How to lose friends and infuriate people

I always loved this ID and its great that its resurfaced with SC19. With its click denial ability it always felt more HB than Jinteki flavoured and this build’s goal is to use this ability with MCA/ELP and Crisium to leave the runner with no clicks with which to run remotes and the actual job of stealing agendas. A lot of card choices are self-explanatory but….

• Sundew is a “no-brainer” with this ID, for a click the runner must spend 2 clicks and 2c to trash it (plus whatever the central run costs breaking ICE etc)

• NGO : a great corp econ card in any build, install adv/adv and use it as a lure, get it down and leave yourself skint early game and they might run against unrezzed ICE thinking you can’t rez etc etc. Ultimately you get a great econ burst either way

• Snare! : It wins games (one of my favourite all time corp cards). Great HQ and R&D protection and the tag can be very handy to clear an annoying resource if they run late or poor

• Breached dome : another great piece of R&D/HQ protection but the primary purpose here is dump them into archives (where they are still active) as quickly as possible. Once that’s done the only way they can run a remote is by running R&D or HQ first unless they want 3 net damage and to lose the top 3 cards of the stack !

• Synth DNA Modification : makes those runs even more grinding, most of the ICE in the deck is AP (or at least enough to make sure they’ll hit at least one per turn with a run)

• MCAAP : this is a must trash asset. The runner is already 1 click down and must spend another on a central run first before they can run the remote and try to trash it.

• Crisium Grid : for use on R&D / HQ only. That first click on a central run now becomes 2 (the first to trash the upgrade, the second to get a successful run to enable a remote run). It also provides some protection against Crowdfunding being re-cycled.

• Enhanced Logon Protocol : That first click now becomes 3 (and with MCAAP nothing left for the remote run)

Econ : Hedge and NGO are the staples but Sundew will provide a reliable stream later in the game once the runner has given up trying to trash them.

ICE : Mostly AP including some big expensive sentries. Susanoo feels expensive for a strength 7 with 1 routine but when you have the breached domes in archives that routine effectively becomes “suffer 3 net damage, trash the top 3 cards of the stack and ETR” and it starts feeling like good value. Kakugo (AP) for the net damage and ETR, again feels expensive at strength 1 but the synergy with Synth DNA makes it worthwhile. DNA tracker (AP) is just good despite its lack of ETR. Thimblerig for some cheap ETR and gives you a bit of flex to move things around late game if necessary. Miraju should go on either HQ or R&D depending on your opponents central of choice, I generally almost always use it on HQ. Macrophage is a chancer and might be a dead card depending on match-up but if it is you can always use it for some dummy protection on a remote, however against an anarch with viruses it becomes brutal. Anansi/Mlinzi for some expensive (AP) grueling running experience and Swordsman for a bit of AI hate (again AP).

Agendas : House of Knives, sneak them out and use the tokens sparingly to make the later runs that much more unpleasant. Obokata felt like the best choice for the big guns, with all the click denial and net damage going on you can get into the situation where the runner either can’t run remotes at all or can’t buff up their hand enough to pinch them even if they do. Agenda flood ? drop one in archives, once the runner knows the cost of running it they won’t touch it with a 20 foot pole. Nissei again plays on the click denial aspect, that token can end the click 4 run that would steal a semi advanced Obo – and yes in this deck the goal is to score them !

Game Plan : ICE up centrals and try to over-draw to dump Breached domes into archives. Hold Snare! In hand and don’t be afraid to play the Sundews early whilst its relatively cheap to get at them - the tempo hit to the runner will soon tell and allow you to take control of the game (2 Premptives will allow them to be recycled later). Ditto MCA but make sure that there is at least one still in circulation for later in the game when you hopefully have Crisium and/or ELP down. Centrals should be steadily iced up with the focus on taxing pieces that will drain the runner leaving them with nothing for remote runs. Archives can be left unprotected or if you do ICE it try not to rez (Susanoo). You probably won’t need much of a scoring remote but a Kakugo and a sentry should be more than enough to keep them at bay providing the centrals are well enough protected.

The beauty of this game is that there is never a perfect build and in trying to cater for everything you can leave yourself with no plan at all. Obviously Employee strike can throw a spanner in the works but with 3 copies of ELP and recursion you should be able to keep on top of things. Film critic again could be a problem and can make those Obokatas vulnerable. They’ll still need to suffer 4 meat damage to steal one after running the gauntlet of click denial (no card draw before running) and HoK/AP net damage though. Early game criminal shenanigans can also hurt but Crisium also provides some protection against some of this by denying the successful run.

Anyway this is my first posted deck so all comments / ideas gratefully received !

[Note to Liv : try this against Tom-SK to ruin his day]