Testing C&C cards

Netrunner General
1

I’m sure some of you have tested out the new C&C cards. Any thoughts? How wrong was Alex?

I sent this to a friend last night after playing several games at my FLGS:

I tried my CT deck tonight, and it worked out ok. The real star of the night in every game, though, was Indexing. I literally scored 7 AP off one Indexing – didn’t even need a Maker’s Eye. A Stimhacked Morning Star was enough to do the dirty work.

Honestly, I think Indexing is so insane I’m going to build a deck around it. We’re talking Test Run, Scavenge, Maker’s Eye, Femme, Cyber-cypher, Escher, SMC, Stimhack.

On the corp side Successful Demonstration was not as good as I had hoped. It was honestly a kind of dead card in my hand a lot of the time. Cerebral Overwriter was ok, not great, so I think I’m going to scrap Matrix Analyzer in HB. Honestly I wished I was just running Secretaries and had Bastions there instead.

Bastion was really good, it just makes those R&D runs really taxing. I’d like to try Jinteki RP with Alix, I think Alix could be surprisingly good. Minelayer was really good using the old HB identity, as well. Howler was not good. Ichi 2.0 was OK, but the original is probably better just because it’s cheaper. Heimdall 2.0 was reasonable, actually, though it gets crushed by E3. Perhaps with Wotan and Tyr’s Hand it could be better.

Gila Hands was reasonable. Next Design did not seem nearly as good as ETF, and noone played any of the other HB idents. Bioroid Efficiency Research seemed pretty solid, but gives away a Femme target. Datapike was bad, Levy University was bad, Viktor 2.0 was reasonable, and Zed never seemed to hit.

I played against an Exile deck and it was actually tough – there were always fucking cards coming out of nowhere [edit: by nowhere I mean his bin] and he had good econ by just Aesoping shit and Freelance Coding. I only got a break because of a late Aggressive Secretary that opened a window to score my last few points. Basically he opens with like QT, Diesel, Freelance Coding, so he’s up like 7 credits, has all the breakers he needs in the bin, and has tutoring cards in hand. Gah annoying.

[…[

I’m sure there will be Weyland tag and bag decks with brain damage cards, and I haven’t even thought about how HB FA is affected by the new cards at all. It scares me a bit to even consider it.

2

Also, Daily Casts was really, really good. I’d find it tough to not run 3-of in every runner deck I make. I know people will be comparing it to Armitage and saying on a click/credit basis it’s similar, but it’s really not – not having to spend clicks to make money is actually a huge deal.

Oh, and for context I wanted to test out SMC/Stimhack as a combo and Test Run/Scavenge as a combo. All cards (with the exception of maybe Scavenge, but even with Femme it’s solid) are good, so I figured in combination they’d be interesting. This is the CT deck I ran to test these out:

Identity:
Chaos Theory: Wunderkind (Cyber Exodus)

Total Cards: (41)
Event (20)
Scavenge (Creation and Control #34) x3
Test Run (Cyber Exodus #47) x3
Stimhack (Core #4) x2 ■
Indexing (Future Proof #106) x3
Dirty Laundry (Creation and Control #52) x2
Sure Gamble (Core #50) x3
Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow #87) x2
Tinkering (Core #37) x2

Hardware (4)
R&D Interface (Future Proof #107) x3
Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead #9) x1

Program (12)
Morning Star (What Lies Ahead #4) x2 ■■■■
Datasucker (Core #8) x3 ■
Gordian Blade (Core #43) x2
Femme Fatale (Core #26) x2 ■
Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control #46) x3

Resource (5)
Daily Casts (Creation and Control #53) x3
Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow #91) x2

3

I’ve found that dirty laundry and thomas are as amazing as we thought they would be

4

Ah, I didn’t get a chance to run Thomas. Dirty Laundry’s good, but I think I’d be comfortable running it as a 2-of… there were times I was wishing it was a Sure Gamble or a Tinkering or something.

5

Oh, one more thing I suppose – it seems like it was wise to rush against Shapers at one point. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, I think. There are far too many ways to tutor cards or temporarily bypass ice, so actually having assets/traps to bait runs and burn tricks seems good to me.

6

Yeah, whoever tries to campare Daily Casts to Armitage must be confused. Daily Casts is 5 credits for 1 click (6 credits if you run Aesop’s, say in a Noise pawnshop deck, credits which you would finish getting a turn early). Armitage is 11 credits for 7 clicks (or 12 credits for 6 clicks with pawnshop), which is nowhere near as efficient per click. Plus, you can get two Daily Casts running at the same time, whereas having a second Armitage installed doesn’t add benefit.

Daily Casts + Kati Jones seems like a really strong resource economy, which can then be supplemented by some event econ cards.

You mention Cyber-cypher: do you think it is viable? would it be for an attack R&D only deck?

7

Played my first game with Exile, just to see a lot of C&C cards. My observations:

Daily Cast is really nice, I think it was better then I thought. Kati felt slow though, I might need to tweak my economy too.

Atman was great too, but needs money. I played HB ETF and faced all kind of 2-3 routine ICE. Forcing me 4-6€ per run.

Exile really needs 3 diesel and 3 quality time.

Overall I could do better, but I think Exile is not tier 1

8

Yeah Cyber-cypher would be placed on R&D. Alright, maybe that one I can cut, haha.

I’m gonna play Exile with some peeps tonight, I’ll report back my findings.

9

Played an better Exile deck which splashed Datasucker, Djinn and Parasites. Got things out with Personal Workshop and relied on Opus for money.

EDIT: also, Effiency Committee is very nice, working with Gila Hands Aecology or purging virustokens.

10

seems great. If account siphon is “the” card, then datasucker is “the other” card.

11

Played my first-pass Exile and my rebuilt Stronger Together decks for fun at league play tonight. Came in third, surprisingly, with the highest SoS by far. Snagged a Kate, so that’s my Season 2 playset complete already :smiley: :D.

HBST games still go really long, doubly so now that there are so many Bioroids that really tar-pit conventional rigs. Viktor 2.0 was a total star, as nobody wants to see a str6 code gate, and Efficiency Research on Janus is so nice. I even beat Andromeda and Gabe with it; though I lost long games to a better Andy deck and a hyper-aggro CT deck.

I constantly felt like my Exile deck sucked, and was sucking, but I found a way to win every game with him anyway. There are so many tricks you can pull with recurring Atman. I even stole an agenda by test-running an atman past an ice wall, letting Ichi trash it, and clone-chipping it back to get past rototurret vs. HBFA. Amazeballs. I think I averaged 5 additional card draws through heap recursion.

I’m not totally sold on him yet, but with some refinement I think he might have a great future. Many people crashed and burned with their first-pass Kit decks.

1 Like
12

Datasucker is amazing, agreed :).

Oh, and I got Account Siphoned five times in a game vs. Andy. I lost, naturally, but it was 7-4 and went 24 turns, which is amazing progress for HBST.

13

Cool man, what’s your Exile deck look like? I got to test out an Exile deck tonight a few times and was surprisingly happy with it. I originally ran Parasites, which I thought I would recur with Clone Chip, but honestly found myself with better options almost all of the time.

Freelance Coding Contracts was actually not bad at all, because you’d honestly rather be Test Running out of your bin than your deck. You’re able to draw into all the Test Run/Scavenges and econ that you need, put your rig into your bin then go from there. It was cool, but as always, R&D runs were king.

Here’s mine after a few tweaks:

Identity:
Exile: Streethawk (Creation and Control)

Total Cards: (45)
Event (29)
Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow #87) x3
Freelance Coding Contract (Creation and Control #33) x2
Diesel (Core #34) x2
Indexing (Future Proof #106) x3
Stimhack (Core #4) x3 ■
Scavenge (Creation and Control #34) x3
Sure Gamble (Core #50) x3
Escher (Creation and Control #31) x1
Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control #35) x1
The Maker’s Eye (Core #36) x3
Retrieval Run (Future Proof #101) x2 ■■
Test Run (Cyber Exodus #47) x3

Hardware (1)
Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead #9) x1

Program (9)
Femme Fatale (Core #26) x2 ■
Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control #46) x2
Corroder (Core #7) x3 ■■
Gordian Blade (Core #43) x2

Resource (6)
Daily Casts (Creation and Control #53) x3
Kati Jones (Humanity’s Shadow #91) x2
Same Old Thing (Creation and Control #54) x1

Edit: Also, Kit’s early-game pressure is enormous. As soon as a Gordian Blade comes out the game comes to a halt as the corp has to double-ice everything. I think running 1 Sneakdoor in Kit to Test Run isn’t bad at all, because agendas glut up in HQ during this period, and if there’s one Shaper who can rock Professional Contacts I think it’s Kit. She needs to draw a ton to constantly refresh event cards, and the early game is slow enough it can take the momentum hit for the long run benefit. But I dunno, I only played vs. Kit, not as her.

1 Like
14

Here’s my crap Exile deck:

Identity:
Exile: Streethawk (Creation and Control)

Total Cards: (45)
Event (24)
2x Retrieval Run (Future Proof #101) ■■
2x Infiltration (Core #49)
3x Sure Gamble (Core #50)
3x Diesel (Core #34)
2x Freelance Coding Contract (Creation and Control #33)
2x Indexing (Future Proof #106)
1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control #35)
3x Quality Time (Humanity’s Shadow #87)
3x Scavenge (Creation and Control #34)
3x Test Run (Cyber Exodus #47)

Hardware (3)
2x Clone Chip (Creation and Control #38)
1x Plascrete Carapace (What Lies Ahead #9)

Program (13)
1x Gordian Blade (Core #43)
1x Deus X (A Study in Static #66)
2x Atman (Creation and Control #40)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control #46)
2x Datasucker (Core #8) ■
1x Morning Star (What Lies Ahead #4) ■■■■
2x Femme Fatale (Core #26) ■
1x Faerie (Future Proof #104) ■■■

Resource (5)
3x Daily Casts (Creation and Control #53)
2x Aesop’s Pawnshop (Core #47)

Daily Casts was so so money. Aesop’s was worthless in this deck. The stars were Datasuckers+Atman, with timely swaps for Gordian, Morningstar, and Faerie as needed. Indexing was the event all-star alongside test & retrieval run.

I used FCC more as a way to put breakers in the heap for later recursion with clone chip / retrieval / test run than anything else. Self-modifying code was mostly a dead draw, paradoxically. I only triggered it’s ability once–though it did provide fodder for FCC often, it was never important.

This deck needs more econ and indexing, so I’m going to play around with:

-2 Aesops
-2 Self-Modifying Code
-1 Deus Ex
-1 Femme

+2 Kati
+1 Indexing
+2 Maker’s Eye
+1 Corroder

I wrecked a Kit deck with HBST simply by putting Code Gates on the perimeter. But I love code gates; might be a meta thing–most people have been playing Yog.0/Zu13 as their only code gate breakers and HBST absolutely wins that contest. Plus, even Gordian vs str 5 Eli or str 4 Viktor 1.0 is a great trade. It’s a pricier corroder at that point :).

15

I was really excited that OCTGN finally has C&C.

I have to say that I originally thought Cloak/Dagger was pretty bad, but now I’m starting to see its actual power as well as its potential power when more stealth icebreakers are released.

I tried playing with Cloak/Dagger in a Kit deck (my original intention was to save influence) and Cloak actually offers decent recurring economy with the opportunity for pumping Dagger to deal with sentry breakers. They’re actually really nice cards, though the Kit deck as a whole didn’t feel nearly as powerful as I do with Andromeda. Nevertheless, the deck has done surprisingly well.

Also, I got beat by a really neat HB:EtF deck that focused on brain damage. Sentinel Defense Program is such a beast. Getting hit by either Edge of World or Cerebral Overwriter when they have a scored Sentinel Defense can really hurt. However, part of my mistake was forgetting that there were two scored Sentinel Defense, and I ran into Edge of World when they were at 5 points. We were both at 5 points, and at that point not having expose effects can set up some really tough situations and interesting bluffing.

16

This is about the deck that I ran into. He was lucky to have a turn 1 PW and Opus in both games, but I was impressed with the flexibility of this deck.

Exile: Streethawk

Event (19)
3 Diesel
2 Dirty Laundry
2 Indexing
1 Levy AR Lab Access
3 Quality Time
2 Scavenge
3 Stimhack
3 Sure Gamble

Hardware (6)
3 Clone Chip
1 Plascrete Carapace
2 R&D Interface

Resource (2)
2 Personal Workshop

Icebreaker (6)
2 Atman
2 Crypsis
2 Femme Fatale

Program (12)
2 Datasucker
1 Djinn
2 Magnum Opus
3 Parasite
2 Sahasrara
2 Self-modifying Code

17

Yeah I love that drop-double advance is a thing again. Infiltration’s gonna be a thing again, I think.

[Edit: traps in general, I mean]

18

How is the corp/runner balance for you guys? I think playing corp is really, really difficult these days.

19

How is the corp/runner balance for you guys? I think playing corp is really, really difficult these days.

Yes. Unless the runner is testing some untuned new shaper deck, winning as corp is hard work. HB got a few upgrades, mostly to its agendas (Efficiency Committee > PSF, Gila Hands and Haas’ pet Project > False Lead). They took agendas with almost-blank abilities for HB, and replaced them with agendas with GOOD abilities.

Ichi2 is pretty good. Viktor2 might be good, but I dont know yet. There might be a big ice, free-ice deck. The advanceable non-trap traps are decent (Haas Arcology AI, etc). If they induce an expensive run they are good. They also make the runner question whether that install+advance was one of them, or an Efficiency Committee.

Playing HB:EtF SanSan decks but with the new upgraded agendas, is kindof able to keep pace with all the things runners got.
Other corps just got crushed. They got almost nothing, while all runners got multiple strong new economy cards.

1 Like
20

I’m kind of sick of the game at this point, spin cycle, with all of it’s promises can’t come soon enough – then again, if the other stuff the runner gets is on par with running interference then corp play will continue to be unfun, and I’ll probably cash out.