Nanuq is looking at you

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Diogene 4248

This deck is leveraging less used cards such as World Tree, Nanuq, VRcation and Psych Mike. I'm sure it can be made better, if we put out mind together.

First, let's get the characteristic of the deck settle.

Mulligan plan : you want to get World Tree in your set aside cards or in hand, Ayla gives you a 78% of this.

Game plan : get yourself a load of tags and credits for a massive Counter Surveillance run.

Let's discuss the deck.

This archetype is about as good as an anarch, with the added value that you can be like Zahya Sadeghi: Versatile Smuggler, by using Psych Mike.

We do not have bin breakers, but we do have a way to tutor anything using World Tree. With it, we can setup faster by tutoring our main pieces, which are Obelus and Rogue Trading.

Whichever essential pieces that we would lose from some unlucky accesses or by putting Basilar Synthgland 2KVJ on the board, we can get back with Harmony AR Therapy. If you can setup Basilar Synthgland 2KVJ before using Rogue Trading, it will allow you to install and click it twice on the same turn, giving you more tags and credits.

The main problem that runners face, when using Counter Surveillance, is that it is very expensive to use and thus, very difficult to recover after the first use, unless you are Zahya Sadeghi: Versatile Smuggler. This is where our Psych Mike (costing 4 influences) is SO great. We get the same advantage as Zahya, by getting the credits spent on Counter Surveillance back.

Finally, on top of accelerating our setup, World Tree also make us more able to recover from a run after using Mayfly or Flame-out (according to what you have in your hand) to be able to go back for another run. This will allow you to pressure the corp if you think they are jamming an agenda in the remote, without depleting you too much. Here, we do not get the best value from World Tree, because it is mainly use as a setup accelerator and replacement finder. But it work well with the game plan, like putting Stoneship Chart Room, running HQ with Jailbreak to draw lots and exchanging the Stoneship Chart Room for Counter Surveillance for a run on the next click, that is a lot of efficiency, just the way we expect for shapers. Finally, it is because of World Tree that we can afford to have only one Obelus in the deck. Because we are sure to find it, with 6 other hardware (not Basilar) that can be pawned to get it early (at a discount!).

Nanuq is better at breaking ices than Mayfly and will stay for a bit, if we do not score any agendas (not counting on it). When having to pass multiple ices (this is what happen when the corp understand that it is against Counter Surveillance, it will save us some credits.

Ayla "Bios" Rahim: Simulant Specialist really shine here, because we can put 4 cards in our set aside pile. Aside from World Tree, the 2 mains pieces (Rogue Trading and Counter Surveillance) are most welcome to be set aside. This is on top of giving us more chances to get World Tree early in the game. I feel that this is a deck that would get better result with Ayla than with Lat or Tao. Having protected card and having a higher chance of getting combo pieces early, while behaving like a 40 cards (41 to be precise) deck in a 45 cards package, is really good.

Tell me what you think and comment if you have any suggestions.

4 comments
6 Jun 2023 Krams

I'm a little confused as to how both the self-tagging and the economy works ...

You start your turn, install Rogue Trading, click it once and now have too few left to click it again. You are now tagged and have a resource with 12 on it. So, naturally, the corp trashes it.

How do you get enough money to fuel the deck and how do you get enough tags to fuel the game plan?

The only way this seems to work out is if you save all RTs until your Basilar is up and to do a clunky turn in which you spend all 5 on one RT.

Even with Ayla that seems to be a lot of moving pieces, since you have to do at least two of those turns to set up a Counter Surveillance run.

6 Jun 2023 Diogene

@Krams, there are some tricks to it. First, you will want Obelus to be setup ASAP, but against Haas-Bioroid and Jinteki, you can set it up later (they are seldom on BOOM!).

Once you have Rogue Trading on the board (assuming you have Obelus), you will want to either have Stoneship Chart Room or Basilar Synthgland 2KVJ installed. The first allows you to clicklessly add 2 cards to hand after clicking Rogue Trading twice, bringing you to 7. The other allows you the option to use other draw mechanism, like Diesel or VRcation, to bring to a safe 7 cards in hand.

While it is true that the corp will (and should) trash Rogue Trading, it is the reason why Basilar Synthgland 2KVJ is so good. In other Counter Surveillance, the corp would prevent 2 tags and 12 to be gained, but because of Basilar, the corp would prevent half as much. Which is sometimes enough for the corp player to not spend a click and 2 to trash it.

This efficiency makes the deck near even with anarch decks, which benefit from bin breakers. Because we can just use one AI breaker, and because we can be a 5 runner, we kind of break even. Compared to Zahya Sadeghi: Versatile Smuggler, we can emulate by using Psych Mike.

Anarch can have 3x Obelus and Counter Surveillance, but we fetch them using World Tree.

Zahya can get tagged fast using Rogue Trading, Credit Kiting and Hot Pursuit. While Anarchs can use God of War for tag generation. This is where the deck struggle a bit more. We only have Rogue Trading. You could take out one Counter Surveillance for God of War, but I think it add another moving part and forces us to do more trick runs to get Counter Surveillance.

How did the deck goes for you? Thanks for sharing.

9 Jun 2023 knorpule3000

I like the deck idea, but I'm not sure about the Tagme Plan. Imo you just don't have enough ways to get tagged to make Counter Surveillance more than a glorified Maker's Eye. Also the whole CS-Plan does not synergise with WT. I would much rather spend my Inf on Resources that excell with WT: examples would include Viruses and Class act, but also any card that ccan be depleted. All in all , i do think that WT is underrated currently but I fear that this deck might be trying to do to much at the same time.

9 Jun 2023 Diogene

@knorpule3000 I think you are correct. This deck is an attempt to do tag me Counter Surveillance with a shaper. It actually work, but could certainly be better.

World Tree is amazing, but can be kind of slow if it is the only thing the deck is based on. I tried to make it much faster with this. With the iterations I did, I think it could have good value even if you trigger World Tree only about 6 times in a game. Depending on what you import, it would give you around 18 of value for those 6 times, which is 12 of net value, in addition of the uses that you would get from what you are importing. Here is a deck that attempt that.