This is the runner I brought to Cascadia. I’ve been iterating on this idea for some time now and going into Cascadia I expected it to be quite strong. It has good econ and acceleration, can cheat through ice early game, has extra clicks for dealing with non-conventional game plans, and has a strong end game with a traditional turbine rig and Deep Dive. I felt this deck had a good matchup into everything I was expecting to see and it didn’t let me down.

I found during Cascadia that this runner could keep up with even the fastest corps (here's looking at you, Azmari), and doesn’t require a full rig to combat most game plans. Physarum makes runs extremely safe, Propeller can break barriers cheaply early game and it helps boost Echelon to 6 strength if you’re expecting Archer.

In the end, I landed at 4th in Swiss and 8th in the cut, which is a great showing but I think I could have made smarter decisions while playing in the cut, opting to set up my breaker suite instead of continuing to cheat through ice with physarum.

The Engine

The core engine is surprisingly robust and gives you a lot of flexibility. Ideally you get both Aesop’s and LilyPAD down quickly, but Spec Work gets you value if you’re slow finding your pieces, so you’re fairly resilient to bad draw.

The core engine is:

• 3x Aesop’s Pawnshop
• 3x LilyPAD
• 3x Self-modifying Code
• 3x Muse
• 3x Simulchip
• 3x Coalescence

3 SMC/ 3 Muse looks like a lot of redundancy, but it’s critical that you have easy access to your tutors, and that you always have programs to sell to the pawn shop.

Overclock, Trick Shot, and Spec Work aren’t exactly part of the engine, but I would call them core to keeping the engine running smoothly, allowing you to run a little closer to the ground than usual and bounce back quickly.

With all these programs you could also consider running Environmental Testing, but I found that it was slightly slow and hurts pretty bad if it gets trashed or Amani'd. I ended up swapping them out for Overclock instead.

Beyond that, this shell offers a ton of flexibility, both for how to spend your influence and for your preferred win condition.

The Build

This deck has tools for many situations, and enough recursion that you can sell almost anything without feeling bad about it. The hard part is matching the pace of the corp, and making the right decisions in regards to establishing your econ, building your rig, or just cheating through servers.

Deep Dive — After testing Cataloguer, Mad Dash, and Conduit, I concluded Deep Dive is the strongest wincon for this deck in the current meta. One of the strongest plays you can make in this deck is Trick Shot into Deep Dive, which can win you the game in a single turn. This is my typical plan against RH or any punitive deck.

Wheels — One of the best tech cards in the meta imo, and crucial for Deep Dive since DJ Fenris is most often Steve.

Cupellation — With the pace of the game, I find it important to be able to punish the corp for bad draw from the start of the game. Using your first SMC or Muse to get Cupellation is sometimes the right play, and you can always recur Cupellation and do it again if you need to. It’s also great against assets and can disrupt combos by stealing the key operation. Cupellation paired with Deep Dive is also a wild number of accesses in a turn, helping you close the game out quickly if you stumble into a punitive trap.

Physarum — I love this card. Between Physarum and Propeller, you’re not afraid of facechecking anything [… except Anansi], and having it as a backup plan means you can facecheck and decide in the moment if your Trick Shot creds are better spent on a breaker, physarum, or just Muse/ Coalescence for more econ with Aesop’s.

Paricia — Paricia is fine. I’d prefer Miss Bones, but I ran out of influence. Notably, Paricia is tutorable, and at worst is a click for 3 credits when you install it just to sell to Aesop.

Cupellation, Physarum, Paricia, and Clot all serve a secondary purpose — Even when you don’t need them, or if they’ve outlived their usefulness, you can just sell them to Aesop. Not only does this get you money, but helps keep the engine going.

Simulchip — This is part of the core engine, but worth calling out for a few interesting notes. Simulchip is best used to keep the Aesop’s train going. If you sell your last sacrificial program to Aesop’s, don’t be afraid to use simulchip to bring something back now to sell on your next turn. Once this engine dries up, it can be hard to get it going again, since you have to trash a program in order to use Simulchip which you might not have around anymore. On that note, whenever you bring anything back, do it with Muse if you can afford to, since then you get back 2 programs to sell on future turns. Lastly, since you usually don’t have to trash anything to use simulchip (since Aesop’s already paid the price), you might find yourself in a pinch where you want to flicker physarum onto another ice. You can do this by simulchipping a muse, over installing Physarum, and then using Muse to bring it back where you want it.

DJ Fenris — You almost always want Steve for +2 simulchip, +2 muse, etc, but I found against Azmari, Sable is an interesting choice that threatens Deep Dive and can force them to slow down and ice centrals.

Breakers + Turbine — This breaker suite is obviously very strong, but I rarely had to set up the full rig. You could experiment with different breakers to save influence or eliminate Turbine, but it’s hard to beat this rig in terms of cost as the game goes on.

46 Cards?!

Going into Cascadia, I believed that the second Deep Dive was my 46th card, but I didn’t want to cut it because I wanted to have it in every game at some point. If you find yourself in trouble, Deep Dive is about the best hail mary play you can ask for. After Cascadia, I think Propeller may have been the 46th card, but I would probably keep it anyway.

Azmari Tech? Punitive Tech? Where?

Notably, I’m not running Stoneship Chart Room or Burner in this deck. I think Cupellation does a similar job as Burner, but it helps you win faster instead of lose slower, not to mention it can be tutored. And with Cupellation, taking even a single card out of Azmari's HQ can buy you a turn. As for Stoneship, I was able to get to 7 (or even 8) handsize pretty consistently on the corps turn between Lat and LilyPAD (which notably you can trigger on your turn AFTER the discard phase).

Shout Outs

Once again, Cascadia was an amazing event. Thanks Whiteblade and team for organizing and running what I consider the premier West Coast tournament.

Huge thanks to the Unnamed West Coast Netrunner Group (you know who you are). Thanks for all the testing, theory crafting, and meta discussions. I wouldn’t have landed where I did without you all.

And lastly, it was amazing to see everyone and I look forward to next time! This game wouldn’t be the same without you all.