Nasir Meidan (First Draft)

Here are the three main questions you should ask when building a deck for any runner: what does my faction do best, what does my ID do best, and how can I build my deck to support that?

Shapers are known for their ability to dig up the answer to any situation. They can run big breakers because they very often have the economy to back such plays up, and they can very often call on whatever programs they need mid-run thanks to cards like Self-modifying Code and Clone Chip. They also enjoy a strong, stable economy in the form of Magnum Opus and a nice combined econ/card draw from Professional Contacts.

Part two of the equation, what does my ID do best? Well, Nasir is tricky, and to fully answer this question you need to have a detailed understanding of run timings. When the corp first rezzes a piece of ice, you are in the APPROACH phase. Nasir's ability doesn't trip until the ENCOUNTER phase, and in between those two there's a paid abilities window. What does that mean? For Nasir it means everything. It means you can start a run with loads of cash in your pocket as long as you have somewhere to spend it within that paid abilities window. Personal Workshop is Nasir's bread and butter, and the sooner you can get bigger breakers, Toolboxes, Magnum Opus on it, the quicker it will be up and running on the corp's dime. Knowing that, packing 3x Workshop is a must because you need to see that card early. And as a Shaper, you have maybe one of the best utility programs in the game in faction: Self-modifying Code. That is what saves your bacon when you run into ice that you need an answer for, either to punch through a server the corp thought was safe, or to avoid taking the blow from some nasty subroutines.

In terms of your icebreaker suite, there's a suspicious lack of a barrier breaker, and while it looks like you were thinking of maybe Paintbrushing anything that's a code gate or a sentry, you're using up 2 MU and spending a click every turn to get through something that could be dealt with by using a barrier breaker or an AI. Paintbrush seems useful on paper, but from all the Shaper decks I've played, it's almost always been far more situational than you'd realize; a well-rounded breaker suite goes farther than a Paintbrush 99 times out of 100. And on the program side, 2x Medium seems a bit overkill with the 3x R&D Interface the deck already runs. Consider this: just two RDI's turns every R&D run into a Maker's Eye. And by putting Medium on the board with your Datasucker as well, that's just even more incentive for the corporation to wipe virus counters. Dropping the two Mediums for Parasites (2 is good, 3 is VERY good) is a prudent move, especially with Nasir whose day can be ruined by cheap ice (I'm looking at you, Pop-Up Window...).

Think some of these things over, and remember, the fewer frills the better. At its core, running is about getting into servers, and stealing agendas before the corp can score them, and you want to build a deck that lets you do that as quickly and efficiently as possible. Good luck!

I think I needed to here that. The last deck I built was for The Professor. So when I started to build this one there was a lot of muttering about one trick ponies and changing things up but shaper is shaper. What do you think about Emergency Shutdowns and Forged Activation Orders? Get rid of all the influence except for the Xanadus? I don't see cheap ice being a problem except once.