WhizFaust (MWL edition)

SyntaxLost 144

This deck is a monster and Faust with Pancakes is incredibly busted. Damon may have attempted to shake up the meta with the MWL, but the result is that Anarchs (being incredibly good pre-MWL) are almost certainly the top dogs in the post-MWL world. And while increasing the influence of the two best Anarch cards (Clone Chip and Parasite) have forced Anarch decks to make cuts, the addition of Eli and Architect on Corp side have hurt corps far more as these were the two best ICE for fighting Parasite recursion, and Anarchs in general.

The deck works on putting extreme economic pressure on the Corp such that it will struggle to keep its head above water just from trying to maintain economic assets and defensive ICE. While there can be some difficulty in getting your power cards online (as is typical for Anarchs without proper tutoring), the game can rapidly devolve into a state where scoring (even a vanilla 3/2 as an asset bluff) is far too much of a tempo hit for the Corp and they are inevitably Medium dug into oblivion. Whizzard's ability is key to such pressure, but I've run tests with this deck out of other Anarch identities (with added Scrubbers) and it's still incredibly strong.

Present meta Corp economies are reliant on assets. There simply aren't enough economic operations for the Corp to gain an advantage fast enough to score and defend centrals. Whether a rezzed asset is trashed or not, the economic disparity created by the asset should (at some point) generate the critical scoring window that the Corps needs in order to ship their agendas (and remove them from possible attack from the runner). Or, at the very least, enable more econ to work towards that scoring window.

When you're Whizzard, it becomes a lot more costly for the Corps to generate their needed income from assets. By forcing the Corp to invest more in trying to defend their econ, you increase the time it takes for them to generate a scoring window. And a greater delay in attempting to score gives you more time to attack centrals and pull the agendas before the Corp can get them to their score area. With greater pressure on Corp centrals, the cost of defending goes up and you can see how this effect starts compounding. By playing Faust as your primary breaker, you greatly accelerate how quickly you can apply pressure, which has a massive impact from this compounding effect. The earlier you're able to pressure the corp, the worse their late game becomes.

Some of you out there may be fans of L4J. It's a fun deck, but I recommend that you try this deck for a few games and see if it doesn't work better for you. The biggest advantage with Faust is that your breaker suite is incredibly simple to set up (one card breaks almost everything), much cheaper than regular breakers and/or Atman4, and has a smaller memory footprint enabling double Datasuckers which crushes glaciers.

9 comments
21 Jan 2016 moistloaf

I've been running Jopps version of Whizzcakes. The cutlery give you an unstoppable late-game after your Levy. I also prefer triple Career Fair to the third Clone Chip, but you can go many ways with the build and still win many games

21 Jan 2016 Talism

SO i was down on my luck, my girl friend left me for the Scrubber on the next block, hell im a better garbo then him, hell im a Whizzard at trashing stuff.

so then i found this runner deck and now my whole life has changed, I An Offer You Can't Refuse for an amazing job!

Then a Super model, SUPER Model asked me out!!!!! all because i started playing this deck.. its like i mean a deal with the Devil

if you want your life to go from Crap to amazing, you just need to sign your soul over to this guy!

21 Jan 2016 Andannius

Is the Turntable there over Vigil because you find you struggle with FA?

21 Jan 2016 falseidol

with little other control, vigil can be pretty easily played around, and turntable messes up GFI too.

22 Jan 2016 moistloaf

@andannius there is no reason to play vigil over turntable right now

22 Jan 2016 SyntaxLost

@moistloaf Parasite is much stronger than cutlery as you don't need to perform any subtype matching, and can trash ICE on first encounter with Datasuckers and Clone Chip. It can also weaken servers so you can build up Datasucker counters. Econ seems sufficient dense without the Career Fair, especially when you're not using credits to break, and Clone Chip is pretty busted with Faust. You also wouldn't get as much incremental value from the Career Fair since you'd have to cut two econ cards with the Clone Chip to fit them in.

@Talism The Devil sends his regards.

@Andannius Turntable is simply a stronger card. Occasionally NEH can get a super-fast Astro and draw into a second soon afterwards. Being able to disrupt the train helps a lot. You can also swap out a scored Breaking News in Convenience Shop which you normally can't do anything about if they score it on turn 1.

22 Jan 2016 moistloaf

@SyntaxLost Jopp (and I) play 3 Parasite 3 Sucker and 5 cutlery ^_^ After Levy ICE melts like butter. You don't cut econ; you cut Peddler for Career Fair. like I said, it may be a preference thing. for reference: netrunner.meteor.com

22 Jan 2016 SyntaxLost

@moistloaf Cutlery and Parasite seems like overkill. The Parasites and Faust dissolve Corp servers very rapidly already, so you'd have to cut econ in order to fit the Cutlery. Peddler greatly speeds up the deck as you really want to find your power cards quickly. I think it's a straight up better card than Career Fair, but thanks for the link. I'll have a look.

5 Feb 2016 Werewerf

@moistloaf I've been trying out both of these decks and I have enjoyed them. The cutlery deck above has struggled a few times when it hasn't found Wyldside - I'm going to try WhizFaust a few more times to see if Peddler makes it more consistent for me, though I miss the cutlery...Have you found consistency to be at all problematic with the level of draw you have currently? Do you draw very aggressively if you don't find Faust or Wyldside?