When you build or play a Corp deck, there are things you have to find an answer for or you lose. For instance, if you come up against an Eater-Keyhole deck and don’t know how to play against it or your deck has no answer for it, you will probably lose.
What are other things we you play as Corp that you have to have an answer for - either in terms of play or deck tech?
After giving this some thought, my opinion is that while you should be familiar with and know what your play outs are for all sorts of runner strategies, there are only 3 things that you deck has to have built in (deck based) outs for. They are R&D lock, remote lock, and to a much lesser extent dedicated mill.
Currently almost all major runner strategies run a version of these three plans as its primary final game ending condition. Dumblefork uses medium and ice destruction to R&D lock. Eater-keyhole is a variant of mill. Most criminal strategies end with an effective remote lock. Shaper is classically R&D lock, or remote lock sometimes both.
By this reasoning all corp decks must at the very least have an answer to those three game states.
I always liked the idea that a Corp deck should have an answer to a Runner that simply takes 8 from Magnum Opus every turn until you attempt to score, then Vamps you to 0.
I would add Siphons to that, whether Siphon lock or just standard Criminal with 3x Siphon.
You can have Jackson installed to protect you from milled agendas, a remote with unrezzed ICE they can’t break (or maybe you went Mushin traps instead of ICE’d remote), and heavy taxing ICE on R&D to prevent R&D lock, but then they Siphon you to zero and run the remote.
You need an answer to Siphon (or Vamp / Lamprey).
I in no way disagree, though I would probably classify siphon spam and other denial strategies as remote lock strats at least at the 30,000 feet view I was using earlier. Same as variants like blackmail, most of the tools that are used to break out of a remote lock (FA, traps, taxing) are also usable in denial/blackmail matchups.
Of course even though they have the same general end plan to me doesn’t mean that corp decks or factions deal with all the variants equally. Drip econ tends to be stronger against denial then operation econ, but no one bounces back from a siphon faster than BABW with beanstalks. Drip econ often is worse against blackmail as the bad pub removes some of the protection of your assets.FA is stronger against blackmail then taxing, etc…