Deal with the Devil 1.1 (1st place F2F games 14 players)

robomagic 175

This deck went undefeated on the day, flatlining four runners and never coming close to scoring out. It's a slightly altered take on the deck I've been playing for about 6 weeks now, which is itself an alteration of Elusive's list from his write-up about yomi play on Stimhack (http://stimhack.com/playing-the-high-stakes-game-with-personal-evolution/). A version running Punitive got me to third place in a store champs two weeks ago (http://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/32296/deal-with-the-devil-3rd-place-401-games-toronto-29-players-), and to a middling but decent 13/27 at Face 2 Face's store champs last weekend.

While I completely admit playing Personal Evolution isn't for everybody and certainly subject to high variance, I think a lot of players could benefit from bringing a list like this to store champs and GNKs. I've had a considerably higher win record by playing a deck that very few people in the have direct counter cards to, while when I played Foodcoats or Fast Advance I felt really tech'd against.

In my third place finish the big counters came in the top cut, when I had to play a Beach Party Kate list with Deus Ex. Even then, while I was almost never going to be able to manage a flatline, I feel like I was able to play two grinding games in the top cut that were very fun while making my opponent work hard to pull out a victory.

Obviously the other kind of decks that will cause you a lot of heartache are denial decks that specialize in spamming siphon and then using Eater / Keyhole shenanigans. These are the toughest games where you have to be the most careful about credit pool. I've found that I spend a lot of time crediting up above 15 creds, and doing everything I can to score a profiteering early. Crisium is a tech card for these matchups, but it won't save you entirely. Focus on staying high in creds while ICEing archives to prevent runners actually scoring those agendas they Keyhole (I was able to prevent an apocalypse MaxX from scoring about 11 points in archives by just putting a quicksand and Lotus field on archives today, winning with a scummy Philotic Entanglement / Ronin Combo.

~~~Cards of Note~~~

Quicksand - a piece of ICE that's not very good, and yet because it has a parabolic cost associated with running it repeatedly, runners tend to not pressure it too hard (as they might if it was ice wall, himatsu, or wall of static). If nothing else it baits a parasite early in the game, leaving fewer for your x2 Komainu.

Ghost Branch - a scummy card that only fired once. Switch out with a second crisium if you're worried about siphon spam.

Trick of Light - never used it once. It might help sometimes cuz it helps you combo ronin kills a little easier, but I think it's too conditional for this list. Drop it for another medical research fundraiser and maybe a psychic field?

Komainu - hell, I would drop the Cortex Lock for another one of these. They are so good now, and are likely to be the thing you actually bother to rez. I set up kills so often with these because instant speed parasite kills are almost nowhere to be found these days. Taxing, deadly, effective.

Personal Evolution is fun! Yomi!!!

4 comments
6 Mar 2016 RubbishyUsername

Crisium Grid? Why not Targeted Marketing? What about Chronos Project? Hurts less than if you score a profiteering as well. Since you're mostly running advanceable traps instead of unadvanced ones, how about turning the ToL and maybe Psychic Field into more money/ice?

6 Mar 2016 robomagic

@RubbishyUsername Targeted Marketing could be a great include for siphon hate. Though the only thing I like about crisium more is that it could at least serve double duty as a Keyhole solution. I've played Chronos Project in this list and found it totally reasonable - same with False Lead (especially with Scorched). I think I'm just super wary of denial decks and the most important thing to running this deck is having a literal pile of creds. The nice thing about PE is that you can def change up agendas and tech cards and really keep runners guessing every time you play the ID.

7 Mar 2016 lolpaca

I've been experimenting with The Future is Now in PE, which I find can make for some super interesting mind games. Have you ever given it a spin?

7 Mar 2016 robomagic

@lolpaca Playing with one The Future is Now would actually be a really great thing to play around with. Mostly if you have it already advanced three times and somehow landed a tag on a runner that they could not clear, so you can grab money / Scorched Earth, on the turn where you want to land the flatline. Would be super handy in a Punitive Counterstrike build too. I'm running the three profiteering purely because I've had too many games lost because of denial tech (lampray / siphon), so having three is just a security blanket, really. It's totally up to how you want to conduct your flatline turn or maintain tempo as the game goes along.