Drip Drop Andy (Scottish Regional Top 8)

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Here is the runner deck I took to 4th Seed then 8th overall at the Scottish Netrunner regionals.

I had been playing this deck (or a variation thereon; it was an Iain deck for a while) since around March and basically had not lost with it (in the week before Regionals, it died to meat damage a couple of times to one of my testing partners. Remember this).

As the Regional began to creep close, I had thought I was going to take a Siphon-MaxX deck, but testing in the two weeks leading up to it I found that, although it spiked high, it was sometimes shut down totally and utterly. I decided to run with the more consistent Drip Econ deck, I knew it wouldn't spike as high, but it would give me enough games over the course of the day to hopefully make it to the cut.

It's inspired by a few other decks, notably the Cardiff store champ Iain deck and Nordrunner's And4omeda. It has a slower start, helped by Andy's increased hand size, then pretty aggressively draws more cards and rig builds. The Supplier and Career Fair are great in the opening hand, I took to mulliganing if I didn't see it, which may have been a mistake. Overmind gives you pressure if you see the corp trying to score early, and Logos lets you turn the corp's early score into either tech (always fetch plascrete against Weyland. ALWAYS, dammit), a Dyson to turn on your UCs, or just more drip econ. Eventually the deck is making 6+ creds a turn, and 2 RDI plus 2 Legwork usually let you find the agendas for the win. With Femme, breakers, Overmind, E3, d4v1d, and a fistful of creds rolling in every turn, there's not a server that can keep you out late game.

My corp deck can be found over here

Game 1, Matt: Cerebral Imaging

Matt had come across from Glasgow, who had collectively decided to all bring CI decks. It had been a while since I played against the ID, and I knew I had secret tech in my deck in the form of Vamp. I fetched that off his first score, then waited a few turns until I had a bunch of money and Vamped him to nothing from 15 or so creds. I felt guilty as Matt burned both Vitruvius counters to recur GLC and keep himself on 5 cards! Anyway, there was an agenda in the bin, and I managed to use 2 RDI to pull out another 3 points from RnD, and only a turn before I would have been scorch/killed in the face.

Game 2, Zak: NEH

I wasn't sure what kind of deck Zak was running, and was a little scared of fast advance (I hoped everyone else had been scared off bringing it with clot; rush and FA are my worst match ups!). This was a bit of a slow game, agendas didn't start getting scored until much later. There was an early Mushin of a card which I left on the table; I Vamped at one point and took a look, worried about ToL, but found Ghost Branch (urgh, one of the only traps to trigger from 0!). Worried he would credit-credit-trash my supplier I cleaned tags, then just continued running. RDI and Legwork eventually got me the agendas with a femme'd tollbooth on RnD.

Game 3, Alasdair: HB:EtF

Alasdair was the first Netrunner player I met in Edinburgh before I moved here (I was placed against him in first round of the Chronos Protocol a month before I moved) and we've been friends ever since. He's a good player and more importantly I had never beaten him in a tournament. It made me nervous (and as I found out later, him too as he loves to hold it over me ;) ). I'll need to chat to him to get the details of this game as I've forgotten, but I'll update when I do. I won! :D

Game 4, Matt: HB:EtF

Matt was stuck to table 1 and hadn't dropped a game all day. He'd just seen off one of the best Scottish players with a double win, so I knew he was on top form! Matt is one of my regular playing partners and another very good friend, knew it would be a good game against him. I didn't get a great start and mulliganed from a hand with 1 supplier in it to one with 0 suppliers in it. I even had to chuck away a couple of cards from my opening hand. Less than ideal! But I slowly got myself set up, grabbing a couple of agendas. Meanwhile, through a variety of fast advance tricks (there was a SanSan on the table at this point) Matt was up to 5 points with 2 domestic sleepers. E3 was really working for me as he had an Eli and a Heimdall 1.0 over RnD, plus about 4 more bits of ice, both helping to keep me and my two RDIs out. He activates one of the domestic sleepers, I have one turn left. I hit RnD, needing three points. First card: El Zilcho. Second Card: Agenda! Gila Hands. Third Card: Accelerated Beta Test. Game came down to figuratively the last turn of a card to see who would win!

Game 5, Seamus: Blue Sun

Urgh, Seamus. Unfortunately a very good friend, also a really solid player. He very, very rarely makes mistakes in his play, so you have to watch for those windows to score so closely. He is a fan of the old triple scorch after scoring Posted Bounty, or just regular scorch at ANY OTHER TIME. He's got a lot of experience with Blue Sun, and runs it incredibly rich. My deck runs rich (it's one of my meat damage protections, having too much money to be able to kill), but not Blue Sun rich. I start to get set up, and Seamus is pulling typical Blue Sun BS. There's a Janus on the board somewhere (against Seamus, there is ALWAYS a Janus on the board somewhere, at LEAST one), and I know death to the face is ever present, so I'd love him to score an agenda letting me fetch Plascrete or E3 with Logos. But, it isn't to be. A Crisium on HQ and Off the Grid on a remote lets him score posted bounty then double scorch me straight past my 4 agenda points. I had a great rig out, so if only that Plascrete or Utopia had showed up on the table! Good hair and sharp suit take the match.

Game 6, Dan: HB: EtF

I'd nearly played Dan earlier before we were hit by an IT gremlin, so I'd already introduced myself. He was a thoroughly nice chap, and doing really well especially considering it was his second major event and he has been playing since around Order and Chaos. A quick check of the score sheet showed we both needed a win from this match to make it to the cut. I had already pulled out a win from my corp deck, so felt the pressure was off me a little; obviously, I still wanted to win, but wouldn't be devastated if I lost! Dan's deck was similar to mine, and to Alasdair's, meaning I thought I had a good chance against it. Dan, however, got a scoring server set up fairly quickly and managed to push through a Mandatory Upgrades (second agenda I think?). At that point it's so hard to win as pretty much anything in hand can be scored. I'm also starting to understand why people hate me so much for playing Ash all the time. I manage to grab a couple of points, but Dan fast advances with his extra clicks for the win.

Game 8, Shemek: Cerebral Imaging

Second CI game of the day! It went reasonably similar to the first, an early Efficiency Committee score lets me fetch a Vamp. I gain some money and manage to Vamp him down to zero, and he even burns his counters to take creds. I manage to get 2 RDIs up and RnD is weak as anything with only a single NEXT Silver there. I see a Scorch there, but tiredness has set in and I fail to draw back to up 4 with even a click remaining. Shemek pulls back a SEA from the bin, and Scorches me for the win. Stupid mistake on my part, but Shemek saw the window for victory and pushed through it to my death, smeared over the pavement.

And that was it! Such a good day, every single one of my games was fun and all of my opponents were great to play against. Would have been good to see Matt take home the top spot, but Laurie was a deserved winner too after his epic feat of Netrunner endurance! Thanks to the QT regulars for deck testing, ideas, beers, and general friendship. Thanks to BL and Stuart for running the whole thing. See y'all at Nationals!

10 comments
19 May 2015 PlutoNick

"and 3 RDI plus 2 Legwork usually let you find the agendas for the win.."

You only have two.

19 May 2015 unitled

Yup, sorry, did a read through after publishing and corrected the mistakes :)

20 May 2015 Dr_Madhatter

Hey man, congratulations on doing so well at regionals! Interesting to see your build, especially your Vamp. I dropped Iain for Andromeda to take to Oxford regionals since career fair has come out, its amazing to see on your opening hand as you rightly point out. My Andy was still quite different to yours though, mostly due to my inf spread where I had 2 scrubbers, proco and ice carver. Did you get much work out of your d4v1d and did u wish u had uninstall?

20 May 2015 unitled

@Dr_Madhatter Hey man, should have given you a shout out in particular, your deck was a massive inspiration. How did Oxford go for you? Do you have a deck list, I'd love to take a look and compare notes!

d4v1d actually did less work than I thought it would, used it to deny Blue Sun credits from an oversight'd Curtain Wall and I think again to break through a Tollbooth a few times. I think for 4 influence there is maybe other stuff that would be better? Never really needed uninstall even though it would seem to be a perfect fit (it was in the very first version of this deck, actually).

Star players are Symmetrical Visage, Career Fair, Supplier (obviously), E3 and RDI. Vamp was good actually, I put it in as RP tech (to deny credits to get me past Ash or Caprice on a remote) but only ended up to deny the corp money to give me access or put the squeeze on CI, as you can see from the reports above!

23 May 2015 Dr_Madhatter

Sorry to be late in getting back to you, I've been busy! My Andy was very similar to yours. except for 1 HQI instead of the legworks (because of crisium grid and supplier synergy), 2 plascretes (so that you can wait out Weyland/get early plascrete vs butcher shop), 2 scrubbers (these are amazing with the supplier). The last 2 cards were last minute additions because I just didn't know what to do with the extra 5 inf from Andy. Pro co over sym visage (career fair/supplier helps the cost) and Ice Carver. Ice carver acts as a constant datasucker and gets installed for 1 credit off the supplier. It is essentialy another economy card. Also it solves the problem of Architect for Garrote, in that you don't need to boost for strength. Overmind and Zu love it too!

I notice u have 3 logos, I use only 2 because I find it too expensive early game and you've got a queue of other cards u want off the supplier which are cheaper. I try to time the install if i feel an agenda score is coming (if ive managed to draw it in time). How do u find having 3?

23 May 2015 Dr_Madhatter

I sacked utopia shard and feedback filter for the scrubbers by the way*

23 May 2015 unitled

As you can see form the report above, meat damage is one of my weak points, two scorched losses out of three losses on the day! I added a second plascrete earlier this week. Scrubbers could well be a great call at the moment, I'm starting to see an awful lot of asset HB (hell, it's what I was running on the day). And I really like Ice Carver actually, that's a hot tip from me as a card that will be on the ascendancy with the rise of Net Ready Eyes for SUPER CHEAP runs. I'm tempted to drop the d4v1d to squeeze it in, that extra dot of inf left over could easily accommodate a scrubber.

I basically really want a Logos ready for the corp's first score, I put it on the supplier as soon as I get it, then grab it on either a turn where I'm not installing anything else or the turn before it looks like the corp is winding up for a score. On the other hand... having three means I'm wasting draws in the late game getting them. I could certainly be persuaded to go down to two.

ProCon on the other hand... I just really like Symmetrical Visage! It's free off the Supplier, but is fine to install even if you have neither Supplier or Career Fair.

It feels weird that we seem to be about the only two people anywhere running this deck... I thing it's really good, and I don't pretend to be the best player in the world so I'm sure the concept can be taken further! Have you seen anyone else running anything similar?

23 May 2015 Dr_Madhatter

I think if I knew what to do with 2 inf I would switch proco for visage - it's a great card!

I'm sure theres other people playing the drip style econ package. There's an iain deck which did ok in an American regionals listed on this site. I have to say I've moved away from it at the moment and started playing as Kate. Mostly because I found myself wishing I had ice destruction. Also, zu really sucks against multiple enigmas and Merlin. Next ice is also hard to deal with. Maybe there's a way of squeezing some ice destruction into this econ package in the future. Emergency shutdown is the only decent option I could think of to add to this. But it's hard to find space.

28 Jul 2015 futureguy

@unitled How do you find this deck faring given the new sets that are out there? Any newer cards that you would add to it?

28 Jul 2015 unitled

Hey @futureguy funny you should mention that... With all this talk of Dubstep Iain, I've put the deck back together with some Turntables in. A slower deck like this really appreciates the catch up mechanic built into that card, it's worth experimenting with.

I'm also interested in trying Trope when that comes out... Yes, it's 3 inf, but giving Criminal some recursion like that I think works well. You can pull back the Overminds you've burnt through, the Daily Casts, Inside Jobs and Legworks, plus you can bring back any real breakers you've lost to program trashing.

Note in the version I took to Nationals, I took the D4v1d out and added a few other things; Scrubber and Professional Contacts I think.

Are you trying something similar? Have you had any luck?