SYNC: Tag Punishment From All Angles

akonnick 2076

This list is very simple and maximizes SYNC's ability to land and stick tags. All of the sentries exist to deliver tags and punish early runner aggression. I'm going to test with this composition, but it is important to have a critical mass of cards that can tag so that you can put the runner in a bind early. News Team is also a card I've been very happy with and seems maximized in this type of deck. If the runner takes the tags, it is likely that they'll never remove them. If they start taking negative agenda points, it makes it very difficult to win as they are going to be in for a slog since they can't steal your Quantum Predictive Models while tagged and the Global Food Initiatives only count for 2 points. I really think that Quantum Predictive Model is a powerful agenda in this kind of shell and is worth building around. The main victory condition is pretty simple: Score out your first Astroscript, let the train continue and let the runner score your Quantum Predictive Models for you. Global Food requires a little more setup to score, but is easy to do once you start protecting your remote with Keegan Lane.

Once a single tag sticks, you have tons of ways to punish the runner. You can go for the tried and true Scorched Earth kill (made easier by the lower deck size and in faction tutor from Lily Lockwell). You can use Closed Accounts to tempo score out behind an end run ice (easier if your opponent doesn't have their full breaker suite). If the runner is set up, you can start using newcomer Keegan Lane to send them back to the early game trying to keep their rig together. That is a lot of punishment on top of the ID's flip ability that allows you to cheaply clear out any runner resources if needed.

The econ package is pretty simple as you don't need a lot of money to operate. The ice is really cheap, you aren't trying to build big servers and your assets and upgrades generally cost nothing to rez. I was excited to get to add Reality Threedee to the deck as I think it is a very powerful card that only slots in a narrow number of decks. While Bad Publicity isn't great, this deck mitigates it by playing lots of binary ice backed up with program destruction to keep the runner from leveraging it. Additionally, when you have Scorched Earth as a win condition, it is easier to care less about piling on the bad pub to gain the upper hand since you don't need to score out.

I think that SYNC will be a very playable ID and the only unknown is whether it will be the premier home for the Scorched Earth NBN decks given the competition from NEH and Haarpsichord. I personally think this seems like the strongest of the three given the smaller deck size and the reduced reliance on Midseason Replacements to serve as your only method of sticking tags. I'm excited to try this further when Data and Destiny is released soon and welcome any suggestions from others playing this ID.

2 comments
26 Sep 2015 darwindeez

Sweet deck.

SYNC is brutal, especially for Noise. And QPM is so fun! I arrived at the exact same agenda suite after much testing. Super strong agendas, all of them.

My build revolves more around Casting Call than program trashing. That way you give even Valencia something to think about. Keegan seems really fun but I'm worried he'd lose to Shapers or anyone with Clone Chip and/or Levy.

If there's one thing I've learned from playing SYNC: you can't afford to take those negative points from News Team. It's awkward, but if you don't float tags right away, you'll never catch up. The smaller deck size makes News Team even stronger, and Global Food goes right along with it. Only 12-15 points in the deck. Nasty!

There's only one real hoser and that's New Angeles City Hall, coupled with Film Critic. So far only Creepy Iain is playing that. Will the meta change to respect this beast?

netrunner.meteor.com

26 Sep 2015 Chewie

Liking the deck man I think sync is a lot of fun to play. I've been trying out 3 breaking news along with the 24/7 news cycle so you can make the BN play into either scorch/TA or destroy all their assets with the all-seeing I (my current favourite card). Kitty cat behind a data raven is always hilarious too that's good fodder for the 24/7 play also check out franchise city too ;)