Fast Protein Sales

Card draw simulator
Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Repartition by Cost
Repartition by Strength
Derived from
You shall not pass
Inspiration for
Diogene's Protein deck with some changes for tabletop sim
Fast Bacterial Sales 1.0
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Diogene 4248

After many games with "Turtle no more", there was some things I wanted to resolve.

First, it was the econ. I was finding myself racing to get creds, while trying to build a glacier. Second, was the speed. The aim was to go fast, but building a glacier went against it.

After a comment (thank you!) from Krams, I changed the ices from the earlier list (named You shall not pass). It is more taxing and give better results. Explanation later in the post.

My (current) solution is to do what every good glacier deck do, use Jinja City Grid. This give click compression and saves a lot of creds. Also, I now use Corporate Sales Team, giving me 6 agendas (of 9) which bring in econ. Lastly, I also use Improved Protein Source. It synergize well with Saraswati. Yes, it gives 4 creds to the runner, but in exchange, you need only to score 3 agendas (usually).

The rest is per usual. Crisium against DoF and Stargate, Cyberdex for viruses and trigger for the agenda, And a Preemptive as tech versus trashing.

Krams gave me the suggestion that having Barrier ices push the runner to install barrier breakers, costing a click and creds. I tried Vanilla, but since it can be broken by an empty Aumakua, for a deck that kill Aumakua, it was not a good value. Instead, I went for Himitsu-Bako. In theory, it you be also used as a mild form of ice movement. Also, to make the ice more taxing, I slotted Rainbow and Engram Flush. Both have a good strenght to rez ratio, making the runner spend creds on them (or lose cards).

After further testing, I found this deck never need to put Cyberdex Sandbox first at all cost (contrary to my Turtle no more deck). You can just hope to score Improve Protein Source last, as a surprise.

On that note, there is a reason for 2x Preemptive Action. Even with an average agendas ratios, I still find myself struggling to get ices in place on time. For that reason, practice suggest to archive the agenda and retrieve it with Preemptive Action. It is the YOLO strategy, but it will save you grief.

You might notice that I got 6 regions upgrades, which cannot be on the same server. But this is a rare occurence. Most of the time, you should value Jinja more than Crisium.

Like most Saraswati deck, this goes fast. All my games with it finished before turn 15. Unless you are flooded (in which case, use the YOLO strategy mentionned above), you should be able to make a fairly strong scoring server pretty fast.

With this, you should be scoring fast. Runner with long setup will not avail. But beware of lucky runs, 3/4 agendas (that gives a 4 creds bonus to the runner for stealing it) make this pretty risky. It will keep you on the edge of your seat.

This is why we love netrunner!

9 comments
29 Sep 2020 Diogene

Thanks for Menghini for the suggestion : Replace Mlinzi by Anansi. Since most ices are pretty cheap, it should work fine here. Tell me what you think.

30 Sep 2020 Diogene

+3 Obotoka Protocol, -3 Improved Protein Source. It makes the deck much more reliable. IPS is fun and janky, but I loss one too many time because the runner was enabled with it.

1 Oct 2020 rattkin

What's the point of this being a Sarswati deck? There's almost no synergy at all without IPS. You still put out 2-turn agendas anyway and one click compression doesn't seem to change much here, especially when the opponent knows/learns that there's no traps whatsoever.

2 Oct 2020 Diogene

@rattkin You are correct. I am further experimenting. Currently, I'm trying with Bacterial Programming. It is so much better than Obotoka for this deck. Having the equivalent of Making an Entrance allow you to setup your game in an amazing way. While a 3/5 agenda takes a click longer to score, you still benefit from the ID click compression and have a click to do something else that turn, while putting a card on remote with 2 advances (looking like and NGO). Sadly for IPS, it gave too much of a boost to the runner. It would work better with a more trap heavy deck, because then, the runner would not benefit as much from the creds. But here, when you want to tax the creds as much as possible, while keeping it rather cheap for yourself, making the next run 4 credits cheaper means a lot. Thank you for your comments. If you play the deck, please comment to tell how it went for you. It is much appreciated.

2 Oct 2020 rattkin

I'm looking for a Jinteki trap deck, so that's why taking interest in this Saraswati. But my idea would be completely different. The key power of Saraswati isn't just a one click compression - for agendas that's largely irrelevant (5adv 3 pointer, 2 adv + 3 adv isn't that much different than 3 adv + 2 adv, sure it leave yous one action). It's the ability to setup traps with 3 advances on them within one round. This makes checking them a tougher call for the runner, because now he is facing a potential 6 net dmg from Junebug and 3 brain from Cerebral (putting him below Snare! threshold).

3 Oct 2020 valerian32

Cool = )

4 Oct 2020 Diogene

@rattkinYou are right. In Jinteki trap deck, it does wonders. In my experience with the trap deck, Saraswati give an additional trick to it, with its ability to put any asset out with a token on. You put a Snare! out, for one cred, you put it with a token. Same goes for Shi.Kyu and Psychic Field, or anything else (even Prisec). This will confuse the runner to no end. Making the shell game used by trap deck that much better. But note that this type of strategy work better if you have a good econ strategy for the deck, because it cost you 1 cred to put most cards out, which can be expensive if you use a lot of assets.

Some though : my first trials for an iceless Jinteki deck was is Saraswati. Alas, while the shell game worked better, it did not work well enough. I've found that Jinteki PE is much better for the iceless trap archetype.

6 Oct 2020 Krams

I'm glad my small comment sparked so much thought process on the ICE :D Happy tinkering!

6 Oct 2020 Diogene

@Krams Of course. Please continue commenting, it makes deck building more fun.