Runaround - The Adam Thread

Oh god. Finding the Truth Noise is actually probably a better use of the card than it is in Adam.

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sorry for straying off topic here:

There’s two ways of seeing Noise’s ability. Ones that it removes cards from the corps play, the other is that it opens up another server with fresh random cards in it. Given most corps put good cards in their deck, it feels questionable that you’ll get a lot of value out of targetting specific cards with your ability if it costs additional resources.

I am otoh very excited for finding the truth in Adam. Neutralise all threats is incredibly harmful early game, it opens scoring windows all over the place and hampers your setup. Lategame it’s great, if the remote is sort of locked. Just like legwork is great, getting another access is wonderful. Finding the truth still lets you “see” 2 cards early game for running HQ, but it’s risk is way less. Sure they get to see I’m on golden: what gives. I’ll happily draw into neutralise all threats for the lategame, when the economy is set up enough to deal with it’s downside, and when agendas become more concentrated across the centrals.

As for other archetypes, you could potentially actually set up a lategame focussed Adam, if you can find the influence for multiple copies of breakers (idk about you, but I cheat with safety first and always be running to run 1x of each and draw into them as I race through my deck).

Both ways you identify make find the truth good in Noise. For accessing agendas, you only have so many viruses, you can’t mill the corp every turn, so this lets you save your viruses for when there is an agenda. For depriving the corp of cards, their cards are situational depending on the state of the game. If they have lots of credits you might let them keep their economy cards but mill their ice, or the other way around if they have few credits.

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Having a permanent peek at the corp’s R&D is extremely strong. I suspect many Adams will be playing some amount of Freedom Through Equality with it. I mean, it’s better than Sunny’s Security Clearance thing, and it’s as good as having a permanent Spy Camera. I agree with most of you that taking out Neutralize all Threats is the way to go here. That card is bad news early on, and can lose you the game. Now, with all the bullshit tagstorm, you REALLY don’t want Neutralize. Excited to try Adam again with Truth. Solid work Damon. :thumbsup:

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Just play misdirection and Multithreaders and go tag me with Obelus. Duh

Misdirection is actually a really, really good card in Adam.

As long as there’s an open server to run on, it’s exactly the same as Sunny’s Security Clearance, with the downside of revealing cards you draw, and the upside of being able to use the ability on not just your first click. Except that ABR does ‘soft’ force it to be the first click.

In my (limited) games of Adam, the downside that’s hurt the most has always been ABR’s downside of requiring a run at the beginning of the turn. ABR’s upside is just so phenomenally good in the early game that it’s worth the downside.

Downsides of the various Directives:
NAT: Must trash cards. This one is not a huge issue, since for the most part, if you can trash a card, you generally will/should. The problems come about vs CtM, and any other Asset Spam lists… Though you may notice, this is only an issue if you’re forced to run those assets… This downside hurts the most in the early game, and once you get your economy established, doesn’t hurt much in the mid-lategame.

ABR: Must run first click. Not a large issue early game, though it does open you up to HHN and SEA and other unpleasantness. (Spiky Jinteki decks, for example.) Its real downside is that it forces you to facecheck and prevents you from developing your board. There’s a reason Eli is a good piece of ICE, despite being able to double-click through it forever. I’d say this downside hurts the most in the midgame, least in the earlygame, and is an annoyance in the lategame.

Safety First: Reduced Hand Size. This one is a bit odd. It mainly warps deckbuilding, as if this downside didn’t exist, I’m not sure that Brain Chip, Brain Cage, or Public Sympathy would ever be considered for Adam decks. (Brain Chip, at least, is debatable.) The main downside to this is that you are imminently killable by Scorch decks. Otherwise the downside essentially doesn’t mean anything. This one hurts the most against Weyland and NEH/Haarpsichord, and doesn’t hurt against anyone else.

Find the Truth: Reveal cards you draw. Another odd one. I don’t feel this is really that bad, as long as you aren’t running certain cards. If you run Account Siphon, Yog, Stimhack, or Inside Job, this downside is actually notable. If you don’t run any of those cards, I don’t really feel it impacts you. So this one more matters at the Deckbuilding phase, just like Safety First. It’s entirely able to be mitigated in deckbuilding by simply not caring if the Corp knows what you have. (Although it does have a severe weakness to Salem’s Hospitality.)

But what about the upsides of those cards?
NAT: Extra HQ access. For free, it’s not bad. HQ Interface doesn’t see play more because it costs 4 than because its effect isn’t powerful. It’s good, but tacked onto that particular downside makes it a little awkward. (Generally you want to trash assets/upgrades after they’ve been rezzed, with the exceptions of Jackson and Defensive Upgrades. Trashing out of HQ is fine though, because it increases the quality of future HQ accesses.) On the whole, this upside is good, but nothing too awesome.

ABR: Click twice to break a subroutine. This one is awesome. Straight gas in the early game. However, you definitely don’t want to leave it at this. Once you have actual breakers set up, this ability is really poor. The benefit to it is that you absolutely have it at the beginning thanks to Adam’s ID power. If you had to draw through your deck to find this and install it, its usefulness would plummet. A+ in the Early Game, and then falls off rapidly into the mid and lategame.

Safety First: Draw a card at end of turn if at less than handsize. This is also a severely powerful effect. At minimum, the next best card draw effect is paying a credit up front and a credit a turn for one card a turn in Drug Dealer. 6 credits for the dream of Wyldside/Chronotype to have two cards a turn is the epitome of this effect, so getting one card a turn, for free, from the start of the game, is absolutely bonkers.

Find the Truth: An odd ability. I feel it’s actually just as powerful in any stage of the game. Early, it lets you know if it’s worth bothering to make a run and R&D (and mildly disincentivizes the Corp from icing it heavily). While Late, it keeps you from having to make costly runs through R&D ice just to hit nothing.

If you couldn’t have it in play when you started, ABR wouldn’t see play. Safety First might not see play. NAT and FtT would see play. Their downsides don’t truly outweigh their upsides. I feel that there exists a deck for SF+NAT+FtT that doesn’t run ABR, instead opting to set up their board faster using SF’s power while dodging Midseason/SEA. I also think the other good combination is NAT+FtT+ABR, as those three synergize nicely.

Essentially: Take out NAT if the downside is too much, as the upside isn’t particularly nice. Take out SF if you’re facing a Meat Damage deck. Take out ABR if you have a plan for the long game. Take out FtT if you think lategame is for suckers. (While FtT is powerful both early and late, Adam’s first three directives combined paint a picture of heavy earlygame advantage that doesn’t carry through to the lategame. FtT is good at all stages, and better for the lategame than any of the others.)

EDIT: Uh, didn’t realize it’d get this long. If I felt more confident in these conclusions I’d make this an article. As it is, though, I have maybe two weeks worth of experience with Adam and these are my conclusions with that limited exposure…

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I agree with your assessment here. I honestly think Adam needs to be playing the anarch heap suite (such as we have them). Paperclip is excellent considering you can actually discard it from Safety First if you don’t want to play it right away.

I’m not that experienced with Adam (I played him for a long time when he came out, but haven’t touched him since Bio lock became a thing. Anyone having success with the new directive? What are you lists?

I sorta have the same track record. I did play him a bit of the way through Mumbad, at least, but once the Argus deck showed up in my meta I had to stop playing him because he just rolls over and dies to Argus because of the combination of ABR, NAT, and SF. When you’re forced to run every turn and forced to spend credits trashing things and forced to a 3 card hand… SEA Scorch ends your game very quickly.

With the new Directive I’m going to take another look at him.

Long, but great assessment.

The new directive really makes me want to pack a few back up directives and jam independent thinking. I really think losing ABR after say, turn 4 rather than wasting influence on cards like E3 is pretty choice. The fact of the matter is that ABR is really only good until servers become 2 deep unless you want to do some weird gymnastics, which is helpful but also kind of bleh.

Independent thinking is difficult to get the full payout for, but if there were more cards like Cache in Adam that you could get a benefit for installing, running dry and then cashing out it would help those builds out greatly.

The new directive at least gives me some hope, but yeah Adam does have some bigger problems to overcome first.

I had the same sort of thought and drafted this up:

Compulsive Conspiracies

Adam: Compulsive Hacker (Data and Destiny)

Event (10)
1x “Freedom Through Equality” (Democracy and Dogma)
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
3x Independent Thinking (Data and Destiny)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (7)
3x Brain Chip (Data and Destiny)
3x Cybsoft MacroDrive (All That Remains) [color=#32CD32]●●●[/color]
1x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)

Resource (16)
1x Aesop’s Pawnshop (Core Set) [color=#32CD32]●●[/color]
1x Always Be Running (Data and Destiny)
3x Armitage Codebusting (Core Set)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
1x Find the Truth i[/i]
2x John Masanori (Opening Moves)
1x Neutralize All Threats (Data and Destiny)
1x Safety First (Data and Destiny)
3x Wasteland (Data and Destiny) [color=undefined]●●●●● ●[/color]

Icebreaker (5)
1x Black Orchestra i[/i] [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
1x Mimic (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●[/color]
2x Overmind (Honor and Profit)
1x Paperclip (Blood Money) [color=#FF4500]●●●[/color]

Program (11)
3x Cache (The Spaces Between) [color=#4169E1]●●●[/color]
2x Datasucker (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
3x Harbinger (Data and Destiny) [color=undefined]●●●[/color]
3x Multithreader (Data and Destiny)
25 influence spent (max 25, available 0)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Escalation

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

It’s 49 cards because I have all four directives, but I don’t have them in the deck, I just want to choose 3 of the 4 to start the game with. (Kinda wondering how Jinteki.net will interpret that.)

As I’d said above, because I can choose to not start with SF against Weyland/NEH, it opened up the deckslots taken by Brain Cage/Public Sympathy. John Masanori seems like a good include for this sort of ‘trash my own stuff’ Adam rig. Sure you might take a tag first click, but that’s fine and clearable, and if it becomes a problem, you can sell him or Think Apart… The Wastelands are greedy and are probably going to be first cuts, turning into Aesop’s. Because of Independent Thinking, extra copies of cards aren’t that bad to have.

The idea I had behind this was that I would be able to get some early points to allow me MU to build out a silly rig. It’s possible this isn’t feasible. Overmind gets the nod here, although I plan on using my MU, simply because it’s good early and late.

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@CodeMarvelous:

The decklist you asked:

2 Career Fair
3 Dirty Laundry
1 Employee Strike
1 Independent Thinking
3 Injection Attack
1 Legwork
2 Modded
1 Networking
3 The Maker’s Eye

3 Brain Chip
2 e3 Feedback Implants
2 Plascrete Carapace

3 Armitage Codebusting
3 Data Folding
3 Dr. Lovegood
1 Kati Jones
2 New Angeles City Hall
2 Public Sympathy

1 GS Shrike M2
3 Overmind
1 Sage
2 Multithreader

Ideas:
career fair and modded take cards out of your hands to help with Safety First. You can up your hand limit with public sympathy. Or (better yet) with Brain chip. So you have to score first turn with chip in hand. Adam has build in multi-access with NAT but this isn’t enough. So you have to use legwork or makers eye. If you score, you’re golden, if you don’t, you can try next turn.

You can get in with ABR first turn. Only multisubs etr’s can hold you then. if they rez hq ice with multisub, chances are you can try your luck with r&d… Along the way you will score points or get locked out. you’ll have plenty of MU. I choose to use it on overmind and Sage. Sage is sweet in that it is your inti (wraparound) and turing-breaker. But it costs 2c/sub. But that’s why we have E3! lot’s of ice fold to Sage with E3. Problem is that the strength is dependable on the MU’s that are left. Enter Injection Attack. It helps with overmind and Sage. Corp thinks you cannot get in? --> Injection attack.

How do you pay for that? Armitage Codebusting, Data Folding and Kati Jones will do the trick. Multithreader will help pay for either overmind or Sage.

But we live in a Tag-heavy meta. What about that? Networking will help with HHn, hopefully you have the Dr. helping you… NACH prevents the tags from BN and so prevents ASI/Information Exchange. Again, the Dr. is kind enough to let you score that while keeping your NACH.

Public Sympathy is there to increase a hand modifier in your starting hand.

This is what i played before the 4th directive came out. For now, i’ll try this with switching up the directives with the matchup.

I kind of want to try mass install. Comboed with Independent Thinking you might almost break even in terms of effective installs/trashes. Especially with cards like Harbringer/Cache in the build.

I really like Wasteland, but I would probably make a 1x.

Paperclip and Black Orchestra are pretty neat in this build.

Endless Hunger is almost a decent nod in this build, if it wasn’t so garbage in the current meta.

I put Independent Thinking 3x because I suspected I’d have Draw problems, not Money problems… Preliminary testing games have shown that to be true. (Once I get an agenda stolen I have the memory to install Suckers and Threaders, and then my runs get super cheap. It’s like a Stealth rig without Stealth cards.)

Definitely not seeing much use for the Wastelands… Are there any cards I’m missing that are useful to trash via Aesop’s/Independent Thinking? Probably dropping the Wasteland entirely. Might go for Career Fair+Earthrise, but that takes card slots… Hmm… Was also noticing that Mimic wasn’t really doing what I wanted, either. Might switch that to some other Sentry breaker… Golden, Garrote, and Shrike look like the plausible candidates.

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THank you

Had a deck I was trying before this pack came out, and the issues it had (taking off) are much improved by having find the truth in play in stead of Neutralize all threats.

PPVP adam

Adam: Compulsive Hacker

Event (16)
1x "Freedom Through Equality"
3x Deuces Wild ●●●
3x Dirty Laundry
2x Independent Thinking
1x Levy AR Lab Access ●●●
3x Lucky Find ●●●●● ●
3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (9)
2x Brain Cage
2x Brain Chip
3x Prepaid VoicePAD ★★★
2x Sports Hopper

Resource (10)
1x Armitage Codebusting
3x Daily Casts
1x Hunting Grounds ●
2x John Masanori
1x Neutralize All Threats
1x Same Old Thing
1x Scrubber ●

Icebreaker (6)
1x Golden ●●
3x Overmind
1x Paperclip ●●●
1x ZU.13 Key Master ●●

Program (4)
1x Datasucker ●
3x Multithreader

Cut Neutralize all threats every time. You need some set up, and randomly seeing a PAD in HQ that you are forced to trash when you don’t have the PPVP’s up yet is killing. You’d need to click for creds to play an event, meaning you potentially can’t trigger safety first and next turn you are in the same hole, basically losing a turn for no investment for the corp. The 1x armitage is filling, couldn’t find better econ. Always be running keeps you dangerous, potentially with an overmind or two. Goal is to race through your deck (2 clickless draws per turn is rad), getting the most out of your 1 offs, to get to a lategame with 3 directives: NAT, FtT, SF. Otherwise pretty basic, Adam’s early game is good, his lategame is sick bc of multithreader/access directives, it’s the bit in between that is the issue. Stay alive and keep that deck moving, the worst thing that can happen to you is that you stall.

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Adam - The Android Netrunner

Adam: Compulsive Hacker (Data and Destiny)

Event (12)
1x “Freedom Through Equality” (Democracy and Dogma)
3x Career Fair (Breaker Bay) [color=#4169E1]●●●[/color]
3x Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control)
2x Injection Attack (23 Seconds)
3x Sure Gamble (Core Set)

Hardware (6)
3x Brain Chip (Data and Destiny)
2x e3 Feedback Implants (Trace Amount) [color=#4169E1]●●●●[/color]
1x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead)

Resource (19)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control)
3x Dr. Lovegood (Data and Destiny)
3x Earthrise Hotel (The Source)
1x Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow)
2x New Angeles City Hall (Future Proof)
2x Public Sympathy (Cyber Exodus)
3x Temüjin Contract (Blood Money) [color=#4169E1]●●●●● ●[/color]
2x The Turning Wheel (The Liberated Mind) [color=#708090]●●[/color]

Icebreaker (7)
1x Corroder (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
1x Inti (Creation and Control) [color=#32CD32]●[/color]
1x Mimic (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●[/color]
2x Overmind (Honor and Profit)
2x ZU.13 Key Master (What Lies Ahead) [color=#32CD32]●●●●[/color]

Program (2)
2x Datasucker (Core Set) [color=#FF4500]●●[/color]
25 influence spent (max 25, available 0)
46 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Blood Money

Decklist published on NetrunnerDB.

Not sure about playing 2 NACH without Film Critic or Fall Guy, and two Zu.13 seems odd when you could just get something stronger for the same influence, but otherwise looks reasonable.

NACH doesnt need film critic I have lovegood. Zu.13 is so i can get it out of my hand easily since all my cards are drawn visible to the corp

Lovegood a pretty good way to extend the lifespan of your NACH. Doesn’t help if you have to run through a Data Raven, but it’s otherwise fine.

I also want to question the Zus. If you’re running suckers, I don’t see a good reason to skip Yog. Yog is real good right now.