This is a deck I’ve been testing a bit in my spare time at home, and it seems to do alright. It’s not without its faults, but I’ll give a breakdown before I get to those.
As one would imagine, this identity lends itself to crippling the runner with brain damage and other effects that lower their hand size. This is made deadly through the inclusion of Punitive Counterstrike. Getting the runner’s hand size to 2 makes a single Punitive lethal, as most of the agendas are three pointers, and getting it to two is not a very hard task to accomplish. The main ways to do so are through scoring Self-Destruct Chips, getting the runner to land on a Cerebral Overwriter, Ryon Knight, and the splash of Chairman Hiro. Because most of the agendas are 3 pointers, IAA turns carry a lot of risk for the runner through both Punitives and Cerebral. Similarly, Self Destruct chips looks very much like asset economy, and sneaking one out hasn’t been very hard. I’d imagine this will be harder against more experienced players, however.
The rest of the deck I’m trying to make taxing in order to open up scoring windows as well as turn on Punitive when they score agendas. It can also be taxing on clicks, which turns on Ryon. There are a few pieces of larger, more threatening ice that can be rezzed either through a large money investment if it really hurts the runner (Janus especially), or more likely the Priority Requisitions. They seemed like the most beneficial 3 point agenda, so it made sense to include some larger ice to make use of them. The other two 3-pointers are undecided, but I kind of like Wotan in here, so they’re what I’m using for now.
Here’s my concerns so far. Bioroids can still be walked through, so runs on click 1 usually end up with one of my ice being invalidated in terms of the runner’s monetary economy, while still usually leaving them that spare click that turns off Ryon. The upside of this is that Ryon makes the runner spend more money breaking ice than clicks, in order to make sure to not take a brain damage, which has the benefits listed above.
The ice is also generally expensive, and early game is a little rough because of it. The influence use requires me to use in-faction and neutrals only, and none of the neutrals seem especially appealing for a taxing deck. Also, Hiro comes with inherent risks, and there’s a reason he’s not often played. However, if you can discard him early, Interns can bring him back from the dead in a time of need (however, this is basically the definition of jank).
An idea that I had to solve a few of these problems would be to ditch one Punitive and Hiro, then replace them with 2 Snare!s, using the remaining 3 influence to import in some better out-of-faction ice to replace what I have. Snare! has the potential to also flatline the runner if they’re not expecting it, or if they happen to have had their hand size lowered to 2 and run into one. It’s less proactive than Punitive, but two Punitives would still be in the deck anyhow, so it’s not as big a loss, especially in a 44 card deck.
Anyhow, here’s the unaltered list. Obviously it’s going to be some months before it can be played legally, but I thought I’d see what the deck might look like, because it seems like it might be fun. Thoughts?
Tabula Rasa
Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded (Chrome City)
Agenda (8)
Asset (10)
Upgrade (2)
Operation (10)
Barrier (5)
Code Gate (4)
Sentry (5)
15 influence spent (max 15)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Chrome City
Deck built on NetrunnerDB.
