Tag the Message

I haven’t tried CTM yet but I wanna try it with Red Herrings. Ash is probably better due to higher trash cost and still functional versus Critic

This is a BOOM-ready deck :wink:

I played vs a Sync like this one yesterday, made me wanted to ragequit :slight_smile:

ultimately I expect whiz to continue playing an important role in the meta, and I play two employee strikes in some of my decks as well, which should keep stuff like this down for a little bit. Maybe. But pretty keen to try the above list with two ash.

I think Whizz will be in the meta the same way Kate was in the MWL1 meta: a much diminished shade of the once-dominant deck that it once was.

Essentially, Whiz and CtM mutually blank each other’s ID’s. In MWL2 I’m more comfortable playing against a blank anarch ID than a lot of other runners.

As far as Ash goes:
The ICE doesn’t do a lot, runners won’t have any trouble breaking it once they have breakers; the ICE taxes very little relative to the assets. Ash does offer a trace, which can offer a further swing in my favor, but I primarily score agendas by asset bluff or FA, so Ash would not often protect an agenda, more likely a SSCG, which could be fairly formidable.

The issues becomes, I’d be removing the very card I want Ash to protect. I could swap a BN for 15 minutes instead, it may be worth it. Nothing stings quite as much as EoI to give the runner 15 minutes, only to take that away later. It’s still weaker than a BN, but it could be manageable.

That actually seems fairly similar to the list I put together. I went with the Museum route, even with the nerf, to extra capitalize on the must-trash-tax of the deck.

I haven’t played with it yet, because I haven’t necessarily been happy with the ice ratio (I’ve never really played with low-ice Museum or NBN decks, so I’m not sure I trust it yet), but I’m interested in giving it a shot.

Controlling The Deck

NBN: Controlling the Message (23 Seconds)

Agenda (11)
1x AstroScript Pilot Program (Core Set)
3x Breaking News (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]☆☆☆[/color]
1x Explode-a-palooza (Old Hollywood)
2x Global Food Initiative (Data and Destiny) [color=#708090]●●[/color]
3x Project Beale (Future Proof)
1x Restructured Datapool (What Lies Ahead)

Asset (16)
3x Aryabhata Tech (Salsette Island)
2x Daily Business Show (All That Remains)
3x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves)
1x Marked Accounts (Cyber Exodus)
2x Museum of History (Kala Ghoda) [color=#708090]○○○○[/color]
3x PAD Campaign (Core Set)
2x Sandburg (23 Seconds)

Upgrade (4)
1x Cyberdex Virus Suite (Order and Chaos)
3x SanSan City Grid (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]☆☆☆[/color]

Operation (11)
2x Exchange of Information (The Liberated Mind)
2x Hard-Hitting News (23 Seconds)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
1x Psychographics (Core Set)
3x Sweeps Week (True Colors)

Barrier (3)
3x Resistor (Data and Destiny)

Code Gate (4)
2x Archangel (Data and Destiny)
2x Tollbooth (Core Set)

Sentry (5)
2x Caduceus (What Lies Ahead) [color=#006400]●●●●[/color]
3x Turnpike (Data and Destiny)
6 influence spent (max 12-6☆=6, available 0)
22 agenda points (between 22 and 23)
54 cards (min 45)
Cards up to 23 Seconds

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

From previous posts in here, I like the idea of trying to fit in Tech Startups. Not sure how, though. Probably Sandburg and Marked Accounts are overkill and can be replaced with the Startups? I might sleeve this up as an alternate play deck and just see how it runs.

From the feedback and testing I’ve done, I’ve found:

  1. Sensie Actor’s Union is better than DBS. The ID Trace is the main deterrent to trashing the card, and Sensie is much more powerful than DBS.
  2. Marked Accounts isn’t typically necessary, since it takes a click it will slow down your econ.
  3. The traces on Caduceus are weak, most link runners will run through them without a second thought, the others will break it with mimic, or force you to boost traces to get value from the ICE. Viper gets better (and costs less influence) since runners normally dodge the first trace by running last click, but Aryabhata Tech gives any trace teeth.
  4. Mumbad Virtual Tour is an amazing card in the CtM ID. I recommend 3.
  5. If you want tags to last, Midseasons.
  6. If I could fit in Franchise City, I would. This deck hasn’t been about keeping runners out, but punishing them for getting in and leveraging more benefit from runner accesses than the runner does. To that end I don’t really agree with Sandburg or Tollbooth.
  7. If there is a Datapool, somehow the runner always finds it to win from 4.

So my philosophy is [quote=“BubbaTheGoat”]
the runner will get in and access servers, but I will benefit more than he from these accesses
[/quote]

To that end, I focus on becoming able to land tags via HHN and Midseasons with my ICE. This means that I am trying to leverage a credit differential with each piece, ideally gaining immediate advantage. This means that Pop-Up window is my favorite piece of ICE. Other solid pieces are Resistor and Turnpike when Aryabhata Tech is out. Archangel is a powerful deterrent, and the trace also combos well. Gutenberg is excellent on R&D, but I don’t always use it, it has gone in and out of my list because of it’s focused use. Tollbooth is pretty good, but I dislike high rez cost. If I rez Tollbooth, I can’t often realistically threaten to FA on my next turn, which is a threat I try to keep alive as much as possible.

MVT work well because it punishes a runner access with a 5c loss and a trace for a tag. Many runners will be caught wearing that tag, but the ones that don’t are setting you up for a tag play. Use tags to swap GFI and psycho advance, or just plain old closed accounts will work wonders. A worthwhile note in my ICE suite is Resistor is the only ETR, followed by a Popup behind other ICE that leaves the runner broke (e.g it costs a runner 5c and a tag to walk through Turnpike and a Popup with 3 Aryabhata tech rezzed).

Archived memories is awesome for recurring anything. Tag punishment cards are high on the list of cards to recur. Biotic Labor is still a great card in any deck that wants to FA.

So, based on that, now what I am thinking is:

-1 Restructured Datapool
-2 Tollbooth
-2 Caduceus (giving me 4 inf back)
-2 Daily Business Show
-2 Sandburg
-2 Hard-Hitting News
-1 Marked Accounts

+1 Global Food (leaving me with 3 inf)
+3 Viper (leaving me with 0 inf)
+2 Pop-up Window
+2 Mumbad Virtual Tour
+2 Sensie Actor’s Union
+2 Midseasons Replacements

I’d love a 1x Biotic Labor, but the 12 inf pretty much blocks me from including it. Otherwise I’d -1 Viper +1 Biotic. :cry:

Took down a regionals with this CtM deck yesterday. It’s pretty good, though not immediately legal with new MWL. :slight_smile:

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Everyone and their mom is winning tournaments with CTM. This isn’t a crack at you, just a testament to the power of this ID. The fact that it can be built many different ways and still win reliably is more evidence.

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I think 0 tollbooth is certainly wrong if you’re running any econ assets at all. Bankers is crazy good. I’m thinking -1 bankers -1 something +1 Sansan + 1 Mumba Temple. The SanSan is just to get another tool against Blackmail spam.

Yup. My guess is that people don’t yet know how to play against it. I faced like two people who said “oh, haven’t played against this ID yet” and one who had played a single game (against some other type of CtM, probably).

I honestly think that playing around HHN is not that hard if there’s no synergy corp side (SYNC, PTD, Aryabhata etc), hence no HHN in my build. I faced at least a couple decks trying to HHN runners in the regionals and it’s not that great if the runner has over 10c because it starts to get expensive to stick. It’s a good card if the runner has like less than 5c.

The correct way to play against these decks seems to be: trash all real econ (Bankers, Suffrage…) after you’ve got yourself enough money (aka. ASAP) and keep checking remotes for BN. Keep enough money to avoid problems and eventually the agendas will pile up in HQ.
This works, but if you’ve got specific hate (EStrike etc), you can probably play more efficiently.

HHN is nothing if you have more than 8 credits. One thing the corp can do though is make a tasty looking remote and then play HHN last click (providing they have econ advantage). So the runner either:

  • pays the trace and runs, leaving them poor for the next turn.
  • takes the tags and clears them, leaving your remote safe.
  • takes the tags and leaves them and runs the remote.
  • Plays Paper Tripping, and runs the remote.

I am finding more and more that Sync feels like a blank version of CTM. SYnc was amazing as a single remote rush deck, but the MWL has killed this archetype.

What I kind of like about CTM is that it lets assets live for a while, so people can build decks with whatever cards they feel like are good for them, and not just with tasty ratios.

Yes the strategy is to money up, trash 3 things, but the decisions are interesting and it doesn’t feel half as degenerate as the IG/Gagarin decks.

That’s my 2 cents, anyway.

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If the corp has any Aryabhata Tech rezzed, the runner needs more than 8 credits. That oversight has allowed me to land many tags that would have been avoided at 10c.

Paper Tripping and Networking are still very solid tech against CtM, which obviously swings the game in the runner’s favor. If they are packing a lot of good tech, it will be a hard match to win (as is the nature of silver bullets).

I ran your deck a couple of times tonight and it did very well. The bankers are so good! I sat on 75 credits at one point.

I agree. I see Netrunner moving toward a model where it’s easier to get the Runner tagged, but harder to get those tags to stick around until the Corp can actually do anything about it. (Only problem with that is Midseasons. I absolutely cannot wait until Midseasons rotates. I think it’s a huge design mistake). That’s awesome, but I hope that we get some more runner cards that interact with tags along with it. Those cards mentioned are great in that kind of meta, but I’d like to see more and I think it’s a rather rich and unexplored design space.

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Here is my CtM list from Gencon. I don’t know what place I ended in, but I peaked at 16-22 in rounds 5-7, and fell far enough from there that I don’t really want to know my final standing.

Hard-mode CtM (with help from spags)

NBN: Controlling the Message (23 Seconds)

Agenda (10)
1x AstroScript Pilot Program (Core Set)
3x Breaking News (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]☆☆☆[/color]
3x Global Food Initiative (Data and Destiny) [color=#708090]●●●[/color]
3x Project Beale (Future Proof)

Asset (8)
3x Aryabhata Tech (Salsette Island)
2x Jackson Howard (Opening Moves)
3x PAD Campaign (Core Set)

Upgrade (7)
2x Cyberdex Virus Suite (Order and Chaos)
3x Mumbad Virtual Tour (Salsette Island) [color=#708090]○○○○○ ○[/color]
2x SanSan City Grid (Core Set) [color=#FF8C00]☆☆[/color]

Operation (15)
1x Biotic Labor (Core Set) [color=#8A2BE2]●●●●[/color]
1x Closed Accounts (Core Set)
2x Exchange of Information (The Liberated Mind)
2x Hard-Hitting News (23 Seconds)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
2x Midseason Replacements (Future Proof)
1x Psychographics (Core Set)
3x Sweeps Week (True Colors)

Barrier (3)
3x Resistor (Data and Destiny)

Code Gate (3)
3x Pop-up Window (Cyber Exodus)

Sentry (3)
3x Turnpike (Data and Destiny)
7 influence spent (max 12-5☆=7, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to 23 Seconds

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

I really like this deck. It plays a tempo style similar to what @TheBigBoy describes here. I didn’t come close to winning, or even making a run at the top 8, but I don’t think that is the fault of this deck. I believe a better pilot could have brought this deck further.

Writeup can be found here

Here is a new CTM archetype to fear.

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Thoughts on the recently released Friends in High Places for CtM? At just 2 play cost and 1 inf (!!), it seems like an amazing tempo swing. Once the runner gets a bit of money to swat down your board, shrug and recur two assets for the low cost of 2 credits and a single click. Interns could do this earlier, but 1 click and 2 creds for 2 cards vs. 2 clicks for 1 card is a far better deal. In addition to this, you become a lot more resilient to ice destruction in case that’s somehow a problem.

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yes seems a good fit.

What do you cut for it, though? 1x Banker’s group and 1x PAD for 2x Friends?