.their silver bullet.
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Those cards are pretty great against RP and BS though. Both me and the champion had all 3 pro co and vamp. Its not like all the Kate decks ran those cards, just those ones with win rates high enough to get into the top 16 against a predominantly glacier field
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like thats the only reason Tim got to 2nd place overall
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Dude, let it go. You’re trying to tell the ProCo running UK nats runner up, who lost to more ProCos, that they both shot themselves in the foot? Given the number of Blacklists in current NEH builds the more controlled draw of ProCo is probably just as good and certainly less risky than QT, and the improvement in the RP matchup is so vast that even if it does lose a percent or two to NEH you more than pick it up elsewhere. I tested with @Tim, @xenasis and @vinegarymink the monday before nats. I decided to go back to QT after one or two slightly awkward games, while they all stuck with Proco. Guess which one of us didn’t make T16? Proco version is simply superior in the current meta.
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My remark was mostly aimed at parasite though.
Not playing Parasite make the grail suite way more annoying to go through repetitively and it SUCKS hard in this matchup if somehow the corp managed to score an astro before you got your first SMC on board.
Proco or not, cutting parasite for vamp is like giving 30% winrate back to NEH Grail.