RP: F*** Anarch! (Winter Store Champ 1st place)

omegalife2002 3040

In preparation for all the Anarch bs that I expected to show up at our Winter league tournament, I reworked my RP deck to deal with Anarch, more specifically Noise and MaxX.

Outside of some unfortunate agenda flood from time to time, the deck performed very well! I faced 2 MaxX decks during the night and in both games I was able to completely shut them out. Like COMPLETELY shut them out. Both times, a well timed Chronos Project completely broke their back and shut them down. Crisium Grid was a life saver and I think bumping that up to 3 copies would be smart!

For changes, like I mentioned, bump CG up to 3 copies. I'd also probably tweak some ice around too, but no major changes. Janus was never able to come out and play, but Ichi 1.0 on remotes is awesome! :)

Oh, and for the haters: Cerebral Static works against all but 3 runners. It's awesome, particularly against Anarch. How many copies to run is tricky because against Noise, you want it really early, but against MaxX, I actually like it around the mid game, when she has dumped a good portion of her deck!

Anyway, fun deck and good for shutting down these new MaxX glass-cannon decks! :)

11 comments
4 Feb 2015 dtelad11

Packing the anti-Anarch hate is pretty cool :) Did you face any non-Anarchs? How did you fair against them?

Also, which runner did you play? How many people showed up to event?

Thanks for sharing!

4 Feb 2015 omegalife2002

@dtelad11 I also played against Criminal, specifically Ken. That game went to time, and he had won a psi game on TFP, and then scored his Notoriety, so I had a modified loss. The game went ok, since this is still an RP deck, just tweaked against Anarch.

I posted my other deck (stealth Andy) and it did great, undefeated! In total we had 12 people show up for the night. Was a lot of fun, very casual event with people joking and having a good time all evening. :)

4 Feb 2015 MattJP

Interesting to hear that Crisium Grid is doing work. I wrote something about it here horshamcitygrid.com

Would like to get your thoughts.

4 Feb 2015 omegalife2002

@MattJP I have read your article and it was part of my inspiration for this deck! :) Great article (and, yes, be very afraid of Waton Destruction)!

I think you nailed it with the Crisium Grid call. It shuts down so many Runner power cards perfectly, particularly these new Eater combos. It's even really well costed for what it does; I've never felt like 3 was too much to pay and 5 to trash is awesome. I've messed around with the whole Crisium Grid/Off The Grid combo and found it too hard to setup. But I think that line of thinking is a trap. Like many Netrunner cards, people get caught up in a combo effect and trying to make it work (eg, Power Shutdown & Accelerated Diagnostics), when they really just need to look out how good that card is just on it's own (like a lot of recent Supermodernism builds have done with PS).

4 Feb 2015 ekayohlee

Congrats on the store champs win! Glad to see someone else having success with Cerebral Static! It's been stellar for me too -- I also take tremendous pleasure in shutting down anarchs. I'm also happy to see someone else having success with Crisium Grids locking out Eater. That's what I've found in my testing, and I wondering if my experiences were an anomaly after reading other people's arguments that it isn't an effective counter.

The huge number of sentries (and some expensive ones at that) in your list is a little worrisome to me due to all the Stealth Andys I've seen in my meta, but perhaps stacking all of them to starve runners of their Stealth credits works too. Good call on reducing NAPDs since you've got a Shinobi in there, by the way.

5 Feb 2015 Jashay

Much love for Cerebral Static! Love that card.

How do you find Ashigaru? I've been tempted to run it myself but I so rarely see it played I have a hard time judging its effectiveness. By the numbers, it looks fantastic.

This is the first deck I've seen with 3x Chronos Project, too. Do you plan to keep all three? Would you include three if the deck wasn't tweaked to smash recursion? It seems like almost every deck runs Clone Chip, Same Old Thing and/or Déjà Vu; do you think it's good enough to be a general include in the 1-pt agenda slot?

5 Feb 2015 aphid

Very interesting deck! Congrats to the win. I'm wondering how the economy is working out for you? Do you pretty much play horizontally and actually ICE the econ remotes as well? (Sundew remote is given, but the other ones). Right now it seems, to me, to be difficult to afford to protect against f. ex wanton/keyhole and also be able to build economy. But maybe people arent trashing econ assets in your meta?

5 Feb 2015 omegalife2002

@ekayohlee I love stacking sentry's! Outside of Switchblade, they are super expensive to break. Even with Switchblade, you need a lot of stealth credits to handle so many. I was playing my own stealth deck last week against Blue Sun and I had to be careful because the corp was trying to stack up Sentry's to drain my credits.

@Jashay I really like Ashigaru! In my regular RP deck I actually run 2 of them. My favorite thing about it is that it is strength 4, not 5, so David can suck it! And, even if they have a strength 4 Atman, they are still paying for 3-5 subroutines typically. As for the 3 Chronos Project's, it's tricky. For this tournament, 3 was the perfect call. In my final match my opponent stole 2 of them early in the game (they were playing MaxX) and assumed that I didn't put 3 in the deck, so they assumed they were safe to run their deck down and wait for the Levy play. I threw down the third Chronos into a remote and next turn, boom, they have the 5 cards in hand to play with for the rest of the game. Even if they don't net you a huge power play like that, I think it's worth it to run even just 2. Like you mentioned, there is just so much recursion in the game now, being able to take that out is amazing. It's fantastic against Shaper and Anarch almost always. It's slightly weaker against Criminal, but not so much so that it's not worth running. At worst, it kills the Same Old Thing/Account Siphon recursion they like to do. I think it's worth serious consideration in just about any deck these days.

@aphid Economy is very interesting in this deck. It absolutely relies on the assets staying put. I absolutely play it horizontal and pump out as many assets as possible as fast as possible. The goal is to overwhelm the runner with too many assets to feasibly trash, thus encouraging them to just give up. The only asset I actually put ice in front of is the Sundew. I usually only get one out on the board per game, but I have noticed that if the runner isn't trying to kill every single asset, once you have a solid economy base, you can just chuck Sundews out in the open and they will probably just leave them because they know it won't really hurt you to lose that money but it costs them credits and more importantly, clicks. What they don't realize is that really makes a card like Shinobi insane. :) I would like a little more operational economy to feel more completely safe, but it's a trade off. This deck did work, but it is a tight rope. The MaxX early is so insanely fast it can be really hard to stabilize, but it can be done, and then she is dead in the water. :)

9 Feb 2015 rustain

Only dropped one game with this deck in a store tourney. The game was against a Lela deck that splashed a keyhole in her starting hand. She milled my two Jackson's and the rest of my ice was buried at the bottom of the deck - variance, what can you do?

Otherwise, this deck absolutely dominated. Highlights:

  • Dropped a cerebral static second turn against a Noiseshop. Just awesome to watch his face sink.
  • Scored two Chronos projects against a shaper recursion deck - both on naked server.
  • Scored out all of my agendas, including a future perfect behind 1 lotus field.
  • In two separate games, wiped out the runner's rigs with that Ichi on a remote.

I did make a few changes to the deck however:

  • +1 Caprice
  • +1 Chrisum
  • +1 Celebrity Gift

Lessened ice to 17 instead of 19 and added a second tollbooth and an architect. Also took out the Janus.

This is such a fun deck to play. Thanks for posting!

9 Feb 2015 omegalife2002

@rustain Glad you liked the deck! Yeah, when you drop a Cerebral Static on Noise players, I think they just die a little inside. ;) And yes, I LOVE an Ichi on a remote because it almost always lands.

I actually really dig your changes. After playing it even my tourney, I knew I wanted another Crisium Grid, and another Caprice and Giraffe is always good. And yeah, pulling out Janus was a good call; I pulled that out later too.

9 Feb 2015 rustain

I also took out Ash, figuring the extra Caprice was sufficient. Here is the ice I went with. I also removed the Ashigura, figuring two tollbooths were sufficient.

ICE: (17)

1x Architect (Up and Over)

1x Eli 1.0 (Future Proof)

1x Ichi 1.0 (Core)

2x Komainu (Honor and Profit)

2x Lotus Field (Upstalk)

1x Pop-up Window (Cyber Exodus)

2x Pup (Honor and Profit)

1x Shinobi (Double Time)

2x Swordsman (Second Thoughts)

2x Tollbooth (Core)

2x Wall of Static (Core)