Nasir, Cyber Vandal

Jashay 715

Nasir Meidan, ICE wrecker. As is so often the case when I think I've come up with something, a cursory glance on the internet shows that I am nowhere near as original as I like to think...

The idea here is to use PW, Clone Chip and SMC as credit sinks so you don't waste your money, and Datasucker and Parasite to trash ICE. Wyrm is a newer addition, and links up well with this strategy.

Economically it's an odd deck, relying on Order of Sol, Personal Workshop, and recurring credits, with ways of making use of Nasir's sudden credit fluxes. This means you can cheerfully run against almost anything unrezzed, as his ability deals with it (particularly if you have an SMC or Clone Chip out), but you will absolutely suck against traces and will be unable to trash things.

As a first stab, it runs quite well, but is incredibly rough around the edges. The icebreaker suite is pretty terrible; it's a mark of how out of practice I am with Shaper that I thought it was okay at first glance. However, it's a mark of the deck's potential that I managed to win some with only Inti and Pipeline out as my breakers!

I suspect that Atman may be the general answer here, but before anything else this deck needs a sharpshooter and a Deus X. I kept being caught by Ichi, and thank god I didn't face Komainu.

Test Run and Levy were intended to be used as extra tutors and recursion to keep the whole thing rolling, but I only played Test Run once, and I've yet to play the Levy. The cost is a little high in a deck like this; you either have to run into a large piece of ice or click a lot. I'll probably keep a single LARLA as a backup, but I'm open to suggestions for the three slots that just opened up.

Ideally I'd like programs or hardware, I think, to keep getting use out of the PW.

So, any thoughts? As I said, it's only a very rough start, but I really enjoy playing it, so i would like to get it into some sort of fighting trim.

3 comments
20 Nov 2014 CJFM

Here's one of our local players' versions. You might've already seen this one, but the main thing is that you rarely actually break ICE and just focus on destroying them. Zu and Atman deal with problematic code gates (put Atman at 4). That's a lot of Net Celebs in your version... Ghost Runner is really necessary to help Wyrm do work. I always want to fit in a Helpful AI...

20 Nov 2014 Jashay

@CJFM: Thanks! That's really helpful. I hadn't actually seen a version of the concept until after I'd played a few games, and since meteor doesn't want to load I can't tell if I've seen it before. Is it similar to cspiekers? I've just found his digging through your decks.

Looking at both yours and his, do you use credits from Kati Jones and Armitage Codebusting to power the Wyrm? (I thought he would lose the credits before the Icebreakers can interact.) Or is it more a case of sometimes you just need money to do things?

How did you find Imp? I found it great for the big stuff, and one time sniping an SE, but it always seemed like a waste on stuff like mental health clinic, jackson and caprice. I chose Paricia for consistency, but damn do I loathe it when you hit a SanSan... >:(

I do have too many Net Celebrity, don't I? I think it's because a lot of my opponents love Targeted Marketing with a fiery passion, so there's a bit of a Current arms race going on.

Although, sticking with the themes of Currents, I wonder if Scrubbed could have any legs in decks like these... If the main aim is breaking ICE, it would save you up to 4 credits from the Wyrm cost, and take things like Koimanu and Tsurugi below the point you even need Wyrm.

Thanks for all the suggestions! Let the improving begin!

21 Nov 2014 CJFM

@Jashay Kati is pretty much there to help you get the Toolbox out and to re-run servers when you faceplant into a Pop-Up. No, you can't pump Wyrm on approach, keeping Datasucker loaded is pretty crucial to the deck. When you're not killing ICE, you're probably running R&D, so having a bank of cash is pretty strong.