I got creamed at a local tournament, looking for help with my HB deck

By ThatOneShaper, in Android: Netrunner Deck Building

Posted at

As the title suggests, I got completely decimated at the spring tourny. Across all 6 games played (3 runner 3 corp) I scored a grand total of ZERO Agenda Points. Clearly, I'm doing something very wrong.

The corp deck I ran was, a disaster. I knew that going in, but now I've remade it. The problem I find is, there's so many decent cards I want to add that I don't know what I SHOULD add.

Here's a list of my HB deck as it stands now, but I don't want to take it anywhere without some feedback. Saturday was simply humiliating...

Identity:

Haas-Bioroid: Engineering the Future

Agendas (20 AP):

Director Haas' Pet Project x1

Bifrost Array x3

Chronos Project x1

Corporate War x3

Project Wotan x3

Assets:

Daily Business Show x3

Sundew x2

Melange Mining Corp. x2

Adonis Campaign x3

Alix T4LB07 x1

Thomas Haas x1

Operations:

Mutate x2

Hedge Fund x3

Ice:

Paper Wall x2

Howler x3

Hudson 1.0 x2

Wall of Static x2

Viper x2

Viktor 1.0 x2

Viktor 2.0 x2

Mother Goddess x1

Datapike x2

Ichi 2.0 x2

Heimdall 2.0 x1

That's what the deck looks like so far, I should note that Daily Business Show is being used instead of Jackson Howard because I don'[t have Opening Moves yet, as soon as I get my hands on that shining golden god he's replacing the daily.

There's SO many other cards I want to add though, like Cerebral Overwriter/Aggressive Secretary; Toybox; Tyr's Hand; Lotus Field; Successful Demonstration; False Lead; Hourglass; Strongbox; Ruhr Valley; Bioroid Efficiency Research... I could go on.

So... any opinions?

I kinda like the idea of "Big Money Big Ice" and "You're not allowed clicks", but I simply don't know how I would go about incorporating those ideas into something workable... yet.

Posted at

The first question would entail: What made you lose? Did you lose because your ice was consistently broken? Destroyed? Did you not have enough credits to rez things? To rez things and score?

So...let's look at this.

Your agenda package is pretty strange. I get that you're trying to Bifrost Wotans and Corporate Wars, but those are hard agendas to score.

Your econ is almost exclusively Asset-based. You'd be needing a lot of remotes for those Adonises and Sundews and, by extension, Daily Business Shows. Alix and Thomas Haas are sub-par economy and no economy, respectively. These are going to prove tempting targets for runners to go and trash, and your Ice package is going to have issues. What HB often does is build one scoring remote, possibly one econ remote, put money making assets in protected by taxing upgrades like Ash and Corporate Troubleshooter, wait for the money to roll in, then install the agendas and score. That doesn't synergize with DBS and Sundew, Assets you'd want to have around for the long haul. Accordingly, they'll be high priority targets to kill. I think they're wrong for this deck.

Paper Wall is a very brittle piece of ice that generally goes into aggro decks looking to score one or two agendas during the opening phase of the game, before the runner can go find a Fracter and kill it. That doesn't synergize with your agendas--you look to be scoring 5/3s and 4/2s early and 3/1s later.

Edited by Grimwalker
Posted at

The first question would entail: What made you lose? Did you lose because your ice was consistently broken? Destroyed? Did you not have enough credits to rez things? To rez things and score?

Well, I lost because I decided to be cute and make an 89 card deck.

So.. yeah, all of the above basically.

Your agenda package is pretty strange. I get that you're trying to Bifrost Wotans and Corporate Wars, but those are hard agendas to score.

So what would you suggest? Priority Req? Beta Test? Efficiency Commitee?

If I had Mandatory Upgrades then I'd have put it in long ago.... but sadly I don't.

Your econ is almost exclusively Asset-based. You'd be needing a lot of remotes for those Adonises and Sundews and, by extension, Daily Business Shows. Alix and Thomas Haas are sub-par economy and no economy, respectively. These are going to prove tempting targets for runners to go and trash, and your Ice package is going to have issues. What HB often does is build one scoring remote, possibly one econ remote, put money making assets in protected by taxing upgrades like Ash and Corporate Troubleshooter, wait for the money to roll in, then install the agendas and score. That doesn't synergize with DBS and Sundew, Assets you'd want to have around for the long haul. Accordingly, they'll be high priority targets to kill. I think they're wrong for this deck.

The main reason I inclued Thomas is for the troll-aspect. I hide him in a scoring server and make him tempting to go far, then gain the money from him after the runner invests heavily in breaking through. Leaving me open to score what I wanted.

Well, that's the idea anyway.

What would you suggest then to fix the econ? Swap sundew for restructures? Add beanstalk royalties? I'm open to any suggestions :)

Paper Wall is a very brittle piece of ice that generally goes into aggro decks looking to score one or two agendas during the opening phase of the game, before the runner can go find a Fracter and kill it. That doesn't synergize with your agendas--you look to be scoring 5/3s and 4/2s early and 3/1s later.

The reason I added Paper Wall was for a very cheap early defense, the early game for HB is the worst from what I've seen and Paper Wall was to help mitigate that, along with Viper and Wall of Static. What should I replace it with? ice Wall? Enigma?

I'm not used to deckbuilding this game yet, if you could tell me what I should replace and why I'd appreciate it.

Posted at

It's hard to make specific recommendations because when you start pulling on one thread, it starts unraveling other choices made elsewhere in the deck.

Thomas Haas, though, is not played competitively. Because no matter what, you're almost never breaking even. The only thing it does is obfuscate how much money you have, because it costs a click and a credit in order to yield two credits down the road. From a strictly economic perspective, you'll never beat the baseline of clicking for credits, particularly because TH sets you back its install click and its rez cost. And during all that time, you're just durdling, you're not advancing your game state, you're not progressing towards winning.

One thing that HB requires is to change the mindset from "early" defense. HB doesn't defend with straight End-the-run. HB taxes the runner, setting them back from tempo for every bioroid they click through. Sure, you'll give up some accesses early on, but once it starts costing them lots of credits and/or clicks to run, that's when you find scoring windows.

As far as this deck goes, I wouldn't go with permanent econ assets, because they give you too many places to defend. Sundew doesn't see play outside of Jinteki, particularly Replicating Perfection. You have Eve Campaign in HB, and you can put that in your scoring server to be overwritten at a time of your choosing.

I'd also say go browse HB decks on NetrunnerDB.com, and read through the descriptions people give for how their decks function.

Edited by Grimwalker
Posted at

It's hard to make specific recommendations because when you start pulling on one thread, it starts unraveling other choices made elsewhere in the deck.

That makes sense I guess, vague theming it is then!

Thomas Haas, though, is not played competitively. Because no matter what, you're almost never breaking even. The only thing it does is obfuscate how much money you have, because it costs a click and a credit in order to yield two credits down the road. From a strictly economic perspective, you'll never beat the baseline of clicking for credits, particularly because TH sets you back its install click and its rez cost. And during all that time, you're just durdling, you're not advancing your game state, you're not progressing towards winning.

That's a fair point, I guess he really is as disappointing as his flavour text says he is. I guess I'll switch him out for something then.

One thing that HB requires is to change the mindset from "early" defense. HB doesn't defend with straight End-the-run. HB taxes the runner, setting them back from tempo for every bioroid they click through. Sure, you'll give up some accesses early on, but once it starts costing them lots of credits and/or clicks to run, that's when you find scoring windows.

So I should rely more on ice like Eli or not bother adding more low-cost ice and go for more expensive ones? I've seen people refer to using the tempo gained for advantages, but I'm still not quite sure on how I can capitalize on their lost clicks...

As far as this deck goes, I wouldn't go with permanent econ assets, because they give you too many places to defend. Sundew doesn't see play outside of Jinteki, particularly Replicating Perfection. You have Eve Campaign in HB, and you can put that in your scoring server to be overwritten at a time of your choosing.

I'd also say go browse HB decks on NetrunnerDB.com, and read through the descriptions people give for how their decks function.

So rely on drip and burst economy then? Emphasis on burst moreso than drop?

I had a look on there, as well as a couple of other sites but the decklists I saw didn't offer any insight into why those cards were selected... maybe I just didn't look hard enough. I'll go check again.

Edited by ThatOneShaper