When I play NEH, I hate seeing Bank Job. Definitely situational, but it’s not a bad choice by any means.
Yeah - it hurts - but honestly the runners money is rarely as important as how fast he can get his breaker suite & R&D interface put together. Sometimes money is the limiting factor there, but usually its card draw.
Back in Ye Olde Times, I used to love running Wyldside/Pawnshop in Gabe with Bank Job & Armitage for econ. So good.
IMO the only other dead Bank Job matchup aside from CI is Weyland, which is currently out of fashion (and it’s not completely dead there, sometime you can land Bank Job from unrezzed or obsolete remote ICE). While Weyland isn’t actually bad, current trends mean you’re not particularly likely to see it.
Playing in Nationals I saw this deck absolutely everywhere, was pretty insane. I tested quite a bit against this deck with Chill84 and 2 other people from our playgroup so here are some insights I found which may or may not be helpful =P. Most of these things experienced players will know but hopefully it will help some newer players.
I believe you need 3 things to have a shot against NEH (in order of importance).
Money, breakers, and multi access (preferably hq early and rnd late).
If you do not get an early code gate breaker and barrier breaker with money to spare early, you will have a really hard time winning.
Money:
The best money cards here for Andy is security testing and desperado (with event econ backup). Kati is too slow the majority of the time in my experience.
Breakers
The best breakers to have hit the table are corroder and passport very early. This will get you through wraparounds, lotus fields and quandarys on the servers that matter. Most decks do not run heavy destroyers (maybe 2 copies of rototurret) so a single fairie will do the job most of the time. That being said do not be afraid to run without a sentry breaker if you think you have a chance at stealing a 3/2.
Multi-Access
The absolute best multi-access card for NEH is Legwork. Run 3 and use it as early as you can before the corp can get its FA Tech set up. They will most likely put a wraparound and/or a code gate ice in front of hq very, very early to secure that first astro. Do not let them. After the early game (and hopefully after a successful legwork) your best target is RnD. Try to get a run there once every turn and throw in a legwork every 2 to 4 turns if they are drawing past lock. You might be able to snag an NAPD or Beale from hand (maybe…).
Even with all this tech, my match-up is about 50/50 against NEH with andy. The deck is just crazy consistent and taxing. Often you will get unlucky accesses and they will get great draws and you’ll lose.
Imo medium is the only card that supplies the sort of RnD Pressure that can shut down the identity. Perhaps we will see a shift away from criminal with the rise of NEH…
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Yeah, money matters a lot against NEH. Being able to trash things is incredibly important – especially if you can get an empty server with unrezzed/free-to-run Ice on it, since that’ll give you a place to Security Test your heart out.
But, yeah, more generally still, you don’t want to let them keep getting money every turn, but most people have to spend quite a bit to trash the economy assets as well as Jacksons/SanSans. Bank Job helps with that pretty tremendously.
I’m not sure I 100% agree about Legwork being the absolute best, but it is a killer. I agree that Medium does a pretty great amount of work, though it’s a splash many decks aren’t interested in. I also enjoy Nerve Agent while Anarch, because forcing them to clear viruses buys me time to do things, and unless they shut me out in doing so I can usually build back up a bit pretty rapidly (Security Testing off a central to build counters again and fund the actual access run).
Really impressed if you could get 50/50… in my experience the 50% chance of NBN landing a sweeps week vs. Andy really killed it… 13 starting credits basically says “good luck keeping me poor”
I ended up switching to Gabe so that I the corp was forced to defend 3 centrals because you can’t let him just keep hammering HQ. That opens up siphon / legwork play - most good players will not rez the wraparound / quandry guarding HQ)vs Andy until they need to (i.e. either Agenda flood or powerful run event is played). Vs. gabe you don’t have that luxury because you can’t let him take $3 and an access.
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I think legwork can be the best multi access early game because you have a chance to nab an astro before they can score it. However, once they score the first astro I would agree with it being significantly less potent.
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While Sweeps Week somewhat hurts Andy, that starting hand is important against NBN in general.
Andy will very seldom get stuck on early breakers and NEH can begin scoring really fast.
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Has anybody considered Kit versus NEH? NEH doesn’t really want to spend their time and money double-icing servers. Just an idea, but it seems viable.
Then again, Kit is just horrid against RP, at least in the few matches I’ve played against her.
I used to run Kit. I tried really hard and it did pretty well. But Wraparound really killed it. NEH usually runs a couple of those. But maybe toss Inti in there and give it a try. Lack of influence for HQ dig will likely hurt.
Edit to add: I decided to see what all the fuss was about and threw together an NBN Fastrobiotics to play on OCTGN, and man, it really is bonkers, … er bananas. I like that. Goes with my avatar.
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Yeah, I made an NEH as soon as it came out–it doesn’t even have Biotic Labor in it–I spend the influence on Tsurugis and Pups, and Ash (I feel like I can’t do without them after RP). It feels silly to play. Easymode. Turns out freeing NBN of feeling like they have to run trace ice just makes a better deck. Oh and hey, extra influence!
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If I can convince everyone to call NEH builds “[Main Feature] Bananas”, I will be so happy :).
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Astro Bananaiotics!
Oh and you know what is amazing in my AstroBananaiotics deck is Paywall Implementation.
Edit to add: Astrobuynanas?
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How about horizontal bananas?
Astrobananas or maybe Bananarama?
Neh has excellent income. Excellent draw. Top notch agendas.
Imo the way to beat it is razor focus on multi access R&D runs. If you are not running Rd you’re raising cash to run rd.
Their ice is typically porous and econ oriented. (Popupr toll booth etc). Plus they typically only use moderate Numbers of ice.
So if you can force them to tower you are on the right track.
We run in an an as heavy meta and as is not as effective as usual vs neh. Realize that against neh The Corp having 15 credits or 50 cred is immaterial. They have enough to do what they want.
Their goto ice… wraparound. Tollbooth. Maybe data raven.
Since you want to run early I’d look to overmind/knight in anarch, inti Cypher
In shaper ( or test run femme) .
The runner needs to convert the contest to a where is a race to access more cards out of the corps r&d rather than the usual question of money.
One last weird edge case. If you have rdi played and record reconstruction… You run get access to two cards then run run archives and drop a financial card on top of his stack. You nullify his draw advantage.
Finally. Trash jackson. That’s the only asset next to a readily available San that’s wor th trashing. But even 2-3 puts of defense means it’s not worth trashing san. Better to run r&d.
Finally. You also need to figure if he’s running scorched.
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Post NEH what would you say the average runner to corp ratio is? I remember feeling serious pain and grief when it felt like Criminal was the only way to go at a big event and you basically were guaranteed a win as runner but just had to kind of go for a coin toss as the corp.
Now it feels almost like the inverse. Like Corporations are so strong that they are the favored faction. I would definitely say the game is not 50/50 runners/corps.
Anyone have some OCTGN data on this?
Honor and profit put it in favor of the corp at high levels of play if I remember correctly. Upstalk and the spaces between probably helped that, as there are more powerful cards on the corp side in those packs.
Pre-Upstalk, I would say we’re between 55-45 and 60-40 for the corp in the general population, and between 50-50 and 55-45 for the runner among highly skilled players. The game balance is really very good at this state.
The question, however, is whether Upstalk is going to shift that. Some are claiming that Near-Earth Hub is so good that it blows away even highly skilled runners. For instance, the Canadian nationals winner claims his NEH deck has 75-80% win rates in tests among very good players. This seems quite dubious to me, but I suppose we’ll have to see.