Merchant of Annoyance

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Repartition by Cost
Repartition by Strength
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
None yet
Include in your page (help)

scd 190

An attempt to do something other than regular ol' Anarch in Alice. Tried a few times on Jnet and it seemed to have a little promise, I suppose. Posting here just for ideas and suggestions for improvement.

Basically, this is just standard Anarch Siphon/Keyhole nonsense with Eater. The reasoning being -- Eater isn't bad in Alice, given you just need the successful run for her ability, so it stacks with Retrieval Run, which you'll probably have to do to get an Injected Keyhole eventually.

You'll be trashing enough ice out of hand that a singleton Immolation Script can sometimes be useful. If using Eater anyway, why not go for Siphon/Keyhole? Aeneas Informants for the asset spam matchup (and great synchronicity with Maw, though obviously a nonbo with Keyhole). A single Wanton is here just for more extra HQ trashing fun, a single Spooned just because of current strong code gates in the meta, could be anything else, really.

If you get locked out or go tag-me otherwise, the fun combo turn if you can pull it off is: c1 Siphon (2 tags), c2 Vamp them down to nothing (3 tags), c3 install Counter Surveillance, c4 trash Counter Surveillance and run R&D for a game-closing Anarch Maker's Eye (or more, depending). Critically, not using Eater on the R&D run so you can actually access.

Does this reliably work? Probably not, but to my mind Netrunnerdb shouldn't just be about effective decks, it's about throwing goofy ideas at the wall. Perhaps some element or two of this might idea stick.

Thoughts?

6 comments
27 Jun 2017 rubyvr00m

I've been playing around with an Alice deck that just uses the fixed strength breakers and Temujin Contracts and it's been performing alright. A few things you might want to borrow from my experience:

I think the 3rd Hacktivist is auto-include. The games where I had it I felt completely oppressive, but when I couldn't find it I struggled to put as much pressure on HQ. Similarly, Bhagat was in my deck as a 1 of, and I think he should have been 2. That said, it looks like you're planning on floating tags so maybe you actually want to rely less on resources here. If that's the case you might try dropping the Aeneas for a Planned Assault to get to your Siphons faster and maybe consider using Obelus instead of Maw that way you have some built in kill protection from increased handsize and you can get free card draw with Counter Surveilence. Against horizontal decks it's probably not as good as Maw but it is an option.

Just spit-balling a bit here, I hadn't considered going the AI-breaker route but I'm interested to see where the community goes with Alice because in the few games I played I was actually surprised at how powerful her ID ability feels (particularly when paired with Hacktivist).

27 Jun 2017 rubyvr00m

Oh and I think you're on to something with the Immolation script. I'm normally not a big fan of that card, but considering most players include redundant copies of ice, I think you are likely to find high value targets.

27 Jun 2017 adquen

I actually think this kind of build is the reason Alice is a 50 card ID - because 45/12 is still enough for 3 Siphons and having five more cards is really an issue if you look for 3 copies of a specific card. That said, I think it's still a playable strategy, just not as strong as it could be ... anyway, to real points:

  • The singleton Immolation Script is a beautiful idea. Keep it!
  • I think Aeneas Informant is the wrong choice in this deck. When you spend 12 of your precious 15 influence on Siphons, you want to make them count. And they count a lot more if they keep the opponent poor, which is not the case if they can keep their economy assets on the board. I would play Scrubbers instead.
  • Finding the first Siphon will be hard enough, as I don't see which additional draw option you could add to the deck (mb John Masanori, as you want to have one Archives-run each turn anyway). Finding the second before the Corp recovers ... I don't see that. So I would recur the first as long as I can by playing 3x Déjà Vu and 3x Same Old Thing. It's basically the same idea as before - if you play a Siphon deck, go all in on it.
  • Datasucker might be an idea here, as you have lots of MU anyway (Keyhole + Eater uses only three for you main rig) - they work wonderful with all those Archives runs you're gonna make and make them cheaper at the same time! And if you already have Suckers, Parasite looks tempting. I'm not sure what to count, maybe the Peddlers. You play 24 events in this deck, this is not the best deck for that card, I think.
28 Jun 2017 Synisill

Just overflew this. Eater and Counter-Surveillance do not work together, so this tag-me plan only works if you have the suite out. Nice deck!

28 Jun 2017 scd

@Synisilll Yeah, they definitely do not work together, but I've found in testing that I'm drawing through virtually my whole deck maybe 70% of the time and I've had no trouble finding those conspiracy breakers. One game I closed out by doing, essentially, a mega-Legwork -- after being on the Keyhole plan all game, the Corp was reticent to dump agendas back into R&D and was defending HQ somewhat lightly, and so I dropped a Counter Surveillance and then popped it, running HQ and seeing all 5 cards for the win. I'm liking Counter Surveillance so far, but perhaps it doesn't need 3x in the deck, and I need to play it closer to the chest as a surprise closer rather than as part of the regular game plan. Same with Immolation Script, really.

@rubyvr00m 3x Hacktivist seems a bit much to me; I think I might rather keep it at 2x and then up the recursion a bit. Having the additional flexibility to keep Siphon-spamming or pull off an extra Wanton or whatever might be more useful? Or maybe I spent more time playing glacier builds with this than is typical in a tournament environment, where Hacktivist will certainly do a lot of work against horizontal decks. I agree that Maw isn't doing what I want it to do here -- seems an obvious include for Alice, but Vigil or Obelus (with this specific build) might be better. I'm yearing for draw in a 50 card deck, and found myself clicking for cards a lot.

28 Jun 2017 scd

@adquen Yeah, I originally had an Aaron in there instead of the Aeneas, but figured the synergy with Maw was worth trying. It worked out in a couple games, but mainly when Maw and those hit the table, the Corp just turtled. Which is fine! It changed their gameplan, though the Maw/Aeneas abilities didn't fire much.