The process of deck-building is much more complicated than I can ever describe in one of these articles. My Regional event is coming this Sunday, and I have been testing decks for a few days in preparation. What I have found is that the decks I built right after Humanity’s Shadow don’t work as well as would have liked them to work. Since my last article, one of those decks has undergone severe revision and the other has been scrapped completely (Replicator is probably going to be really good someday; today is not that day).

So, here are the decks I will probably be playing this weekend, as well as the thought that went into their construction:

I’ll start with Corp. I expect Haas Bioroid will be popular as it has been at most of the Regional Tournaments and I can’t get away from the consistency that HB provides. I’m playing Engineering the Future because it’s still easily the best. Agendas first:

3 Accelerated Beta Test
3 Project Vitruvius
2 Mandatory Upgrades
2 Private Security Force

Standard fare for Agendas. I’m going to skip to Operations for a moment to let you know that sometimes I am not original at all:

3 Trick of Light (9 Influence)
3 Green Level Clearance
3 Biotic Labor
3 Archived Memories

You may recognize this Operation line-up as the key cards behind the “advance from hand” deck that supposedly made a splash at the Georgia Regionals. This deck works, and I’m not above using someone else’s concept to my advantage. The rest of the deck is built to support these cards. Ice:

Barriers:
1 Hadrian’s Wall (3 Influence)
3 Ice Wall (3 Influence)
3 Wall of Static

Code Gate:
2 Enigma
2 Viktor 1.0
2 Viper

Sentry:
3 Ichi 1.0
3 Rototurret
2 Janus 1.0

Hadrian’s and Ice Wall are easily Weyland’s best advanceable ice and this deck needs places to advance from. It doesn’t hurt that Hadrian’s is unlikely to be broken on the run you rez it. Viper has done particularly well in tests because of the prevalence of Yog.0 in this environment. The sentries are just the great sentries that HB has always had. Assets will round out the deck.

3 Eve Campaign
3 Aggressive Secretary

Eve is good. Eve is really good. Rezzing Eve after a Runner plays Account Siphon can really make plans go wrong. With a trash cost of 5, many runners will let Eve get you her full 16 credits over the course of the game. Aggressive Secretary is honestly the reason this deck works:

The idea of this deck is that you heavily ice all 3 central servers without using any ice on remotes. Many runner decks rely on consistently getting into centrals, so blocking that path and installing/ advancing things unprotected will often throw the Runner off balance. Runners should know that Secretary is really good, as all Runners but Noise really care about their programs.

My Runner deck is based on the deck I built right when Humanity’s Shadow came out, but it has undergone so many revisions that the two decks do not look similar. I’m playing Andromeda and Criminals should always start with their events:

3 Account Siphon
3 Emergency Shutdown
3 Inside Job
2 Quality Time (2 Influence)
3 Satellite Uplink
3 Special Order

Quality Time is better than I could have guessed; 5 cards is a bunch of cards, and the influence is incredibly unrestrictive. Satellite Uplink takes the space that Forged Activation Order would have because face checking ice is a good way to force the corp to rez it, but face checking trap assets will lose you the game. Programs are next:

1 Crypsis
1 Corroder (2 Influence)
2 Femme Fatale
2 Yog.0 (2 Influence)
2 Djinn (4 Influence)
2 Data Sucker(2 Influence)
1 Medium (3 Influence)

This deck draws cards like crazy including the 4 cards extra cards you start the game with; since you see a high percentage of your stack faster than any other Runner, 1 of Programs make sense. Djinn is the center of this deck’s central server punishment; Djinn will find your Data Suckers and Medium when you need to dig deep into R&D for those last couple points. Last is Resources and Hardware:

3 Access to Globalsec
3 Decoy
2 Desperado
3 Kati Jones
3 Public Sympathy
3 Underworld Contact

Since this deck usually maxes out at 4 MU, the best place to find link is with one of the worst cards from the Core set: Access to Globalsec. Don’t be afraid to play multiples of this link because traces can come up at any time, and it’s nice to use your link for something other than drip economy.

My blundering around while deck building highlights a simple fact: if you want to be better at Netrunner, you need to play. I have tuned these decks to my own personal playstyle; I chose to omit some cards that many find to be staples in their decks (like Tollbooth and Compromised Employee) because they don’t fit me and they don’t fit the deck.