Here's what I'm playing these days. I'll take my deck apart and talk a little about my card choices.
NBN - Making News (54 cards total)
Agendas - 11
3x Breaking News
3x Autoscript Pilot Program
2x Priority Requisition
2x Private Security Force
1x Restructured Datapool
Ice - 21
3x Enigma
3x Wall of Static
3x Pop-Up Window
3x Data Raven
3x Tollbooth
3x TMI
(2x Caduceus) (4)
(1x Rototurret) (1)
Assets/ Upgrades -15
3x Pad Campaign
2x Melange Mining Corp
1x Marked Accounts
2x Red Herrings
1x Ghost Branch
(1x Adonis Campaign) (2)
(2x Project Junebug) (2)
(2x Edge of the World (4)
(1x Aggressive Secretary) (2)
Operations - 7
3x Hedge Fund
2x Closed Accounts
1x Sea Source
1x Psychographics
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This deck is built for an attrition style of play, something that NBN excels at. The ice is a decent mix of subtypes (6 sentries, 9 code gates, and 6 barriers) and includes all of the NBN proprietary ice that have effects as soon as you encounter them. In addition, some of the ice (Calduceus and Pop-Up Window) double as economy boosters. Most of the ice (15 out of 21) stop a run.
Although the deck contains the Astroscript Pilot Program and other cheap agendas, I wouldn't label it as a "fast advance" style deck like others that are floating around on the FF forums. This deck isn't trying to keep the runner at bay by advancing agendas in a singe turn, although it won't hesitate to do so after scoring Astroscript Pilot Program. This deck is using traps and tags to ruin the runner's resources until it can wrestle the runner into a poor position and score an agenda while the runner is too broke to crack a remote server.
Traps are an under-appreciated resource in Netrunner. Many corporation decks that I see omit them entirely, which I believe is a mistake. Without traps, there's no way to bluff the runner into making a disadvantageous run. The runner will come to expect that if something has been advanced, it's an agenda and should be stolen. This simplifies the game into a question of whether the runner has sufficient resources or not. If he does, he steals the agenda and wins. If not, he fails to steal the agenda and loses. Most of the time, the runner will have enough resources if he's not being made to waste them.
With the inclusion of traps, the runner will always have to second-guess himself. If he makes a run and spend his resources breaking through your server only to get hit with a few net damage, take a few tags, or lose some programs, you can bet that he'll be hesitant to instantly run an advanced card the next time. Late game, it's entirely possible to flatline the runner with Project Junebug when the runner must run advanced cards or risk losing the game.
The things I consider changing the most in this deck are the economy, ice, and agendas.
Although some of the ice can also earn credits, I'm still tinkering with the economy of this deck. When I can land and use Melange mining corp once or twice, things are good. On the other hand, if I don't find an early economy card, it can seem like an uphill battle. The only thing I might take out in favor of more economy is ice.
The ice serves its purpose well in this deck, but there is almost too much of it. I might also want one or two more pieces of ice that can tag the runner, but nothing jumps out at me among the unused NBN/ neutral cards, and there aren't a lot of good taggers among the other factions. Matrix Analyzer can help to set up traps, and is cheap, but suffers from low power and doesn't stop runs. Low power and not stopping runs would be ok individually, but together they reduce the utility of the ice. Matrix Analyzer works better in a Weyland deck, where it can be used to advance ice without spending clicks. Shadow is ok, but advancing ice is not where NBN wants to be spending its time.
If I had the influence, I would strongly consider Ichi 1.0. As a surprise out-of-faction ice, Ichi could put a serious hurt on a runner that encountered it unprepared. There's usually no reason to make a run as the first click against NBN, so runners tend to marshal their resources and make a run on their third or fourth click. Ichi makes them pay for their assumptions. Although Ichi won't usually lead to a tag due to the fact that the tag subroutine is linked to brain damage, Ichi can also help bust programs, which is a large drain on runner resources.
I'm not entirely happy with my agenda choices. I wish there were more low-cost agendas to choose from, even though having them adds to the pure number of agendas in my deck. The bigger agendas tend to sit in my hand waiting for an opportunity to hit the board. Priority requisition doesn't have the same targets in this deck as it does in a Weyland or HB deck. There's no Archer or Janus to take advantage of the free rez. The best thing I can rez is tollbooth, and usually I end up paying to rez that as part of keeping my opponent away from priority requisition. Many times the most I'll get is a free Data Raven or Enigma. Not terrible, but not optimal either.
The same goes for Private Security Force. Tag and Bag isn't a central strategy of this deck, and generally I have better things to do with my clicks once a runner is tagged than a measly 1 meat damage. The only reason Private Security Force is here is because it's indistinguishable from a trap when I play it. Once someone realizes I'm running traps, a card with one advancement counter on it looks positively unappealing, allowing me to sneak in 2 agenda points. I wish there was another neutral or in-faction option at 4 advancement I could use.
I included the one-of Psychographics card after a game in which my opponent just let the tags from a Data Raven pile up late game. He had already advanced his board to the point where he only needed a few credits to run my servers. In that situation, Psychographics would have let me instantly score whatever agenda I happened to draw. I only included one because it's usually more important to get early tags than it is to have cards to take advantage of having tags, and Psychographics isn't the best card to have early.
