SANIC (Winner, GNK Card Kingdom Seattle, 09/28/2014)

Card draw simulator
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talking_chicken 429

This deck took 1st place in a GNK tournament on September 28, 2014, and I've already made the lists public, so I might as well publish them here, too. There were 24 players, and it was 5 rounds of Swiss with no cut. I've been continuing to play this deck since then and I don't think it's lost a game since the tournament.

This deck won 4/5 games, where the loss was to NEH Astrobiotics, and I probably could have mulliganed better. An earlier version of this deck had some decent luck against the archetype in the past; you just gotta go fast.

Mostly standard criminal fare; run early, run often, only stop when the ice tells you to. Tenma's been fairly underrepresented as far as blue decks go, but he's still really solid. PPVP really helps both the run and non-run events shine. It's gone to the point where I don't even include plascrete because it does a really good job keeping up with a scorch deck's economy. Sec Testing helps that a lot, too, forcing the corp to defend all of their servers if they don't want me to get a lot of benefits out of only one click.

I'd like to accelerate the card draw a bit if I can; sometimes the one card in my deck that I need (usually Special Order) is too slow in arriving. I've tried John Masanori but the downside was really hurting me in some games, and that's no good. Express Delivery would be nice if I decide to cut something for it.

Credit goes to my friend Kyle for indirectly inspiring me to build this deck and helping me make some last minute changes, and to Simon Bradford (choux) for his 2nd place Canadian Nationals PPVP Tenma deck that helped a lot with some of the initial refinement.

9 comments
15 Oct 2014 Jander

I have similar Ken (but no fixed str breakers), also inspired by choux, and card draw is necessary - I play with 3x Express Delivery and 2x John Masanori. I played many games without John and adding him was a very good choice. Of course you don't install him in some games and you need to be careful.

15 Oct 2014 talking_chicken

I wouldn't go as far as to say necessary; the regular draw action isn't too bad, and the tutors still help out a lot. I'm back and forth on Masanori. He's great when he works, but he's an active hindrance when he doesn't. I've had games where I spend way too many clicks and credits just dropping the tags. Maybe I just need to be better at knowing when to install him. I'd definitely like to squeeze in something though; maybe Mr. Li would work out.

15 Oct 2014 Jander

Regular card draw + Same Old Thing (3 clicks and a card slot to play an event again...) would make deck slow. John is very synergistic with Desperado + Security Testing. Sometimes you get a tag, but many corps doesn't have tag punishment. Do not invest too much in keeping him on the table. Usually he gives me 1-2 tags(sometimes I drop them, sometimes I don't), but gives many more cards.

15 Oct 2014 talking_chicken

I think the one game where it hurt me the most was against a CI deck and I wasn't sure if he was on the scorch plan or not, so I ended up dropping the tags each time. It might not have been the best game to install him at all, but it's what convinced me to take it out.

I agree that the draw can definitely be faster, though. It's just a matter of what to cut; every card in this deck has done work at some point or another. I'm hesitant to say Emergency Shutdown, but with Blue Sun being a thing, it might not be the best idea right now.

15 Oct 2014 Jander

Take a look at my Ken - netrunnerdb.com Maybe you'll see some answers. Emergency Shutdown may be hard to play, with Caprices and Crisium around.

CI is simply a bad matchup, because you don't have a free server for Security Testing.

20 Oct 2014 tuism

Have you considered Quality Time for card draw?

20 Oct 2014 talking_chicken

I'd rather have Express Delivery purely because it's in faction. Usually when I need to draw for something it's to find a very specific card, and Express Delivery does that a lot more cheaply than Quality Time does.

21 Oct 2014 Sojourne

Would this deck be better served by using it in Gab?

21 Oct 2014 talking_chicken

Not this one specifically. I don't think I'd run PPVP and lucky finds without the extra two influence and I like that this deck can still make use of the ID without needing easy access to HQ all the time. Plus it's still useful even if there's no real reason to run HQ.