Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? (3rd Place 2018 NZ Nationals)

Ghost Meat 938

Tired of corps having all of your personal information? Surveil back in a big way with a disgruntled, conspiratorial octogenarian!

This deck took third place at the event, despite only going 2-5 on the day, riding in on the coattails of my undefeated Titan deck. It's been very strong in testing in the past month, but had some bad beats on the day. I'd been playing a very similar archetype with my Kid Sister MaxX deck, published a couple of months ago (https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/48154/see-trash-all-the-things-2nd-in-swiss-victoria-bc-sc-), which uses God(s) of War, Obelus, Mars for Martians, Dean Lister, and Counter Surveillance to land some bonkers deep digs in R&D to usually close out games, and By Any Means and Legwork to bin important cards from the corp's hand.

In testing with MaxX in the two months leading to this event, I found that all copies of Obelus were too often going into the bin due to her cavalier attitude, and needed something that was potentially more consistent in getting them down early. My friend Chris Hay and I figured that Omar's early pressure might be a better choice, and to just put more draw in to get the essential early combo pieces down as fast as possible, which are Obelus and at least one God of War to get the engine going.

I tested back and forth between E-Strike and Levy for the restricted card, E-Strike being especially important against AgInfusion, as it can get tough to land a CS dig without it, but ended up choosing Levy, as it was crucial in some situations if you took damage throughout the game by being agro and lost too many key cards (see my game against Michael Walsh in the semifinals for empirical evidence of this, haha).

Games this won were against Argus (thank you for more tags) and Titan (Stimhack through Archer on the remote for the final agenda). The most memorable loss was to Palana in round one of Swiss, against which I went tag-me on turn one without Obelus, got to six points very quickly with Omar's early aggression, went into HQ with three cards in hand, hitting an Obokata, not being able to steal it, and getting Boomed a turn or two later...out of Palana. I high-fived that guy.

I got to play Corp in the first two rounds of the cut, but then had to run against Robin Candy's tournament-winning Skorp deck (in which Omar got to five points, but couldn't get anything to break Code Gates fast enough, as he closed out with Atlas counters and Audacity), and then against Michael's truly glacial Palana, which more or less ground me into paste with three rezzed DNA Trackers and two Nisei scores that made CS digs nearly impossible.

This was a great tournament event, and everyone there was fantastic to play and hang out with. Special thanks to the Dunedin and Victoria metas for their inputs and support throughout the lead-up to this tournament, particularly to Peter Harris for stream-of-consciousness level, instant-speed feedback on card choices and ideas, and Chris Hay for encouraging me to take Titan a few days before the tournament (which, incidentally, Peter had also suggested as a strong choice quite a while before that, but I was tunnel-visioned on Skorpios at the time).

6 comments
9 Apr 2018 PyWiz

Interesting take. I’ve been playing a similar list out of MaxX but without Legwork or BAM (instead the influence went to a 2nd Levy and 3rd Peace). In testing BAM felt awkward with Mars/Peace and in general just fired the standard combo tended to be better anyways. Legwork + BAM was sometimes cool but a lot of times I’d rather just Legwork normally.

Am I missing an important use for these cards? The list I’m on now is pretty all-in on getting the combo ASAP (3 Build Script, 1 Special Order, and 2 Ret Run in addition to the Max draw). The speed felt necessary to race Titan but maybe the disruption makes up for that?

9 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

Thanks, @PyWiz! Yeah, quite a few priority events can be a bit odd at times. My thinking with By Any Means is mainly for matchups against NBN, where you want to bin their tag-punishment operations, or asset spam decks where you can take out some key, high-cost assets like Illegal Arms Factory or Jeeves. There's a real backup contingency plan against NBN decks with QPM, if you can wind up a BAM run into a big Counter Surveillance in R&D, and mill out the agendas and then run archives, but that's pretty edge case, and you'd maybe need an untrashed Mercs on the table, and a fair amount of un-Closed Accounts money in your credit pool to start the turn. In the second round against Argus, I did BAM Legwork and binned an SSL and an Atlas, drawing three cards from Obelus in the process, and then getting those from Archives shortly after, so that put the corp on the back foot pretty good for a while. Here's my original MaxX list if you want to compare: netrunnerdb.com

11 Apr 2018 Celephaishs

Really enjoyed the Kid Sister deck, so I'll definitely be giving this a few runs on the weekend. I like the consistency that this will bring - a good few Maxx games were lost due to the main pieces ending up in the bin.

I have a dream of nuking an asset-spam deck with BAM + Marathon - so I'm tempted to go -1 Legwork, -3 Build Script, +1 Marathon, +3 Sports Hopper to see if I can make that happen. More of a meta call depending on what's being played locally, and the Sports Hopper is a lot more expensive. But still, I want those asset decks to burn!

12 Apr 2018 Ajar

What do you mull for in this? Money + draw?

12 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

@Ajar You typically want Obelus and a GOW as early as possible, to get the engine going. A Sure Gamble or Peace in your opener is really nice as well to help get those down. Granted, against some corp factions, you're probably not worried about getting Boomed, so Obelus isn't as crucial. That said, I did this against Palana in round one and got Boomed super early, so you never know.

13 Apr 2018 Ajar

Cool, thanks!