The Jank You'll Miss Most

Wait, chum is gone? Too much of a rules headache I guess. Along with Marker, Sensei, Cell Portal. They moved away from the “code gates = positional ice” thing

should’a made core2: Subliminal

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Cell Portal, not because I ever thought it could be a good card, but because I now can’t make a Jinteki deck called “Now You’re Thinking With Portals.”

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I won a game with Awakening Center + Breaker Bay Grid + Janus once. Was lovely.

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ICE hosted on the Center are in the server? If so, that’s brilliant!

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Discovered that in a game against someone else on jnet. Can’t claim it as my own.

This still works.

Sort of.

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We are currently playing janky, casual card pool decks for fun on off-league weeks.

I have a Cybernetics Division deck with Edge of World, Cerebral Overwriters, Valley Grid, and Black Level Clearance.

Throw in Self-destruct Chips and Enforced Curfew and you can really apply some pressure. Neural EMP is added to seal the deal when necessary.

I highly recommend some purposely casual time set aside to enjoy jank with others.

My 2015 Leela Alpha-Omega-Unscheduled Maintenance deck. Man that was fun…

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The card I’ll miss the most is Mandatory Upgrades and for many reasons.

First, it’s such a cool, powerful effect and it requires such a specific deck to be able to play it. It’s both a challenge and a reward and I love that.

Second, my first really good deck was based around Mandatory Upgrades. UpInc, I called it. (Some called it “Man up” but I dislike that term). It had Encryption Protocol, Red Herrings and Ash on it as well as some cheaper ICE and Tollbooths to rush the Mandatory. It worked surprisingly well and many years later the Germans actually went and revived it, which was super cool.

It was also my most read article for a very long time. It was one of the first “primers”, it featured some cool cards and it got traction through BGG when it was the only place you could read about Netrunner. Loved that deck.

Your opponent: You call that jank? Now THIS (shows Kraken) is jank.

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Could you link it?

Ah, sorry, it’s not online anymore. I switched to a new blog and didn’t update most of my old articles. I can give yuo the decklist if you want, though.

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What was the website? Archive.org likely has a snapshot if it was online a long time.

https://archive.org/web/

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[quote=“wombat929, post:33, topic:9524, full:true”]
What was the website? Archive.org likely has a snapshot if it was online a long time.

https://archive.org/web/[/quote]
Didn’t think of that! You can read it here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20151227001652/http://eriktwicereviews.com:80/netrunner-upgrades-incorporated-a-haas-bioroid-primer-part-i/

Not that you want to, I was even more of an awful writer than I currently am! :wink:

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@ErikTwice I know this deck as Waldemar HB and I absolutely adored playing it. Sincerely, thank you for making it because it brought me a lot of joy and also taught me to think more critically about both how a glacier works and what makes a good agenda suite.

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That was some fun, old-time meta reading there!

I am playing in old metas mostly (right now in Honor and Profit) and I have never used encryption protocol outside of RP. I will give this a try, thank you. :slight_smile:

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Wow, thanks! I truly appreciate it. It was my first “good” deck and learned a lot with it. I remember being superexcited when the Germans brought it back, I didn’t expect that at all!

Here’s hoping they reprint Mandatory Upgrades, I feel it’s a card that should be in the game even if it’s to power some jank.

Some OLD-SCHOOL facts for you:

  • This is one of the best decks around. Because I said so, deal with it.
  • This is the only deck in the history of Netrunner that had a reason to run Executive Retreat. Deal with it, I guess.
  • There used to be a time in which Heimdall 1.0 was considered good! Also Viper was like, fantastic and stuff. Guess we had to deal with it.
  • I played Director Haas. It’s not bad, just completely overkill. I played it because it’s frigging Director Haas and it used to be hard to trash it.
  • Scoring two Mandatory Upgrades gives you enough cool points to make your opponents cry. I once scored an Executive Retreat from hand at Netrunner Nationals. It was hilarious.
  • There used to be a time in which Jackson was not seen as being a must. It took me a while to play three copies of him, for some time it was common to have two and people saw him as a good addition, not a necessity (We were used to not having him, there was no Legwork and influence was very tight).
  • It’s hard to tell now, but paying 3 credits to trash a card used to be considered expensive. It was uncommon for Runners to be able to trash cards after the Protocols went down and if they trashed them on sight they couldn’t get in the remote anymore.
  • Whizzard was a joke. A big joke. My biggest fear with this deck was losing to him because then I would go to the loser table and face the Whizzard that inevitably lost his first match.

I am an ONR player that found the game right after C&C dropped.

I remember that meta - which is why your read was so fun! The prevarication on Jackson is hilarious. Such heresy!

To Howard, or not to Howard - that really was a question.

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Hot Tub Time Machine had one as well, a flavour reason but still a reason :slight_smile: