My last three corp decks have all been focused on offense in different ways, so I figured I’d build a deck based around ice and money. No traps at all! (At least in this iteration…) I decided to experiment with Next ice; and I figured NEXT Design must be a good match for that, right?

Next Ice, v. 0

NEXT Design: Guarding the Net

Agenda (10)

• 3x Accelerated Beta Test
• 1x Corporate War
• 3x NAPD Contract
• 3x Project Vitruvius

Asset (10)

• 2x Adonis Campaign
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 2x Melange Mining Corp.
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 2x Sundew ••• •••

Operation (8)

• 2x Enhanced Login Protocol
• 3x Hedge Fund
• 3x Peak Efficiency

Barrier (8)

• 3x Eli 1.0
• 2x Heimdall 1.0
• 3x NEXT Silver

Code Gate (3)

• 3x NEXT Bronze

Sentry (9)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 3x Architect
• 3x NEXT Gold
• 1x Rototurret

Other (1)

• 1x Mother Goddess

12 influence spent (max 12)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

10 pieces of Next ice (counting Mother Goddess), out of 21 in total; I decided to tilt more heavily towards ice than towards money, to maximize the identity ability. Though, thinking about it a bit more: maybe I should find room for some economy ice, say Pop-up Window or Errand Boy? Influence is tight, though; we’ll see how much money I have as I try it out…

The initial version of my NBN Interference deck had its moments; in particular, Psychographics plus Information Overload can make for a very entertaining combo. (Whereas I didn’t get as much out of isolated tagging.) So I decided to focus on that when slimming down to 49 cards.

I got rid of my Gutenberg and Virgo, and added a third Midseasons. I decided I didn’t need both Blacklist and Chronos Protocol, so I got rid of both copies of Blacklist. The agenda I ditched was one copy of Market Research, and PAD Campaign was the last card I ditched.

Playing that a bit, I felt low on money and vulnerable to Noise; so I added a third Hedge Fund and a third Jackson Howard, removing both copies of Daily Business Show.

Here’s the result:

NBN Interference, v. 1

NBN: Making News

Agenda (11)

• 3x AstroScript Pilot Program
• 1x Breaking News
• 2x Chronos Project
• 2x Market Research
• 2x Project Beale
• 1x Restructured Datapool

Asset (10)

• 2x Aggressive Secretary •• ••
• 3x Jackson Howard
• 2x Marked Accounts
• 1x PAD Campaign
• 2x Primary Transmission Dish

Operation (13)

• 3x Hedge Fund
• 3x Midseason Replacements
• 2x Psychographics
• 2x SEA Source
• 3x Sweeps Week

Barrier (3)

• 2x TMI
• 1x Wraparound

Code Gate (3)

• 1x Inazuma ••
• 2x Tollbooth

Sentry (9)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 2x Data Raven
• 2x Ichi 1.0 •• ••
• 2x Information Overload
• 1x Rototurret •

15 influence spent (max 15)
20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)
49 cards (min 45)

I took it to a tournament, and if I’m remembering correctly, I went 3-2 as Corp, which is certainly better than I expected! I’m sure I got lucky, but the two losses also both easily could have gone the other way. I still don’t think it’s a great deck, and I’m not planning to work on refining it, but maybe there is something there? (Though it’s pretty vulnerable to Film Critic…)

I have no idea why Inazuma is still in the deck. Also, I’m not sure I need to focus on blowing up rigs in quite as many ways: Information Overload is staying (though two copies is enough, I think), and Archer is fabulous, but maybe I should replace one or both copies of Ichi or Aggressive Secretary?

Oh, also, one technique that I figured out at the tournament: if your opponent is running Astrolabe, then, by creating two servers on your first two clicks, then you can net 6 credits out of Sweeps Week instead of 4.

When The Underway came out, both Chameleon and Hyperdriver caught my eye. So, of course, I decided to build a deck that incorporated both of them! Here’s the initial version:

Chameleon

Hayley Kaplan: Universal Scholar

Event (12)

• 2x Diesel
• 3x Notoriety
• 2x Quest Completed •• ••
• 3x Sure Gamble
• 2x The Maker’s Eye

Hardware (14)

• 2x Clone Chip
• 2x Cyberfeeder • •
• 2x CyberSolutions Mem Chip
• 3x Dinosaurus
• 3x LLDS Processor
• 2x Plascrete Carapace

Resource (10)

• 2x Armitage Codebusting
• 2x Daily Casts
• 1x Ice Carver •••
• 2x Kati Jones
• 3x Personal Workshop

Icebreaker (6)

• 3x Chameleon
• 1x Deus X
• 1x Gordian Blade
• 1x Sharpshooter

Program (8)

• 2x Datasucker • •
• 2x Hyperdriver
• 2x Parasite •• ••
• 2x Sahasrara

15 influence spent (max 15)
50 cards (min 45)

The Chameleon side of the deck is to have it ready to install with Personal Workshop, and to match strength with Dinosaurus / LLDS Processor / Ice Carver / Datasucker. And the Hyperdriver side of the deck is Notoriety and Quest Completed.

Having said that: even as I wrote it up, I couldn’t convince myself that Hyperdriver will work. I want to play it that way for a week or so, but I imagine that I’ll get rid of those cards, at which point my tentative plan is to also get rid of the mem chips and switch to Chaos Theory. (Or maybe to Kate if I decide I’m more comfortable with 45 cards than with 40 and that I need money and/or link.) We’ll see.

And I’m not super optimistic that it will work in general; but I figure I’m way too conservative in general with icebreakers, so this will try to force me out of my shell. (And it will probably horribly backfire!)

The previous version of my Leela Patel deck had been doing quite well at work—so even though it was 51 cards, I didn’t really know what to get rid of! I eventually decided to get rid of my last Dyson Mem Chip, one copy of Crescentus, and both copies of Symmetrical Visage: I didn’t end up needing much memory, Crescentus seems like it fits with the theme but in practice I never used it, and while Symmetrical Visage is nice, I mostly wanted run-based economy, and the fewer resources I have, the easier it is to float tags.

Here’s the result:

Leela Patel

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist

Event (20)

• 3x Account Siphon
• 2x Dirty Laundry
• 2x Emergency Shutdown
• 3x Forged Activation Orders
• 3x Inside Job
• 2x Legwork
• 2x Special Order
• 3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (9)

• 2x Clone Chip •• ••
• 3x Desperado
• 2x Plascrete Carapace
• 2x Prepaid VoicePAD

Resource (5)

• 3x Compromised Employee
• 2x Security Testing

Icebreaker (8)

• 1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
• 2x Corroder •• ••
• 1x Faerie
• 1x Femme Fatale
• 1x Mimic •
• 1x Passport
• 1x Yog.0 •

Program (5)

• 1x Crescentus
• 3x Datasucker • • •
• 1x Parasite ••

15 influence spent (max 15)
47 cards (min 45)

I took it to a tournament on Saturday; unfortunately, it did just as badly as my Cybernetics Division deck, leading to by far my worst result in a tournament. This deck was a lot closer to winning than my corp deck, so I was somewhat unlucky going 1–4 (maybe I went 2–3, I can’t remember for sure which side I won my first game with), but still: I’d been right to feel that I wasn’t sure why I was winning so often with this deck.

I’m going to leave it assembled for a while—I do like the criminal “mess with people” approach, and I still think it’s a decent deck—but I’m going to experiment with a Chameleon deck for a bit.

With the previous version of my Cybernetics Division deck, I still wasn’t getting enough use out of my traps: I need some there to make the runner nervous, but if I can’t win with them, then I need to win other ways, which means more money and ice.

So the first tweak was to remove Project Junebug, Hourglass (which was really only there to set up Ryon Knight), and one copy of Ichi 1.0 (which was a nice threat but didn’t stop people) for a third Eli 1.0, a Viktor 1.0, and a Sensei. The Sensei was probably a bad choice (though it’s been useful one or two times when playing)—it’s not a great piece of ice in general, and in a deck without a lot of ice it’s probably even worse—but in general the idea behind my additions was to slightly increase the number of ice that I have and then use one of them to set up a second remote for an economy server. (I actually had a decent number of economy assets, I just couldn’t keep them alive.)

That seemed like it was a little better, so I continued the theme: I got rid of one Cerebral Overwriter and one Ryon Knight, adding in a second Melange and a second Viktor 1.0. I figured that would give me a decent chance of keeping a Melange alive for a while, and (as with so many decks) if I have a lot of money then good things can happen.

Here’s the resulting deck:

Cybernetics Division

Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded

Agenda (10)

• 3x Accelerated Beta Test
• 1x Priority Requisition
• 3x Project Vitruvius
• 3x Self-Destruct Chips

Asset (12)

• 3x Adonis Campaign
• 1x Cerebral Overwriter
• 1x Edge of World ••
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 2x Melange Mining Corp.
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 1x Ronin ••••

Upgrade (1)

• 1x Ryon Knight

Operation (7)

• 3x Biotic Labor
• 3x Hedge Fund
• 1x Restructure

Barrier (5)

• 3x Eli 1.0
• 2x Heimdall 1.0

Code Gate (5)

• 1x Sensei •
• 2x Turing
• 2x Viktor 1.0

Sentry (4)

• 1x Architect
• 1x Cortex Lock ••
• 1x Ichi 1.0
• 1x Komainu ••••

15 influence spent (max 15)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)

Unfortunately, it’s still not good. I can often get the runner off of their feet, but turning that into a kill or 7 agenda points is hard. And they often get into R&D early and/or have multi-accesses on it late, so it’s easier for things to snowball their way than mine. (I even had situations where I took Melange turn after Melange turn, had dominating economy, but couldn’t quite get the agendas I needed to win before they sniped one.) I took it to a tournament on Saturday; the deck went 1–4 (I think; it might have been 0–5?), and it deserved those losses.

I’ve had recent corp decks focused on bludgeoning my opponent and on reducing their hand size; at some point, I actually am planning to build a deck based on straightforward scoring, but my ideas there involve HB, and I already have one HB deck assembled. Also, at work, there are some very successful resource-based runner decks right now, so I figure we need some more tagging. So I decided to build a deck mostly around tags, though I threw in some program destruction as well, and some recursion defense.

Here’s the initial version:

NBN Interference

NBN: Making News

Agenda (12)

• 3x AstroScript Pilot Program
• 1x Breaking News
• 2x Chronos Project
• 3x Market Research
• 2x Project Beale
• 1x Restructured Datapool

Asset (14)

• 2x Aggressive Secretary •• ••
• 2x Blacklist
• 2x Daily Business Show
• 2x Jackson Howard
• 2x Marked Accounts
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 2x Primary Transmission Dish

Operation (11)

• 2x Hedge Fund
• 2x Midseason Replacements
• 2x Psychographics
• 2x SEA Source
• 3x Sweeps Week

Barrier (3)

• 2x TMI
• 1x Wraparound

Code Gate (3)

• 1x Inazuma ••
• 2x Tollbooth

Sentry (11)

• 2x Archer •• ••
• 2x Data Raven
• 1x Gutenberg
• 2x Ichi 1.0 •• ••
• 2x Information Overload
• 1x Rototurret •
• 1x Virgo

15 influence spent (max 15)
22 agenda points (between 22 and 23)
54 cards (min 45)
Cards up to Breaker Bay

I’ve played it a few times; I don’t think it’s a great deck, but if I just force out SEA Source at the right time, I can do some damage, and if I can continue to stay ahead on money, then Midseasons and Information Overload make an amazing combo. And of course there’s always the classic Midseasons / Psychographics / Project Beale combo.

The best game, though, was against one of my coworkers who has an amazing Haley deck; once it gets going, has these combos of large hand sizes (Beach Party, filled up with Game Day) feeding his multiple installs, paid with by Power Nap and a bunch of other double events. And there’s Starlight Crusade Funding supporting the doubles, with Adjusted Chronotype and Gene Conditioning Shoppe preventing him from losing clicks from Starlight Crusade and Beach Party.

In that game, I managed to play two Sweeps Weeks right after he’d double-Beach-Partied plus Game Day to get his hand size to 14 cards; 26 credits in two clicks is pretty good! And I tagged him (I can’t remember if it was Midseason’s or SEA Source) to get rid of Aesop’s, so he had a hard time getting rid of the Beach Parties, leaving him down on clicks. He started to recover from that, but then I landed a Chronos Project just before he was about to Levy, so all of a sudden he only had 13 cards available in total, most of which were already in his hand. Then, a bit later, after one more tag, I got rid of Adjusted Chronotype and Gene Conditioning Shoppe while leaving him two resources installed that each cost him a click; and, it turns out that running with only two clicks per turn doesn’t work very well.

So the deck isn’t a complete disaster, at least; that one game was a total fluke, but I’ve won a couple other times with it. It’s just a first pass; I imagine I’ll fiddle with the ice significantly, and probably cut down on the program destruction. I think it’s probably a useful addition to our local meta; I’m not at all sure I’ll be able to evolve it into something that wins even half of its games in tournaments, though.

The initial version of my Leela Patel deck had 55 cards, which was ridiculous. And, when playing it, there were indeed some cards that I never played; unfortunately, they actually largely served useful roles, they just were the wrong cards. So I swapped out two copies of HQ Interface with two copies of Legwork, and two copies of Crash Space with two copies of Plascrete Carapace. That last swap did at least mean that I didn’t have any resources that I would be really sad to lose, so I got rid of my Decoy, but otherwise, that didn’t help with the card count.

Nels suggested that I didn’t need the Dysons: his attitude is that Sneakdoor Beta (which is the main memory hog) is useful for a time, but then you discard it once you need memory pressure. The thing is, with one Sneakdoor Beta, I couldn’t even count on that; so I ended up removing the Sneakdoor, one Dyson (the second may go away soon), and also one copy of Emergency Shutdown (because my HQ access isn’t particularly reliable now). And with no non-event multi-access, Demolition Run was much less useful, so I replaced it with a Parasite.

Here’s the current state: 51 cards, so it’s still bloated:

Leela Patel

Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist

Event (20)

• 3x Account Siphon
• 2x Dirty Laundry
• 2x Emergency Shutdown
• 3x Forged Activation Orders
• 3x Inside Job
• 2x Legwork
• 2x Special Order
• 3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (10)

• 2x Clone Chip •• ••
• 3x Desperado
• 1x Dyson Mem Chip
• 2x Plascrete Carapace
• 2x Prepaid VoicePAD

Resource (7)

• 3x Compromised Employee
• 2x Security Testing
• 2x Symmetrical Visage

Icebreaker (8)

• 1x Cerberus “Rex” H2
• 2x Corroder •• ••
• 1x Faerie
• 1x Femme Fatale
• 1x Mimic •
• 1x Passport
• 1x Yog.0 •

Program (6)

• 2x Crescentus
• 3x Datasucker • • •
• 1x Parasite ••

15 influence spent (max 15)
51 cards (min 45)
Cards up to The Valley

The main problem that I’m having now with winnowing it down further is that it’s actually doing surprisingly well! (And I am very glad I have three copies of Desperado.) I definitely don’t feel like I’m getting my icebreakers out quickly enough, but I’m also feeling that I’m messing with people enough even without a full breaker suite.

So I’m really not sure what to do next. Get rid of the remaining Dyson? I haven’t actually used Crescentus yet, though I’ve seen some situations where I was a credit or two off from it setting up a perfect combo; maybe get rid of one or both of those? (But it still seems like derezzing is useful for Leela, and I just got rid of one Emergency Shutdown…) It seems ridiculous having both three sentry breakers and three code gate breakers; but if I’m feeling that I’m not getting to my breakers enough, then reducing those might not be the right tactic. Security Testing is nice but hasn’t paid off hugely in practice; maybe ditch that, or Symmetrical Visage? Maybe ditch one copy of Account Siphon, though the counterargument there is that three of them increases the chance that you’ll get them early, where they are by far the most useful? (So maybe ditch all three? But keeping the corp broke is very useful, especially if I want to play Forged Activation Orders.) Heck, maybe deal with my icebreaker-finding troubles by adding in a third Special Order?

I dunno: I think that, for now, I’ll keep on playing it and try to figure out more about the core of this deck.

My initial version of my Cybernetics Division deck was workable, but had some issues. I picked a useless 3-point agenda; Sundew never survived long enough to matter (and I didn’t have enough ice that I wanted to protect it); and the ice mixture was off. So I swapped out Utopia Fragment with Priority Requisition, Sundew with Melange, and replaced one Hourglass and Checkpoint with Pop-up Window and Komainu.

That was a bit of an improvement, but two Junebugs plus two Cerebral Overwriters left me with too many advanceable traps and no non-advanceable traps other than Ryon Knight. (Who, given that he was an upgrade, meant that he frequently wasn’t a surprise.) And, given that I actually am building up a decent-size scoring server, and that all but one of my agendas are three-cost, I realized: Edge of World would be a pretty good trap for this deck. So I swapped out one Junebug with an Edge of World, and replaced Pop-up Window with Architect.

Here’s the current version:

Cybernetics Division

Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded

Agenda (10)

• 3x Accelerated Beta Test
• 1x Priority Requisition
• 3x Project Vitruvius
• 3x Self-Destruct Chips

Asset (13)

• 3x Adonis Campaign
• 2x Cerebral Overwriter
• 1x Edge of World ••
• 2x Jackson Howard • •
• 1x Melange Mining Corp.
• 2x PAD Campaign
• 1x Project Junebug •
• 1x Ronin ••••

Upgrade (2)

• 2x Ryon Knight

Operation (7)

• 3x Biotic Labor
• 3x Hedge Fund
• 1x Restructure

Barrier (4)

• 2x Eli 1.0
• 2x Heimdall 1.0

Code Gate (3)

• 1x Hourglass
• 2x Turing

Sentry (5)

• 1x Architect
• 1x Cortex Lock ••
• 2x Ichi 1.0
• 1x Komainu ••••

15 influence spent (max 15)
18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)
44 cards (min 40)
Cards up to Chrome City

It’s still doing okay; winning sometimes, but not particularly reliably. (But I think one of my coworkers’ runner decks is both unusually good and unusually well-suited to this deck.) I have enough ice and econ to be survivable, but both feel a little low; maybe I should get rid of a trap to add more ice? Or even a Jackson?

If there were a Netrunner tournament next weekend, I’d probably try it out there and then retire it; unfortunately, that will have to wait until the 25th this month. But I might start working on another corp deck soon anyways…

For the June Minecraft session, my dilemma was that I liked the village that Pat and Miranda had built, and I was interested in exploring near there (and maybe working more on a nearby cave), but it was really far from home. I’d been thinking that maybe I could build train tracks, but I wasn’t looking forward to that; fortunately, Pat had a better suggestion, namely build train tracks in the nether! (I hadn’t realized that one nether block was equivalent to sixteen regular blocks; good design decision, that.)

A villager contemplates the river

Building a nether portal

The portal is active

I spent a long time staring at this – not sure why it took so long to load

A building housing the nether portal

We decided to both build train tracks, so away we went. For some reason I didn’t take any pictures of the construction process, and actually the photo hotkey I was using ejected me from the train, so I didn’t take pictures riding it, either! But here’s some pictures of the two ends.

Runaway trains, from when I tried to take pictures en route

Both our tracks, at the start

Pat’s tracks at the other end

My tracks at the other end

The portal at the other end already existed: in fact, Miranda had built a building near there, that had since gotten partially destroyed. And there were actually two portals in the real world leading to the one nether portal; one was less well placed, so I destroyed it and relit the other.

Partially destroyed library

A duck is surprised by my appearance through the portal

Looking over to the city

The ruins of the wrong portal

Relighting the correct portal

For our May Minecraft session, we pretty much hung out in the same place where we’d been in April, where Pat and (towards the end) Miranda had been building a sort of stockade village.

I flew around for a bit, and ended up returning to a large, strangely round cave nearby:

Flying around in a rainy sunset

The entrance to the round cave

Looking down into the cave

Coordinates, for my future reference

I wanted to do something with the cave, but I wasn’t sure what: the entrance in particular was so big around round that I wasn’t sure what I could do that would make it look better instead of worse. I eventually decided that I didn’t like the area right outside the entrance, so I wanted to put some color there.

The first version that I actually took a picture of. I liked the black and blue border, but the gold was a bit much.

Green, maybe?

Or red?

How about purple?

Emerald, to match the texture of the blue?

Diamond?

Those were all too gaudy; maybe some gold ore?

Diamond ore?

The ores didn’t work. White?

I’m tired of doing these one at a time, let’s look at three options at once.

Black, but a darker black (and a different texture) than the outer ring.

I liked the black best of the options so far; maybe add a white dot in the middle?

Or a white triangle?

A gold triangle, maybe?

Or a gold dot?

What if I stick a torch on it?

Or leave the torch but ditch the gold dot?

I kind of liked the look of the torch, but it seemed a bit weird sitting there on the ground in the middle, so I went back to black.

Lots of work for a carpet. And I still don’t know what to do with the cave itself! Though I later returned to another part of the area surrounding the cave entrance, this time a ledge high up on the right:

Adding a railing and leveling out a ledge

Putting in a chest and workbench

Anyways, enough of that area. I went back to the stockade village (not very far away at all):

A nice wood / river between them, you can barely see the roofs of the village

What’s that small hole on the right river bank?

And then I saw a small hole; I went in to explore, and there was a massive cave inside! I didn’t take too many pictures, but it was one of those great Minecraft moments, where you never know what will happen when you enter a hole or go around a corner.

Lava visible through a cave tunnel

Emerald ore

Some mine shafts

Back outside

Anyways: the village. First, Pat and Miranda finished it off a bit more:

Finishing a house

Beds inside one of the houses

That room’s ceiling

A house by the river

A view from the top

Then, once they’d gotten the houses habitable, they started spawning villagers.

Spawning a villager

More villagers

The villagers examine the structures

Inside a house

The village at dawn, with lanterns added

Inside the main building

Villagers outside at day

They spawned a golem, too

The golem is in the water

One last view of the whole village