I’m writing a blog post aimed at beginners, on how to put together a decent tournament deck with as little money as possible, and I need a bit of advice on the corp deck. I put together a CtM deck for $90 (using Chris Dyer’s champion pack), but then I started playing with Sovereign Sight and saw just how good Cali Testing is in CtM. I would like to include it in the basic deck, but I also want to keep it at under $100 RRP, so I’m thinking should I cut All That Remains (which is there for DBS) so I can include it? Or is DBS more fundamental to CtM?
Sentry (4)
2x Data Raven(Revised Core Set)
2x Turnpike(Data and Destiny)
12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Revised Core Set
Note: this assumes the beginner owns the revised core set, I also made a different version based on the original, which is basically the same except with a Beanstalk instad of Green Level and a Private Security Force instead of the TGTBTs.
I can’t cut Crimson Dust, because I’m also using it for cards for the runner deck (Mining Accident and Aumakua). So All that Remains is the only candidate.
Bear in mind that I’m gonna have suggestions on what packs to buy to improve the deck if the reader wants to spend more, so there’s no question that I’m gonna suggest both DBS and Cali Testing to people, it’s just a question of which of the two to include in the barebones budget deck.
CTM—or NBN overall to an extent—are often not fantastic for beginners. They won’t know why cards like Mumbad Virtual Tour are significant or how to “bait runs.” They might find CTM frustrating because they feel defenseless without beat-‘em-up ice like Ichi 1.0 or Mausolus. There are also two and three card combos here that the new player is unlikely to grok. They’ll feel they’re doing it wrong.
However, as an initial “let’s get you up to speed so you can compete” investment it looks good. This, however, depends on the player in question being the type of person who will diligently and competently practice one deck and one deck only, never get frustrated, and never have any interest in exploring the card pool or trying different factions.
My gut tells me as a new player I’d rather spend $200 on a game than $100 on a deck. $200 will buy you a bunch of cards you can play with your friends. $100 will buy you a pseudo-fast track into competitive games you’re unlikely to win anyway, and the risk is always that the player will quit.
I think DBS is more fundamental. It is top trash priority when running against CtM.
That said, article you plan makes sense for a CCG. When playing an LCG, the best way to get a competitive deck if you’re a new player still finding out if they want to commit to the game will always be to get to know people and borrow a deck. A player with full collection can now build competitive decks for 3-4 people simultaneously and most likely only needs to do this for themselves and maybe one other person, so at least one deck can be ready for a random stranger who wants to test the game.
That’s kind of my point. How is a new player even supposed to evaluate which of the two DBS cards they draw? How would they know their opponent would consider it a “must trash.” It’s harder than we think.
I think it’s a good deck, and a new player would get a lot of mileage out of it, but it doesn’t teach fundamentals, so it’s at cross-purposes with the Absolute Beginner.
I think we need to hear more from the original poster on what he or she is hoping to achieve, whether it’s a deck for a specific person or a deck for a general audience.
Yes, a typical beginner will completely flounder with this deck and have no idea what to do with it, I’m aware of that. I’m making the assumption that the typical beginner won’t want to go to a store championship one month after they started the game anyway. I’m assuming that these decks will appeal to “false beginners”, of which I’ve noticed many creeping around on reddit and facebook since Core 2.0 came out. By false beginner I mean people such as:
people who used to play but quit and sold their collections, and want to make a new start,
people who quit and didn’t sell their collections but stopped buying several cycles ago, so many of their cards have rotated and the rest they don’t really know what to do with anymore,
people who used to play the LCG extensively, so they’re not complete beginners, but don’t own any cards
people who’ve been playing for years with a very limited cardpool (such as kitchen table players), and want to expand
those rare freaks who are just so good at card games they can take up netrunner and win a GNK 2 months later (we’ve all met one or two).
Having said that, if a complete beginner wants to try it, more power to them. The good thing about basing these lists on decks that have done well in recent tournaments is that there are plenty of videos of these decks being piloted well for people to learn from, and I’ll link to a couple in the article. Some people just thrive in competitive envinronments and want to jump in at the deep end in order to find any motivation to learn. My aim wasn’t to make a teaching deck, or to teach fundamentals, just to make a reasonably strong deck with as few packs as possible (kinda like what Willingdone and @thebigunit3000 did based out of @mediohxcore’s decks a couple years back) and trust people to figure out if that’s the approach they want to take to get into the tournament scene.
I agree that DBS is more fundamental, we’ve seen the deck work even without Cali (and bearing in mind how many Shapers maybe Cali is more of a threat than a win con). But I don’t know, it’s just such a good card, might be the raw power level makes it worth more than DBS, especially to an inexperienced player who, like you all pointed out, might not know which card would be best to bottom.
Why did they sell their collection? Is there any evidence that this crowd would ever want back in? The game wasn’t right for them, let’s all move on.
Why did they stop buying? If it was due to real world pressure (a new job, a new partner, a new offspring or, as in my case, a federal prison sentence) then it’s understandable to have taken a break. To this end, I think a CTM deck is a hot way to show off the Autumn 2016 Netrunners. However, if they stopped buying because they responded unfavourably to something about the game, the community, or the competitive environment, then this deck won’t solve it. Asset spam, IG, and CTM—or perhaps the combo of CTM, Sensie Actors Union, and Hard-Hitting News—was a big turn-off for a lot of people, and the political assets in general have been deemed “the worst mistake in Netrunner” by someone smarter than me on a podcast recently. Is this the way to encourage people to rejoin?
I think the only person who fits that bill is qqq and we banned him.
Here you go! I have one or two friends who don’t buy packs they view as poor investments, love Netrunner, but only play among friends and never in tournaments or whatever. Unfortunately, these people are perfectly aware of what expansion means (“all the cards”) and convincing them to go beyond kitchen table play means something other than patronizingly showing them a good CTM deck. Show them that Netrunner is not full of eye-roll matchups that’ll waste their time and they might bite
[quote=“CryofFrustration, post:5, topic:9601”]- those rare freaks who are just so good at card games they can take up netrunner and win a GNK 2 months later (we’ve all met one or two).
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This subset of carbon-based lifeforms does not need a CTM list.
DBS is easily more important than calibration testing. Calibration testing probably doesn’t make the cut in most competitive CtM decks while DBS is absolutely crucial.
I don’t know where they’re coming from or why they quit man, all I know is the past month and a bit there’s been a lot of “returning player wanting to buy back in” posts on reddit!
And the choice of CtM wasn’t because I think it’s a good beginner deck, it’s just because it’s cheap to build a strong-ish deck due to the Chris pack! I could wait for Wilfy’s decks to come out but I doubt CI will be more beginner friendly!
Obviously people who are determined to buy back in anyway will just buy everything they’re missing and not bother with this article, this is for the people who can’t spend that much in one go or aren’t sure they want to.
Calibration testing may be better as an inclusion somewhere towards the end of the article about where to go on collecting after you make the deck and play in a few tournaments. Besides, it’s in the latest pack, so there’s no end in pressure to pick it up if they just got back into the game.
In that case I think this is a good deck to recommend… It’s a) unlikely to be hit by the MWL anytime soon, and b) nothing gets hit by next rotation.
So yeah, it’s $100 for a good, enduring archetype!
Would you rather go with QPMs? I think this strengthens your overall gameplan of exchanging for a GFI. Nothing’s more fun than having your opponent score a QPM for you then trading it back next turn.
I would, but D&D is $30, and most of the cards you’d take from it are already in Chris Dyer’s deck! It’s definitely one of the packs i recommend people buy next though.
LOL… I had a dumb moment. I realized later when I was trying to build runner decks using the same card pool that I had been simply reading out the pack names and had forgotten they all came from World Champs 2016.
It looks like you’ve got 1 Revised Core, 1 World Champs 2016 Corp, Crimson Dust, and All That Remains?
If you added the World Champs 2016 Runner deck—I know that pushes the cost up—you get access to some utility Anarch cards (and a lot of ones that are now illegal lol). Combine it with Mining Accident and Aumakua from Crimson Dust and… You have an okay-ish Anarch deck? I’d play it for $100.
The Best Legal Runner Deck I Could Make w/ World Champs Runner 2016, Crimson Dust, and 1 Revised Core
Turned out much longer than I thought (should’ve split it into multiple posts really, but hopefully the index will make it easy to navigate), plus it’s been a busy few weeks for me so it took much longer than I planned.
Still up for suggestions on how to improve these decks for the newbies, so if you see something you don’t like let me know and I might edit the article! I’ll be absolutely thrilled if some beginner posts and says they made the cut in a store championship with these!
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