"The Trooper" - Dead Coats

Decklists
1

I’ve been playing Dead Coats (HB Glacier/slow advance with Punitive Counterstrike) as my main corp deck for most of the time I’ve been playing Netrunner.

I am wondering if it has peaked. Three things make me think this might be the case. Firstly, the resurgence of Jinteki has meant most Shaper builds now run Deus Ex and can recur it. Deus Ex walks through almost all of HB’s big bioroids for 3 credits, which really undermines the deck’s ability to build a reliable scoring server. Secondly, Blue Sun will almost certainly do glacier plus a flat line threat better because of its ability to invest money in big and pull if back for the kill (and it becoming the new hotness - even if it’s no good - is likely to lead to a resurgence in Carapace). Finally, Quetzal, who is fine in herself, but means E3 Feedback Implants, which are horrific for HB to deal with.

This is the build I’m playing at the moment. A few things probably need explanation. No Jackson. Jackson is great, but with only eight agendas and multiple ways to pull things out of archives (and a strong match-up against Noise) I don’t think this particular deck needs him. Second, Sweeps Week. Relying purely on the assets to make you money can easily leave you falling behind in money against criminal, nutering your flat-line threat and ASH. The in-faction alternative would be Green Level or Successful Demonstration and I don’t think either quite does the job. The other use for the influence would be Snare! but space for non-economy, non-ICE cards is at a premium. Thirdly, no NEXT ICE. One reason for this - parasite. Finally, Project Vitruvius rather than all 3 pointers and Domestic Sleepers. I found the Sleepers build was both too high variance and too predictable. 2x agendas in hand early was usually fatal, so it really needed Jackson and that meant I was devoting 6 slots to cards that weren’t gaining me a great deal. Plus Vitruvius is really powerful in Dead Coats if you can overadvance it.

Thoughts welcome.

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future (Core Set)

Agenda (8)
3x Priority Requisition (Core Set)
3x Project Vitruvius (Cyber Exodus)
1x Eden Fragment (The Spaces Between)
1x Hades Fragment (Up and Over)

Asset (6)
3x Adonis Campaign (Core Set)
3x Eve Campaign (Humanity’s Shadow)

Upgrade (3)
3x Ash 2X3ZB9CY (What Lies Ahead)

Operation (11)
2x Archived Memories (Core Set)
3x Hedge Fund (Core Set)
3x Sweeps Week (True Colors) ••••• •
3x Punitive Counterstrike (True Colors) ••••• •

Barrier (7)
3x Wall of Static (Core Set)
3x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof)
1x Heimdall 2.0 (Creation and Control)

Code Gate (6)
3x Viktor 2.0 (Creation and Control)
3x IQ (First Contact)

Sentry (8)
2x Ichi 2.0 (Creation and Control)
3x Pup (Honor and Profit) •••
3x Architect (Up and Over)

15 influence spent (maximum 15)
21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Up and Over

3 Likes
2

Hades sounds like a good Jackson replacement. This deck is going to install anything it draws. You are staring at a lot of ice sitting at 5, but Atman is less an issue than Parasite. And haven’t seen anyone run Pup outside of a Jinteki deck yet. Looks good here.

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Never played this style of deck before, so take with a pinch of salt…

Firstly, I would try to include Jackson. I see the point about having good inhouse recursion, but Archived Memories won’t protect you from being agenda flooded when you’re not ready to score them, and Jackson protects against Noise far more than Memories when he’s on the field, recurring from archives instantly. Plus protection against Indexing, and the ability to draw up quickly if needed, etc etc

Sweeps week is a good card but spending 6 influence on it in such an economically strong faction seems a little odd. I would try x1 Peak Efficiency now that it’s out - using x3 is probably too inconsistent but with the amount of ice in this deck I think you could make good use of one copy. That would also free up 2 influence. Have you tried both Blue level and Restructure for operation economy and found them lacking?

On the ice, I think smaller Ichi/Heimdall offer better value for your money, possibly allowing you to be a little richer for your punitive traces. Is the extra 3 creds for Heimdall 2 worth it (especially if it’s being neutered by Deus?) I like the pup splash. That x3 could also work as popup windows, but I can see why taking an extra credit from the runner might be more important than gaining one for yourself.

1 Like
4

I am just here to say thank you for the decklist. Dead Coats is one archetype I have never played, so I think I might sleeve this up for the LGS Achievement League tonight. I have been wanting to play with Punitive for awhile now.

1 Like
5

This might sound a little odd, but have you thought about putting in x1 Biotic Labor?

6

While I think the concept of Dead Coats is interesting, I really don’t like Sweeps Week in there (my guess would be that Blue-level Clearence is about as good for no influence) and Eve Campaign has not aged well since release. Eliza’s Toybox would probably be good in that slot since you can play it similarly except that it can also be placed in a guarded remote. Security Testing made all non-iced remotes much worse. Gives a potential higher upswing the turn you rez it while still keeping a trashcost. I tend to favor a good spread in ICE-strength in my decks and would use the saved influence from Sweeps to shore that up.

7

Thanks for the thoughts.

@Ilza and @RotomAppliance you are probably right about Sweeps Week. The reason I run it is that the alternatives don’t quite work as well in the same slot. Blue Level is net gain of a single credit over clicking for credits. It also doesn’t allow you to surprise kill. Successful Demonstration is good, but has limited use with so much taxing ICE. Restructure exasperates the deck’s biggest weakness (vulnerable when poor). Peek Efficiency I haven’t tried yet. It sounds like it might decent call as a mid/late game one-off, but it won’t help in the early game. Melange (which you didn’t mention, but is the other thing I’ve tried) is really hard to protect well and makes R&D vulnerable. Of them all, I actually think Green Level is the best of the options available to reclaim the influence. What would you suggest I use it on?

On the strength of ICE, Atman is a potential problem. IQ helps, because I can control its strength. The reason I haven’t gone with the 1.0 ICE at the moment is E3 and Quetzal. E3 is much less of an issue for the 2.0 versions than the 1.0s. Although for Heimdell I guess it doesn’t matter because they’ll be using the ability, so swapping him out for something else is probably a good move.

@Ilza I thought the same about Eve, but with Architect and Pup both providing convenient ways to up the tax on an economy remote I think she’s looking a bit better than she was. My experiences with Toybox have been pretty poor I’m afraid. I felt everytime I was using it, I was just putting myself on the backfoot. And that was in a deck where every use was rezing a Janus or something.

@striatic Yes, actually. I was running it in an older version just before Domestic Sleepers came out. It was ok without being spectacular. It allows you to fast advance for the win and sometimes pull off some weird multi-punitive kills. Other games it just sits there being not enormously useful. I’ll put back on the list of things to put in if I find space.

8

Something I like about x1 Biotic is that if the runner finds it sitting in HQ they might adjust their strategy to your advantage, but I guess they are more likely to see a Punitive and adjust to that instead.

2 Likes
9

I think a combination of sweeps week and GLC is ideal in HB. It gives you money when you’re poor. And when you’re rich enough the asset econ can do the big job. I wouldn’t play peak efficiency because it wont give you much when you need creds.

Sweeps and GLC are robably also the best opening cards (with hedge fund):
Sweeps week will help you vs Andy too and is an extra potiental Hedge fund turn one.
GLC again a good card early game to get creds and maybe find ice to defend the two centrals turn one.

I really like the idea of putting in one biotic to close out games, when you lost your scoring windows (see a passive runner with a Magnum and too much creds). It will win you some games.

10

I think Sweeps Week is especially good in Dead Coats because runners sometimes try to deny you money after seeing it by holding few cards in hand, making them easier to kill.

Blue Level might be a good choice since need both the draw (to find Punitives) and the money. In my experience Green Level’s effect is too small to be worth the deck slot.

Eliza’s might be good in Red Coats, but Eve Campaign is good in Dead Coats. You need real money to fuel the Punitives.

2 Likes
11

I think the biggest flaw with GLC is that it doesn’t provide that much money for a glacier. Like Blue level, it’s only a net gain of 1 credit over clicking for money - I would think it’s more suited to speedy fast advance decks. Beanstalk provides a compromise between GLC and sweeps week, allowing you to recover when poor for only 1 influence each, but is a slightly worse card than sweeps and doesn’t give all that much money either. I think still think peak efficiency would make a decent one-off, but that’ll be found out more by testing than debating.

I think the best option for freed up influence would be Jackson Howard, but if not, importing some more ice could help. Tollbooth is always good in Glacier, and could replace Heimdall as your large taxer, and Lotus Field is almost never a bad idea, though IQ sort of fills a similar role. Even popup windows to sit on your money assets or archives could be nice, really just a matter of taste.

12

At long last my roommate has put his list up on netrunnerdb, so I can give y’all a look at the original. It’s pretty similar overall.

Deadcoats

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future (Core Set)

Agenda (9)

Asset (7)

Upgrade (2)

Operation (12)

Barrier (5)

Code Gate (8)

Sentry (6)

15 influence spent (max 15)
21 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Up and Over

Decklist published on NetrunnerDB.

Atman’s not a big thing here, so that might be something to take into consideration admittedly.

J-How is great in Deadcoats because he lets you customize how many agendas they steal from Archives. Mill-focused decks become really easy to snipe if they score twice at once and don’t win right then (which Jackson helps with), because that makes each Punitive do 6 meat damage instead of 3. Nice and murderous. He also lets you dig for Punitives when you think you might need them, which is bloody useful.

IQ is an interesting choice that I kind of like the look of, but it seems strange to not have Tollbooth just for the massive tax and hard ETR it represents.

For the most part the 1.0s are nice because they’re cheaper. The goal with them is to tax your opponent more than you do yourself, and combined with ELP they still make clickthroughs hard. Quetzal breaks in relatively effectively with E3 but Architect, Rototurret, Tollbooth and Lotus Field all mean she can’t get through on ID + E3 alone.

Sexy Robot Money prevents siphons from being too much of an issue even through less-than-solid HQ Ice.

Sweeps Week is interesting – incentivising them to drop cards – but Restructure is easy enough to pull off and provides some pretty big boosts.

Viper and Enigma take time away from the runner and incentivize last-click running, which is what you want them to be doing (so they can miscalculate and fall prey to your PCs).

The big, BIG thing with Deadcoats to keep in mind is that all your focus at first should be surviving the early game. Lots of runners will hammer you hard at first, but s’long as you can slowly tax them down and build up an economy it doesn’t matter. If they get two early steals without you being able to Punitive it’s rough, but that’s unlikely and not the end of the world.

Honestly the biggest threat this deck has seen locally has been a Switchblade-refractor Kate list, but it’s possible that the local Quetzals aren’t being run as well.

Blue Sun glacier’s a very different beast and will certainly lead to some general anti-glacier anti-meat damage teching, but it’s not as though Plascrete makes things impossible, especially if you can stick a brain damage (triple punitive FTW).

1 Like
13

As usual, GG has said much of what I would want to say about the deck. List is actually still a little outdated, one of those Project Wotans should be a Hades Fragment. I think that the 5/3 and Sleepers plan is one of the strongest aspects of this deck.

David’s IQ inclusion is the one I’d most be interested in trying out in my own build, especially if my local meta moves more towards Atman (something that’s been bizarrely missing here).

14

I tried Polar Night setup (NEXT ice + all 3pointers with Sleepers) and I think that in order to play punitives with success you need to run cheaper ice in general. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in situations, where you can either rez an expensive piece of ice or threaten runner with punitive, not both. And sometimes you’ll make a mistake.

When you rez cheap ETR ice like NEXTs - runner is going to search for breakers or parasites and will spend money+time. At the same time your Eve’s and Adonis’s will generate you some money advantage, and if you want to land a successful trace with punitive - it is a must.

Suddenly, while writing this post, I’ve got an idea - maybe lets try Targeted Marketing in Dead Coats? :smile:

15

Thanks for the list and your thoughts.

I like the Enigmas, although I’m already Code Gate heavy. Might look at them over an IQ or two. Tollbooth I agree is an obvious choice, it’s just that 8 credits is a lot and it inevitablly gets Femme’d. I like the Taurus a lot as a solution to both Carpace and E3. ELP is a good one, possibly even better in my list than yours because of the lower number of agendas.

I think you are entirelly right about needing to survive the early game but I find Restructure runs directly counter to that. It puts you in situations where you have to choose between rezzing and ICE or economy assets or being stuck with a dead card in hand for a few more turns. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great card once you are set up a bit, but that’s not normally when this deck has a problem. Or you just have to take a bunch of accesses for the first couple of turns and hope they don’t strike lucky.

The main reason for switching out the all three pointers was it was just too predictable for the runner. They were sitting back, gaining money off Opus or Kati and running nothing but economy assets and double advanced cards. Whereas Vitruvius makes them run unadvanced and single advanced cards (plus you almost always get to score the first one unopposed because they aren’t expecting it) and if you get the window to overadvance it, it is pretty much the best card in the deck.

1 Like
16

This is the deck that I’ve used quite a lot last few months.

http://netrunner.meteor.com/decks/CPa4KGhPGKAQ3GmYv/

I’ve had quite some success with it (Top8 german regionals where it was a star, top8 Dutch nationals where it was a bit underwhelming).

It’s a great deck, I find that playing against criminal is quite an “easy” matchup, which was great when Andy was all the rage. And a lot of people did not expect PC so plascretes got discarded right and left. With time, the deck became a bit boring for me, and local meta knows I pack PCs in it. It’s still quite good even if the opponents expect PC.

I find early game to be quite important to leave one central porous - usually RnD against Criminal or HQ against Shaper. You just don’t have enough money to rez ice all over the place. You probably want to protect that Adonis more than RnD at first. I’ve eaten several indexings without any agendas being hit.

I find it increasingly difficult to out-money the good runner, which then turns off the PCs completely.

Due to Archived memories, I can play only 2 PCs, since you DO NOT want them early, either clogging your hand or runner accessing it. That helps with the influence as well.

Ice-wise, Inazuma into Heimdall is a winner combo, but you don’t want 2 inazumas probably. Parasite usually kills 2 ice if you have inazuma on board (the inazuma and the ice before it). Tollbooth is just too good and not a lot of players play femme (only shapers consistently). Even if they do, For your 8 cost, you’ve costed them at least 3 + ETR (or break) + 9 + 1 per run. Even that is not that bad.

Viktors I’ve found a bit underwhelming - especially when stacked with other Code Gates - they make Gordian blades quite good. Architect is definitely something to try out in the deck, especially after Eli/Viktor, which will often trigger “run on last click to install ABT”. Even without it, installing your sexbots will be quite nice, after they go out or runners trash them. The more I think about it, the more I like this ice in the deck.

2 Likes
17

I am currently playing Drain Bramage 2.2 from netrunnerDB, and I can say that GLC and BLC are much better econ options than the campaigns. If your ice is sufficiently chunky, thats enough of a tax. What this does is makes the punitive combo easier to draw into, and gives you money. The econ setup in that deck is nearly flawless with

3glc
3hedge
2-3 BLC (depends on which version)
1 celeb. gift (which can slow runners down if you show them the punitive combo)
2-3 archived memories to replay Gift or other events like BER, or recover next ice
2 BER

I recommend giving it a look, it is really strong.

2 Likes
18

First, just want to make sure folks know that @BenConn’s the one that deserves credit for what I post, since he’s the one what came up with it, I’m just… way more active here.

Second: I don’t see how having the runner access Punitive is a bad thing. Y’know what I’ve been able to do when the runner knew I had a Punitive? Score without a server because they’d spent all their money getting into HQ and seeing it.

So long as every score of theirs is a potential kill (even if just with triple-punitive, which is why 3x is so important) then the runner has to be slow and build up econ/cheap ways in. Winning off of random accesses is quite possible, too, which I tend to find delicious.

[quote=“Anthropod, post:14, topic:2092”]
Suddenly, while writing this post, I’ve got an idea - maybe lets try Targeted Marketing in Dead Coats?
[/quote]I like this a lot in theory, and would even more if ELP wasn’t in-faction. But ELP provides a pretty massive tax to most runners that goes nicely with the Bioroids, and is a big part of why I feel confidant even against Quetzal.

[quote=“bayushi_david, post:15, topic:2092”]
Or you just have to take a bunch of accesses for the first couple of turns and hope they don’t strike lucky.
[/quote]This is one reason I find Punitive so useful, actually. Do they know? Well, if so, then they’ve got some discouragement about running easily and openly. I don’t mind letting them have some accesses, particularly ones I can tax even slightly, but that can go wrong, certainly. What I find with Restructure is more that it helps make the not-early game more solid – quickly pumping up to double-Punitive levels is useful.

Can see why you’d prefer Sweeps Week, but I feel like the influence is too tight here.

[quote=“bayushi_david, post:15, topic:2092”]
The main reason for switching out the all three pointers was it was just too predictable for the runner.
[/quote]Hasn’t generally been an issue for either of us that I know of, though obviously it should be. Feels hard to justify even so, but it’s a good point about making them run. If we start running into those plays it’s definitely something to be considering, I’d say. I’ve always loved Vitruvius, but I like the DS plan a little more, just because two of their potential steals do nothing for them.

[quote=“x3r0h0ur, post:17, topic:2092”]
I am currently playing Drain Bramage 2.2 from netrunnerDB, and I can say that GLC and BLC are much better econ options than the campaigns.
[/quote]The one big benefit I’d be hesitant to lose is Siphon protection from the assets, but I’ll go give that a look-see later all the same.

19

Honestly it has 20 ice, I have no issues making siphon a costly venture for the runner, especially BER’ing a fatty in front of HQ until you stabilize. Gift + AM, Gift + install is 2 turns to locking down HQ with a huge ice too. Yes shutdown is a thing, but Gabe isn’t around a lot any more…

20

I think that if you’re not investing the influence in ice, Celebrity Gift is definitely a consideration here. I suppose you don’t want to reveal a Punitive, but glacier is going to usually keep its hand full, so it’s a bit more reliable against runners that like to keep their hand mid-sized.

I’d also strongly consider swapping the Pups for Caduceus. The influence cost again is a bit high since you have so much tied up in PC, but I think it’s potentially an even better tax than Pup.

1 Like