Anatomy of Dinner

LSK 4662

Played this deck between rounds at the Dice Dojo tonight. It's brutal; I won most of the games I played by a wide margin. It's a Keyhole deck that can destroy up to 13 pieces of ice over the course of a game.

Card choices:

Reina Roja: This is the clear ID choice for a deck that wants to put heavy economic pressure on the corp's ability to maintain a steady ice presence.

Parasite/Datasucker/Clone Chip, Forked/Knifed/Spooned: These form this deck's ice destruction package. Ice destruction lets us put economic pressure on the corp, which can make it very hard for the corp to score agendas. Focus on R&D - you'll win most games by making it impossible to maintain any ice over R&D and repeatedly hitting them with Keyhole.

Retrieval Run/Same Old Thing/Planned Assault: These are largely extensions of the deck's ice destruction package. Retrieval Run can grab Keyhole, Eater, or Parasite, depending on what you need; Inject usually ends up dumping at least one of those. It's usually Parasite, of course. Planned Assault and Same Old Thing can get Forked/Knifed/Spooned, but they can also grab Retrieval Run if you need a Parasite.

Inject: This deck probably wouldn't be possible without Inject. The card digs you deep; it gets your programs into the trash where you can Retrieval Run or Clone Chip them, and it's basically cost-neutral.

Armitage/Daily Casts/Kati Jones/Sure Gamble, no copies of Dirty Laundry: These are probably the best sources of income without going out of faction. They're useful at any point in the game and provide large chunks of money at a time. This deck isn't playing Dirty Laundry because it's not very useful as click compression - if you're making a run against a server whose contents you know, that run is probably an event run or a Keyhole run. So, Dirty Laundry would just get played as an Easy Mark most of the time, which isn't as powerful as any of the other economy cards. Liberated Account would be slightly better than Armitage Codebusting but there's always the time you need to crawl back from 1 and you're grateful for the Codebusting.

Grimoire: We really just want the memory from this - Keyhole eats up a lot of memory and sometimes the full rig comes together, with Eater, Corroder/Mimic, Datasucker, and Keyhole (leaving 1 MU for Parasite).

Hades Shard: This is something you want to install as soon as possible. It makes it pointless for the corp to ice Archives, sometimes forces the corp to use Jackson proactively, and makes it possible to Keyhole and take the agenda you see without Jackson hiding it away.

Corroder/Mimic: Corroder's here for Wraparounds; Mimic's here for Swordsman. Wraparound on its own isn't that much of a problem, but we might as well play Corroder because it's in-faction and useful to have access to. Swordsman, on the other hand, can ruin your day and it's nice to have access to the Mimic just in case.

Keyhole: Well, this is just central to the deck's strategy. It's this or Medium, but I'd rather have this because it doesn't care if your counters get purged and it makes runs against Jinteki much safer. Plus, every Keyhole run lets you see 3 new cards, where every Medium run only lets you see 1 new card, even as you dig deeper and deeper.

One change I'd consider making is playing -1 Special Order, -1 Hades Shard, +1 Inside Job, +1 Vamp. Nearly every game I've played with this deck could have been even more brutal with a Planned Assault sniping an Inside Job. I don't know if I'd give up the Hades Shard and Special Order for it, but it's very tempting. Vamp isn't a card you want very often here but it would be good in the positions where you want it.

The deck might find a use for Deja Vu but it's not as good of a card as the recursion the deck already plays. When you recur Parasites, you're looking for click efficiency so you can make use of the weak spot, and Deja Vu takes two clicks and 4 credits to put a Parasite on a piece of ice, which is something Retrieval Run and Clone Chip both can do for a single click and fewer credits.

12 comments
14 Dec 2014 Dydra

You put nonexistent cards, into the current meta, and you DON"T expect to wreck everything? Please ... get real ...

14 Dec 2014 Glitch

@Dydra can you explain to me please which cards in The Source and Order & Chaos are going to hard counter the "dinner suite"? Even in the current meta, Swordsman is the only "counter" to Eater and he has covered that with Mimic and Parasite.

I know you have issues with proxying cards that are unavailable right now, and I can understand an issue with cards from SanSan Cycle that don't have a release date. However, these cards are right around the corner and can easily be integrated into the current meta already.

@LSK, I think the deck looks really fun to play and I know first hand how mean the Eater + Keyhole combination is.

14 Dec 2014 Oisin

I am looking forward to playing an Eater/Keyhole/Siphon deck, but I also share some suspicions about how effective these decks will be.

Eater decks will certainly impact the meta, but they aren't that difficult to neutralize. And there are already answers to the Eater deck beyond Swordsman. Without tutors, Will-o-the-Wisp becomes extremely problematic. Crisium Grid becomes a problem. These are cards that aren't useless against a lot of other decks (and Crisium is only one influence). I imagine they will both see quite a bit of play after Order and Chaos.

This build looks a bit more resilient than others because of the Special Order and the Planned Assault. And it has quite a bit of economy. It looks like a fun deck to play. I plan on running mine out of Quetzal, to neutralize any Wraparounds, Wall of Static, Himitsu-Baka, etc.

And, one final point: all that economy comes at a price. There is no way to deal with Scorched decks here, beyond Keyhole trashing combo pieces. Good Scorched decks can get those pieces back. There's not a lot of ways to deal with PE decks, either (again, other than the x2 Keyhole). And, as a longtime Noise player, I'm left wondering whether these decks will be fast enough to threaten NEH.

15 Dec 2014 BTrain

@LSKI love this. I feel like the deck really wants to make room for an Archives Interface, but you have such a tight build here I'm not sure where you'd cut. Maybe if you drop the Special Order and Hades Shard for 1 Inside Job, and take Kati Jones down to 2x, you might have the space for it. It'll also be a huge help against Jinteki, particularly Industrial Genomics, who stick Shocks and Shi Kyu's in archives.

15 Dec 2014 LSK

@BTrain I'm not sure Archives Interface is particularly interesting here - the deck doesn't really plan on running Archives except for Retrieval Run (which won't trigger Shock) or the game-winning points. Shock is pretty niche as far as Jinteki cards go, too; I haven't seen one in months.

15 Dec 2014 BTrain

@LSKI can definitely see the specialized archive runs, but just wait - once Industrial Genomics hits, Shock and Shi Kyu will be coming back in a huge way. My friend has been proxying it for a couple weeks, and it's one of the most problematic ID's I've come across in a loooong time because it can slow your game down to a crawl. It will run Hostile Infrastructure, which is one net damage every time you Keyhole, and you won't be able to afford to trash it (a base trash cost of 5) without turning those archived cards face-up, which is where they hit you with Shock and Shi Kyu. It's a nasty, nasty ID.

15 Dec 2014 LSK

@BTrain The more logical inclusion seems like Imp - that fits in with your game plan better and lets you trash Hostile Infrastructures at a minimal cost.

15 Dec 2014 BTrain

@LSKImp works great as well! It's just a less permanent solution that requires recursion, though with Grimoire you're getting more mileage out of each one. It's really a style choice, I just think with the upcoming cards controlling archives will be just as important as controlling what's on the corp's board. Either way, I can't wait to sleeve this deck up and give it a try :)

15 Dec 2014 MasterAir

Is Déjà Vu not a better choice that SOT? It's more vulnerable to damage, but otherwise better if your econ can support it. I'd be interested to see how often your Planned Assaults/SOT are Siphons. Might be better to play more Siphons! It often is!

15 Dec 2014 LSK

@Oisin: Sorry, I missed your post. "...all that economy comes at a price. There is no way to deal with Scorched decks here" - in my experience, good economy is the best way to deal with Scorched decks, since they can't kill you easily if you have enough money.

@MasterAir - I usually prefer spending an extra click to spending two extra credits, but your mileage may vary. I don't actually want Siphon that often in this deck - destroying a piece of ice is often just as powerful economy-wise and sometimes you leave the corp too poor to take any money from them. Plus, the deck mostly focuses on destroying R&D ice - it's easier to focus on a single server. Siphon is useful but I don't need to spend 4 more influence on another.

17 Dec 2014 aero

This is a fantastic deck. I'm starting to think @Dydra prefers trolling others over actually playing netrunner. Hmm.

18 Dec 2014 semaphores

Why no Steelskin? You don't have any draw except for Inject, and it protects you from damage.

Imp seems bad considering you won't be accessing cards most runs (due to Eater).

Is Grimoire better than Vigil if you're only boosting Parasites and Datasuckers? The extra memory is nice, but Vigil's draw seems powerful.