Quantum Mathematics

Sysp 1259

Even though it is assymetrical, Netrunner is in its core a fair game.

The game is a thrilling race to 7 agenda points. The corp has to maintain a certain agenda density based on deck size to make sure that the game stays fair.

The runner wins by stealing agendas worth 7 (Correction: 8 to 13 points) from the corp's deck.

The corp wins by scoring 7 points of agendas, often by scoring three agendas. (Correction: The corp often wins by scoring two agendas, and sometimes the runner scores some for the corp).

Even though it is assymetrical, Netrunner is in its core a fair game. (Correction: ...but not when playing against this deck).

Welcome to the wonderful world of Quantum Mathematics!

The beauty of this deck lies in its agenda suite. When playing 40 card corp deck, the usual approach is to go for very few agendas (usually 6 or less) and try winning the game by other means than scoring. This deck takes another approach by running a full 9 agendas and instead mitigating the impact when the runner steals an agenda.

Between Project Beale and Global Food Initiative, we are essentially running two 5 for 3:s that only gives the runner 2 points when they steal it which significantly lessens the impact of it being stolen. In Quantum Predictive Model, we have an agenda that swings the game by agenda 2 points (+1 corp, -1 runner) when the runner tries to steal it when tagged during a run which happens often in this deck. All this means that we often only need to score two agendas to win the game if the runner blunders into a QPM.

News Team makes matters worse for the runner. Since we are playing SYNC, the tax of taking two tags is significant enough that the runner often ends up with 1-3 News Teams in their score area, which further increases the number of points needed.

On the ice side, Data Raven (and its sidekick Gutenberg) taxes the runner and ensures that tags will land during runs to benefit QPM and Keegan Lane, the shatterer of rigs and dreams. Archangel also is a nightmare for some runners to deal with regardless of where they encounter it.

1 The All-Seeing I and 1 Closed Accounts ensures that you have some punish apart from QPM and Keegan if the runner choses to stay tagged. The All-Seeing I also is great vs that DLC deck we all know and love. Remember that all tag punishment can be recycled with Jackson as needed.

Since the combo pieces and Jackson "Mandatory" Howard are all in NBN (and mostly from Data and Destiny), we have a whopping 12 influence to spend after paying for 3 Global Food Initiatives. I've chosen to spend this on shoring up the economy with 2 Celebrity Gifts - it's always fun to show the runner a hand of 2 News Team, an agenda worth only two points to them, an Archangel and a random card and see if they feel like running. The rest of the influence is spent on powerful EtR ice (Spiderweb, Turing, Rototurret) to complement our disruption ice.

Reality Threedee (!) is the 44th card that I'm trying right now. It's an obvious non-bo with All-Seeing I but it doesn't come up often. The deck has the ability to go Never Advance in its scoring server if it wants to with Beales, QPM, Keegan, Jackson and News Team and Reality Threedee can play the bait game just fine while being difficult enough to trash for the runner to stay around for a while if you choose to rez it naked for the economy. That said, it's probably not optimal for the slot so I'd love some other suggestions.

Thanks for reading and I hope you try the deck out, it's a ton of fun to play (for you that is). I'm 13-2 so far with it on Jinteki and plan to start taking it to GNKs as soon as possible.

17 comments
12 Nov 2015 Krams

I think I met you on Jinteki.net today. I was piloting a weird Kate that tried to be Sunny. It was a fun match! :D

12 Nov 2015 Skeletons

I like this maths :)

12 Nov 2015 Fireburns

No psychographics to go with Beale and tags?

12 Nov 2015 Chuftbot

I see where you're coming from, but it's a little disingenuous to call QPM +1 for you and -1 for the runner. That being said it's a huge tempo swing and taggy ICE like Data Raven, Gutenberg, etc. make it really funny. I enjoy single-advancing it behind a raven and letting the runner score it for me.

Regarding the 44th slot, you're probably right to make it an econ choice. How about a PAD? Most runners don't care enough to trash it early, and if you see it late it can just be an annoying tax.

12 Nov 2015 LeonardQuirm

I too played you on Jinteki.net today :) I had the Overmind Adam deck and got trounced!

As an idea for your 44th card slot - what about 15 Minutes? Makes the maths even more unfair when you're giving yourself a 2-1 that you can score but the runner effectively can't steal except as their final point...

12 Nov 2015 Sysp

@Krams Yeah, that Kate deck was a nice change of pace, well built and well played!

@Skeletons Math is hard when you are a runner, leave it to the corps. ;)

@Fireburns Problem is that Keegan consumes tags so the runner usually don't stay multi tagged for long so Psycho would do much.

@Chuftbot Yeah, it's not exactly +1 / -1, that was indeed a simplification. QPM is indeed a great baiting card for your scoring server. If they don't run, you score (or overwrite into Archives if they are multitagged). If they do run, you score for free. Hilarious! A PAD is indeed an option, did want more eco in there but wanted to try R3D as if there ever was a deck for it, this might be it. I'll test a PAD as well but wary of not being able to rez it and go positive on bits right away.

@LeonardQuirm Yeah, that was a fun game! :) 15 minutes is interesting but I'm not sure that can afford playing an agenda instead of an economy card there. Could try going with 1 less QPM but I suspect QPM is just better in this deck. Worth testing.

12 Nov 2015 E1eutz

if you dont play psycographics, isn't astro better than beale?

13 Nov 2015 SecurityRake

Been playing a similar decklist (http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/27760/sync-psychobiotics). I like this version better but mostly a tossup. It's pretty damned crazy what you can do with this sort of agenda spread. The one thing I want to fuck with is being able to have both Psycho and Beale, there have been times it would win the game. It's tough to do without fucking up the spread though.

13 Nov 2015 Sysp

@E1eutz Beale can be scored for 3 points whereas Astro only scores for 2 (even though it is arguably the best agenda in the game). Believe it or not, between the News Teams and GFIs, there has been games where overadvancing Beale has been the only possible way for me to reach 7 points (!). Based on all the awesome feedback about runners going "Tag me", I will try adding a Psychographics in the 44th slot and will see how it performs, making Beale even better. A good thing about a 44-card deck with Jackson is that finding and recurring single copies of narrow cards are actually pretty consistent. I often end the game with only 5 cards or less left in the deck.

@SecurityRake Nice deck! Even though they look similar at first glance, they seem to play very differently with yours being a fast advance deck and this deck being more of a control / scoring window deck. Key difference apart from that seems to be Keegan which I regularly use 2-5 times per match (with Jackson recursion) and that also keeps me from amassing tags. SYNC seems like a flexible ID so far!

13 Nov 2015 SecurityRake

@Sysp

Not mine but a local's. Yeah main similarity is the spread and the use of News Team to be absolutely brutal. I have had multiple games go to where the runner literally could not win by scoring out (actually got damned close to milling me, but it worked out in the end thanks to psycho). I am glad there are multiple paths to take with it, and it's fantastic to see NBN not being the exact same agenda spread as it's been for years.

15 Nov 2015 deckm1

No one seems to be using Big Brother! I find it fits in quite nicely with my sync deck. Once they're tagged, Big Brother's going to cost them another 2 clicks and 6 creds to pitch the tags, so they often give up on getting rid of them. I have yet to run into anyone playing paper trimming, so it really boosts the chances of a psycho or scorch win.

As for Keegan, a really nice combo is Keegan/Bandwidth. It's pricey to avoid the tag so most people take it anticipating a successful run but then you can rez Keegan immediately and spend that tag to kill the program that would let them into the server! :)

15 Nov 2015 SecurityRake

I love Big Brother in other tagstorm decks, but I haven't had much cause to use it in Sync yet. Depends what form of tagging you've got. if you're relying on News Team and Midseasons only to stick tags, then add the cost of Sync to those, and you don't usually need it. Now if you're using Sea Source, Breaking News, Snare or anything that can only stick one tag, then Big Brother is better. I try to slot it in MN decks all the time, but ideally the added cost of Sync is saving you from needing it.

16 Nov 2015 lolpaca

This looks very cool - my only question is Celebrity Gift, which seems to be eating up a lot of influence when NBN now has quite a lot of great in-faction money options.

Do you find Gift essential and is there anything else you'd rather spend inf on?

18 Nov 2015 Sysp

@deckm1 As SecurityRake said, it usually comes down to the runner having no tags at the start of your turn or having lots. Since we don't have any fancy combos like Snare and False Lead to force the runner to retain a tag into your turn, Big Brother would do very little.

@lolpaca Celebrity Gift has actually been one of the allstars of the deck so far! The ability to go from 3 to 10 while showing a semirisky hand for the runner to run is like closing a reverse scoring window after you've have to go low after rezzing your entire remote server ice stack to score a GFI or overadvanced Beale, or if you have been Siphoned you can often Sweeps Week into Gift. This is much better in the deck than drip economy since you want to build a big credit stack fast and then sneak an agenda out behind 1-2 ice before the runner is fully set up. If you can score 2-3 points like this, it helps a ton for the late game.

Another clue to the usefulness of Celebrity Gift is that I often end up reshuffling in 1 or 2 of them when I Jackson since the game state dictates that it would be useful, so that should be a further sign that the card is performing in the deck.

18 Nov 2015 Sysp

I'm currently experimenting with the following changes:

-1 Gutenberg -1 Archangel +2 Enigma

I wanted more EtR ice and Engima is cheap, influence free, decently taxing and slightly punishing when facechecked. 3 Gutenberg was way too many, you only need one for R&D and sometimes you're sticking a Raven there anyways so going down to 2 seems alright. Superhappy with Turing btw, that card is worth its weight in influence in the current meta (Faust, Endless Hunger etc).

-1 Spiderweb +1 Ash 2X3ZB9CY

Less ice but another way to stack the server. Can be recycled with Jackson. Spiderweb is less needed as with the addition of 2 Enigmas.

-1 Reality Three-Dee +1 Psychographics

So far, the Psychographics has been strong. I absolutely don't think I need more than one but the ability to discard it early and Jackson it late has won multiple games when the runner has gone full "Tag me" mode so running exactly one copy seems to great increase the win percentages in the matchups where the runner is likely to retain the tags.

20 Nov 2015 Popeye09

If you wanted to use Reality Threedee, have you considered going all in on them (maybe swap for Hedge Fund?) and including Exposé to remove the bad publicity? This deck seems perfectly placed for Exposé, since presumably for the 5/3 agendas you are trying to score you plan to install-advance-advance them. You can do the same with Exposé to bait a run through your scoring server ICE before rezzing and using it when they get to the server.

11 Dec 2015 ren666

If you could part with the Celebrity Gifts, you could squeeze 2 or god forbid, 3 snares in. Maybe that is a different deck altogether, but the tag they get with Snare would be painful to shake off at 3 credits. And if they are digging RnD and hit a snare, it turns on QPM, as well as being a hell nasty surprise out of NBN. Snare is basically news Team 4-6. Then again, Eater/Keyhole will wreck this strategy. Maybe leave it at just the 3 news team. But man... What a prickly RnD that could be, especially with Archangel!

LOVE this deck tho.