What beats NBN?

Slaghund data shows higher Corp winrates, but it doesn’t have the full history or player ratings. We need a new full data dump from @db0 before anyone can redo player rating, competitive cut, and matchup analysis.

It’ll take me about five minutes to run my code again when we have new data.

gabe was good vs the TWIY astrobiotics but i havent had a chance to run v NEH yet. i still feel he is probably the best.

i do think noise is creepin back into the picture. the amount of 1 cost virii is at or nearing the critical mass.

Lunar and the currents are apparently favoring corp, with runners being favored next cycle, if I’m recalling the Lukas interview rightly.

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Has anyone tried to proxy Astrolabe? The shaper console that is coming? I’m thinking it will be really good against them since you will draw whenever they draw, allowing you to rig up faster.

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Good early, at least. I’m trying to sort out a “4 Akamatsu” deck, but not sure what needs that assortment of MUs. Still, yeah, could be pretty handy if you get it early enough.

And then they draw Fast Track and win anyway.

After trying NEH in lots of variants from SE to FA i think they are all strong but the Fastro Biotics is the most consistent type as long as it uses asset eco only as a bonus/distract and not as main eco.

The ability of NEH is nice but you will use it in every match even without trying to build your deck around it. In my opinion that combiened with 17 influence makes it the strongest NBN id so far.

The worst matchup for this ID are fast criminals especialliy Gabe (and the Whizzards that play like criminals), but they have a very bad matchup against Jinteki PE.

I’m really looking forward to putting this into my Kate Pawnshop deck! It’s strictly better than the memory chips I’m already running and it should be great against NEH!

Before Regionals I tested my Gabe deck with @mediohxcore against NEH and it did really well. Unfortunately it’s worse than Andy/Kate vs Glacier because you are so dependent on Sneakdoor in those matchups to force inefficient ice placement and hopefully give you some early points while making late game runs easier.

It’s a bit of a not so sure gamble right now with runners so you have to guess the meta a bit. I would expect playing Gabe & RP to be a strong choice at the moment if NEH picks up in popularity (and people respond with Gabe).

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Hey Fluff,

I was among the first to jump in and say that NEH was seriously strong. And I talked about the tactic of dropping assets behind cheap ice (pop up) as a tactic that was proof against wiz.

So the question is how to counter NEH. And I think the answer starts with multi-access R&D. You’re right that Fast track is an issue to be dealt with.

The issue isn’t that the counters don’t exist - its that to beat NEH it requires a pretty radical rethinking of deck design.

Keyhole, imp, and selective milling* are all perfectively great ways to defeat Fast Track/ NEH. (and yes, anarch is back).

Selective milling:
As noise, Run R & D: look at your two+ cards. If the card you DONT want the corp to have is on the top - install a virus, milling the card.

IF the card you don’t want the corp to get is the second card - wait. On the corp turn, after his free draw, pop a virus using either clone chip or personal workshop. You can also run archives when he has a jackson to persuade him to rez away the card, or index it to defer it.

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While I won’t say it’s Tier 1 by any means, I’ve found Desperado+Security Testing Whizzard to be good against NEH, RP/HB Glacier, and reasonable against PE. Not quite as good as Andy against any of them, no doubt, but having the access to Imp has been making a pretty sizable difference, to me, and D4V1D is going to make Tollbooth a breeze to handle.

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I think any runner deck with multi access and threats for all three centrals are good vs NEH.

For archives threat only Noise and Sneakdoor come to mind. Everything else that targets it is just economy and that might not be enough.

At least for multi access we have a lot of tools by now. Which one works best clearly depends on the decks they are used in. In the long run the Interfaces might be the best overall, but “the long run” is something you just have to get to vs NEH.

yeah, when you force double icing of all three centrals, and have parasites to keep the pressure on Corps running 15 or less ice are going to need to see nearly half of it before they can stabilize. If you need to see half your ice, that means you’ll probably run into half of your agendas too, and if you haven’t stabilized yet then you are at risk of giving up a lot of points. It’s sort of the downside to running so many operations.

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I put up a post on the “redefining shaper control” with some thoughts on adapting PPVP Kate to get better results against NEH- I think its helpful to think in more detail about how to modify existing decks to get better results against NEH, alongside more radical moves like sleeving up whizzard.

Please seriously consider running x3 The Source.

I have been playing a “Net Neutrality” Andromeda deck lately for fun, only neutral cards, and it has x3 The Source. Despite this self imposed handicap - no-multi-acess whatsoever! - it was able to beat NEH Astrobiotics by repeatedly playing The Source and forcing the Corp to play the remote game, locking out the remote early using crypsis+overmind and then being methodical about probing HQ.

In tournament level play of course a novelty deck like that isn’t going to work. Fast Track makes it so that methodical probing of HQ isn’t good enough. I do think that some combination of The Source and Legwork will work well against NEH, with some surprising benefits against non-fast advance deck archetypes as well.

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I just checked out the Canadian Nationals Andy list–that seems really good to me to fight NEH. 3 Legworks is elegant, no Parasites, and the RDIs, to make sure you can mulit-access the centrals as soon as you can.

Voicepad Kate is really strong against Astrobiotic. It was insane against TWIY*, no reason for not being good against NEH Aswell.

In my experience, it actually struggles a fair bit. The problem is that your economy is very fast, but quite limited, and you just can’t afford to trash all their drip econ and san sans. If you leave the drip econ, they can eventually just biotic out an astro, fast track, and train away, and of course leaving a san san is usually suicide. The need to trash so many assets make a big difference vs. playing TWIY. You can win if you get a good start and get lucky with your multi-access, but it feels quite dicey.

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Most andy builds were good against twiy as well, the difference being NEH can afford real ice

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I can’t speak to NEH specifically, but as a long time NBN player who just hasn’t been able to play much recently, I think this is a pretty important point that hasn’t got much attention in this thread yet.

NBN is pretty susceptible to having their ICE cut up, since they don’t run enough of it to ICE 3 centrals and a remote. That’s one of the things that makes Astrobiotics work actually - they’d like to avoid putting ICE on that remote. If you have to ICE 4 servers, then you have to see half the deck to get the ICE to do it. Admittedly NEH is good for doing that, but drawing half your deck will get you half your agendas too.

Consequences of this in my eyes:

  1. Run Imp, Security Testing + Desperado, Whizzard, Stimhack, or something else that lets you blow up undefended SanSans without losing your ass to the trash cost. Now they either have to defend the remote or not use SanSan.

  2. Do something that makes it hurt to leave Archives open. Sneakdoor is a card I used to loathe seeing as NBN. It has the side benefit of enabling Emergency Shutdown and HQ Interface too, which are two more cards I really loathed as well. In fact, when Darren Tse was doing his interview series on BGG, Emergency Shutdown was the card I picked for “card I hate to see the most”, even more than Siphon.

  3. Cut up their ICE: Parasite, Kraken, Emergency Shutdown, Crescentus, FAO, Femme Fatale, Knight, and so on. Parasite is really a bitch for a deck that wants to run Quandry/Enigma/Popup Window/etc., and if you’re packing one of those other cards, you’ve got a way to neuter a piece of end-game ICE on a server after the gear-check-becomes-light-tax ICE has been eaten by Parasites.

  4. Pack cards that really bend over the Corp when you get free access to a central server, because if you take this ICE attack vector to them, then you’re going to get a couple of opportunities. Keyhole gets an honorable mention for doing this for R&D AND being able to trash their ICE.

  5. Try to be set up to take your swing at beheading the Corp in one turn with your #4 cards the same way the Corp takes advantage of “scoring windows” on the Runner side. Using Fast Advance is expensive, and if the Corp drops a pile of money and a whole turn doing it, there are ways to still come out better on the exchange, even if the card they scored was Astroscript.

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