I designed this deck based off Baa Ram Wu's Run D.M.C and Chuftbot's Nico Suave as mostly a counter to the ever-present PD / Asa decks, and a bit for the Azmari kill deck, where the goal is to use strong, fast early central multiaccess against lightly iced centrals to win before the corp does. In those two matchups, you also don't have to be afraid of traps, unlike playing against Jinteki or NBN where a bad multiaccess can mean a Snare! + Fujii Asset Retrieval, or two unexpected tags from Behold! or Tomorrowʼs Headline or Oracle Thinktank.

The fundamental tension with Mercury bypass decks is that bypass cards, unlike icebreakers, aren't reusable, and don't get you credits. Usually, runner decks have icebreakers, and then a bunch of economy cards. Economy cards give you more cards, or creds, both of which you can use to deal with ICE (by powering icebreakers), trash assets, and get more cards or credits. That's netrunner! But bypass cards can only be used once, and there aren't as many tricks to tutor them, unlike icebreakers, and you can't use them for anything except dealing with ICE. That means that a large fraction of your deck (usually 1/3) is taken up by bypass cards. They can't be used for credits (which are useful for everything you want to do in netrunner) - in fact, they require credits to play, most of the time, which results in economy problems (both credits and card draw) in bypass decks. Compare this to other decks, where about 1/3 to 1/2 or even more of the deck is made up of economy cards, and only 6 or maybe 8 cards are devoted to dealing with ICE. As a result, bypass decks end up being economically challenged, very narrow, inflexible with little room for tech cards, and tight on slots. We need more reusable, efficient bypass and more icemelting support before bypass Mercury decks can shine. For example, Afterimage is repeatable bypass (albeit narrow and unsupported due to the paucity of Stealth cards) on a single card that functions like a "bypass icebreaker", and Alarm Clock is another source of repeatable bypass on a single card that's narrow in a different way. Banner also feels like a Mercury card that enables interesting gameplay and tradeoffs but was printed in orange and costs 3 influence for some reason. I think there's room for fast, risky, swingy Netrunner, and I love the Mercury ID, but we need some better bypass options. Fingers crossed for Dawn!

Deck notes

Play this deck super aggressively. If either HQ or R&D are uniced, you should be running there every turn if it makes sense. The goal is to luck into stealing 2-3 agendas in the first 3 or 5 turns, then have just enough bypass to steal the last agenda from a central server.

Float slot is Reprise - it can be another Laser Pointer, another Mala, another Physarum, another Backstiching, another Class Act, or even an Amelia. Have fun with it. If you need some defensive tech, I wish there were slots for Flip Switch or No Free Lunch.

Cupellation: against HB, snatch Seamless Launch or Big Deal to make the game go on longer, and sometimes Tranquility Home Grid or Wage Workers to avoid having to pay to trash. Cup can also be used to snatch kill/combo cards like End of the Line or Oppo Research defensively.

Diesel: I spent 4 influence on this mostly because nothing else really felt good in my testing. I really wanted Banner to be good, but it's already so narrow, and it doesn't hit 6 strength Bran, which is deadly for a card that's this specialized and that you're running 1 of. Card draw is weak in this deck, but I hate playing Earthrise Hotel and The Class Act when money is already so tight in this deck, and Diesel is good to play whenever you draw it. You can consider cutting a Diesel for a Mystic Maemi.

The problems with this deck are that there are a lot of matchups where it struggles. It's really only good into some non-trap asset spam decks (very rare, and Weyland's barriers are hard to deal with), and it's ok into the usual HB. There's no tech against asset spam decks and a weak economy. Bankroll helps, and Miss Bones helps also.

We are screwed against the AgInfusion glacier. We don't have any answers against Anansi, and the agenda density is so low that lucking into 3 agendas is inconsistent. Just send it at centrals and hope. Maybe a AirbladeX (JSRF Ed.) can help.

There's enough bypass - we can squeak by without Boomerang, even though it's a really good card to beat the second (innermost) piece of ICE.

I'm hesitant to play run events without bypass, but you can add a Pinhole Threading if you really need a way to beat Manegarm Skunkworks and Anoetic Void, or Jailbreak, which is great early but falls off later.

The Tournament

Win Game 1 vs LazerSeaHorse on ShootTheMoon PD: Classic Mercury play - I was able to sneak enough points out of centrals before LazerSeaHorse could really get started. The game was over on turn 6. Always run with a click and 2 creds left in case you fall into an Ikawah. :) This was a game that I felt I won more because of good fortune than any particular virtue I possessed. Such is Mercury.

Win Game 3 vs BinkBonkle on PD: Another win, snatched from the jaws of defeat. Things were looking bad, with BinkBonkle on 6 points and me on 2, but a surprise Divide and Conquer + Cupellation let me pull a Ikawah from HQ and an OffOff from R&D to win the game on the turn that BinkBonkle was threatening an Ikawah score out in the remote.

Loss Game 5 vs enkoder on NEH: Here's enkoder's video. The only tech I had against this asset spam matchup was a single Miss Bones, and maybe my multiaccess friends Alarm Clock, Docklands Pass, and “Pretty” Mary da Silva, but a good half of my deck became dead cards and I couldn't find a Bankroll early. enkoder hit me with a 2 tag Oppo Research, and the next turn I stole a Tomorrowʼs Headline off an Alarm Clock run, giving one more tag than I could afford to clear and it was the end of my line on turn 4.

Loss Game 8 vs Amarum on Asa: I just couldn't keep up with several quickly-iced remote servers and couldn't find enough points in HQ or R&D to win before Amarum scored out.

Loss Cut game 1 vs enkoder on NEH: Here's the link to enkoder's video. Can't blame enkoder for choosing this matchup. It went much the same way - I got down an early Bankroll, but I couldn't keep up economically and I definitely couldn't keep up with all the assets. Around turn 7, he hit me with a Reaper Function, never-advanced a Fly on the Wall, and I met Sundog.

Thanks to maninthemoon for an awesome online showdown, and xdg for the foresight to create a backup server! I had a great time squeaking into my first cut. Mercury represent!

My corp was a R+ kill deck that went 3-2, both losses very close and interesting games. I'll add a link later, when the escape character injection bug when saving decklists through Notes is fixed.