Breaking: Tag! Is it just a game?

jill_rae 8

Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to Netrunner, so this is my attempt at making an NBN deck with the cards I own. I currently have the following sets: Core Set (one copy) Order and Chaos True Colors The Spaces Between Future Proof Opening Moves

I would appreciate any feedback. I hope to test this out and make refinements and see how much I like NBN.

Thank you!

1 comments
22 Feb 2015 ain

You have a lot of effects to punish the runner for having tags, but not really a reliable way to tag them and make it stick.

A good runner never runs on the last click if they know they might hit a Snare, and they can always choose to jack out when hitting Data Raven.

If you want to use tags there are generally two schools of thought.

The first is to get the runner tagged for only one turn without a way for them to remove it and then flatline them with 2x Scorched Earth. This is most commonly accomplished by either letting the runner run into a Snare! and then abandoning a scored False Lead to prevent them from shaking off the tag or by causing the runner to spend most of their money and then beating them on the trace of SEA Source, with the latter being by far the most common and more reliable option. Sometimes people also use Midseason Replacements for this purpose.

The second is to make the runner run into so many tag attempts that they either have to go broke or float tags of their own accord. This is accomplished with cards like Manhunt, Midseason Replacements, Data Raven and others. This way, since the runner is unlikely to shake the tags, there are more options for leveraging them and a longer time window to do so as well. The downside is that it is harder to convince a runner to float tags than it is to land just a single one.

So before making a tag-heavy deck you should decide which route you want to go down. From the looks of it you are trying for the second strategy. With this you need to be able to take advantage of the runner spending their credits to avoid tags. The obvious path is to use this as a scoring window and start the Astro train. But Midseason Replacements is a real favourite as well, as it can land a ridiculous amount of tags on a broke runner. This is very hard to recover from, especially if it means you can Psychographics out a Project Beale for up to 7 points (with 13 tags).

For tag punishment you have several choices. There are the game winning options Scorched Earth and Psychographics and those that delay the runner such as Closed Accounts and Information Overload. As a rule you want to run as little of these as possible, as they are useless until you turn them on with tags.

Your deck list looks reasonably balanced, except that it's a bit heavy on the tag punishment side. I suggest you decide how you want to leverage your tags in one way and focus on that. Information Overload, while a really powerful card, is pretty bad in multiples as it is either useless or overwhelming by itself. So one copy is usually enough.