Overview:

This deck is fun as hell. Moreover, I think it's actually quite good. Granted, jnet casual is what it is, but this is undefeated in my testing so far, and I don't think any of the games have even been close. I keep waiting for it to just fall apart against something and reveal itself to be a janky gimmick, but it's yet to happen for me, so I figured it was time to put it out there, talk about it, and hopefully get it into the hands of some better players than me to see how it really fares. In my experience, it feels incredibly consistent, aggressive, and easy to play, allowing you to focus on pressuring the corp and hunting agendas, rather than doing involved math or plotting out convoluted lines.

How Does It Work?

The premise is dead simple: Slap Vandal and Botulus are amazing, can break nearly anything, and are dirt cheap to use. Run 3x both of them and you'll very consistently have breakers in hand that you can install on-demand with your ID ability to break whatever you run into. That in turn lets you put insane pressure on the corp, because you have almost zero setup requirements. I think this is where Arissana really goes off, and how she was meant to be played.

Complementing these breakers are 2x Poison Vial. These let you get through ice with more must-break subs when needed, although of course the charges are limited, so you should be at least a little judicious about burning through them willy-nilly.

When your breaking solution is this stripped-down and cheap, you don't need much in the way of supporting rig. Less is more here; in many games you don't even end up installing half the non-breaker stuff, because you're just going that fast, and you're on game point by Turn 4 anyway, so why bother? One interesting benefit of having such a cost-effective gameplan is that clicking for credits (while still not good) goes considerably further than usual, so you always have a little bit of gas on tap if you need it.

With all your free slots, you can really lean into a event-based build instead, and just perpetually hammer the Corp with high-value runs. You can pressure HQ with Burner and DJ Fenris (if you ever get around to installing him), R&D with Trick Shot, and both equally with Jailbreak. Remotes usually get an Overclock or the back half of a Trick Shot (these cards also provide a lot of your trashing credits, so save them for that if needed).

This is all without even mentioning the skateboard tricks you can pull. In addition to the usual Simulchip flicker shenanigans, some of the new events from Rebellion Without Rehearsal allow you to do some serious bullshit.

What's that? The remote is four-deep with giant ice and the winning agenda is sitting in there? You have an entirely empty board, and only a few credits to your name?

Chuck down a Poison Vial for free with Rigging Up and get a 4th counter on it automatically. Then use Spree and your ID ability to install that one Slap Vandal and ride it all the way down the stack. A remote that might have cost the corp as much as 40 credits to rez goes down in just 5, including the breaker install. Just busted.

OK, But What About...

...Magnet? This is probably the most obvious card that's meant to throw a wrench in our plans, but fortunately we have a card that does the exact same thing to it: Hush. Thanks to rules quirks, it disables the Magnet, rather than the other way around, so this is a fairly easy one-stop shop for getting through the silver bullet ice. You can either Simulchip it out of your heap when you need it, or install it directly from the grip with your ID ability. If you do the latter, you won't be able to also throw out a breaker -- but fortunately, the friendly Corp will usually pull one of your other installed ones onto the Magnet for you when it's rezzed, and save you the trouble!

...Virtual Service Agent? Like most NBN cards, this one is annoying, but doesn't really prevent you from doing your thing. You'll take a tag and pay a credit for running through it -- but on the plus side, you don't need to dedicate one of your breakers to it. Simply clear the tag later and move on with your life. Ideally after having stolen piles of agendas. If you really care for some reason, you can Hush this too, although I can't imagine why you would need to.

...Hammer? Another leading alt-rig-hate card, you will sometimes take a little bit of pain from this one. Being able to only break the program-trashing sub or the hardware/resource trashing one means you're likely to lose something when you run through this. In some ways, it's the nastiest thing you can run into with this rig. On the other hand, your board is often almost (if not completely) empty, so you can sometimes walk straight through this by breaking just the third sub and not even really care. And last but not least, you can always (say it with me now) Hush it. Man, that card is good.

...Wraparound/Hortum/Conundrum/Swordsman? These are easy: for some reason, Botulus isn't an AI. So if ice like these are in the matchup, prioritize using your Bots for them. Same with ice that is >6 Strength, or can get there. Fortunately, these things are all pretty rare, and usually expensive. And a certain orange Trojan does its thing to all of them, too.

So What Does This Struggle Against?

As I said, it's just been a breeze for me in all kinds of matchups so far. But I suspect the archetype most likely to give it a headache is Asset and Tag spam out of NBN. A lack of real money means the cost of trashing the board and clearing tags is a pretty significant burden -- even more so than usual. I often end up going tag-me and just rushing for the last score rather than trying to slow down and do the heavy lifting of clearing all those tags. Fortunately, you're usually at or near game point by the time this becomes a problem, so it's relatively viable. PE/Grinder builds can be somewhat challenging, as well, in the way that they always are. Fortunately, you have exceptional card draw, built-in flatline combo protection, and plenty of speed to finish the game before it becomes a problem.

TL;DR

Try this deck! It's the most fun I've had playing Netrunner. I'd love to hear what folks think!