Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 00:32:35 -0400 Reply-To: Netrunner Discussion List Sender: Netrunner Discussion List From: Skipper Pickle Subject: Re: Poisoned Water in 10 turns In a message dated 6/2/97 11:31:08 AM, Len Blado wrote: > If you're *real* lucky. As I said before, Tag n' Bag and Fast >Advancement both have a very good shot at winning if they're unmolested >in the early game. Hi, Len. Nice to hear from you. This discussion is all so very timely. This last weekend, Jon Roberson, our local Most-Mighty Card Lord, finally pulled off a coup. It was his third attempt at Bad Publicity in a constructed deck format, after two dismal failures that have him at the bottom of any conceivable ranking. i thought i'd add a little fuel to this fire and report his deck (with his permission), since he's not wired. He calls the deck "Lucky Number Nine" (it always works by his ninth turn); Ben was calling it "The Sellout"; i call it "Backstabber's Boycott"; Charles calls it cheese. Take your pick. Or pick your poison. Much of this will be repetitive, but it's a real-life example of--whaddayacall--playing the game in the deck-construction phase. This is what i referred to a while back as the Dark Side of Netrunner. Think of the following as a case study of the constructed environment. Call it cool or call it queso, it's all perfectly legitimate play, and you have to be able to deal with this deck if you're going to step into the shadows. There's nothing really WRONG with it, but it can really irritate the people you play against. To Jon's credit (or whatever), he developed the deck pretty much in isolation, not having access to NR-L or other online resources. Here's the deck: 12 Faked Hit 10 Preying Mantis 11 Bodyweight Synthetic Blood 8 Top Runners Conference 1 N.E.T.O. 2 Mantis, Fixer-At-Large 2 Back Door to Netwatch 5 Poisoned Water Supply 1 misc.for-sale 7 Militech MRAM Chips First, he installs as many TRCs as come to hand, at least 6 Preying Mantises, and 3 MRAM chips, Bodyweighting all along the way. Like the Short Stack (perhaps even more so), if the Last Turn comes, the game is over. The Last Turn comes once he has 11 cards installed (apart from the PMs). He also needs to have 8 Faked Hits and 3 Poisoned Water Supplys in hand. Typically, the Last Turn looks like this. Action 1: Bodyweight Synthetic Blood Action 2: Bodyweight Synthetic Blood Take 6 extra actions from Preying Mantis (he now has 8 actions left). Action 3: misc.for-sale. Between the misc.for-sale and his bit pool, he needs to have 32 bits at the end of this action. Only the PMs have to stay in play. Actions 4-6: Poisoned Water Supply. Trash two PMs Actions 7-10: Faked Hit. Corp has 7 Bad Publicity points. Game over. i quoted Len's comment at the beginning of this article because this is exactly right. The deck is terribly vulnerable to the two main strategies of successful Corp decks: tagging and fast advancement. Tags can hurt this deck a lot, even if all the Corp does is trash his resources.. The only reason he would ever run is to trash a City Surveillance. If the Surveillance is out of reach (notice he has no icebreakers), he dives for a N.E.T.O. (this is why Mantis, Fixer-At-Large is included), which slows things down quite a bit, but doesn't trigger the CS. Underworld Mole is another card he has to be wary of, but Back Door to Netwatch allows him a smirk or two. The deck usually wins on turn 8. The fastest it has been clocked is 6 turns; of course, that was not in actual play --remember, this deck doesn't need an opponent. :) i've played against the deck twice. The first time, i was crucified in the press. Then i got out my Corp War deck. He conceded after his first turn. Poisoned Well Supply Skipper Pickle wspickle@aol.com