Keep It Simple v1.1

"It's the economy, stupid." -James Carville

I am a man who loves his jank. I love needlessly complex combos. I love my Hayley Chameleonaire deck, installing things through Scheherazade with Sahasrara credits every turn.. I love mucking about with Off-Campus Apartment and zero money Nasir Meidan: Cyber Explorer. But there comes a time when I just want to play some actual Netrunner with my opponent instead of playing solitaire while my opponent rolls their eyes. So it's back to basics for me!

This is my take on a shaper "big rig" deck. The goals are consistency, flexibility and inevitability. And other words ending in "y". In a world of Fausts and D4v1ds and Atmans, I wanted to go back to the Old Ways. Money & Breakers.

The approach I took was to combine a stimshop type, fast setup deck, leveraging CT's extra memory to enable fast setup of a very powerful breaker suite, backed by Magnum and Multithreader economy.

The plan is to set up econ and then breakers as fast as possible and then just run wherever you damn well please. An ancillary benefit of Magnum is that you often have enough money to aggressively trash spammed assets, which are quite prevalent these days.

Card Choices:

Setup:

Self-modifying Code and Clone Chip: In CT's 40 card deck, having the full compliment enables you to run singletons of the breakers and maintain great consistency in finding and deploying what you need.

Diesel is a pure consistency card, and having one in your starting hand let's you dig further for whatever you don't have in your opener.

Test Run was added because I still felt like I wanted a tiny bit more redundancy and to decrease the number of games lost to RNG putting all my SMCs and breakers in the bottom 15 cards. Could be changed with testing, but has the benefit of sometimes fetching an SMC, which in turn is cracked for what you want (maybe using Multithreader credits, and dodging the downside.

Clone Chip Worth the MWL influence! Clone Chip not only acts as Self-modifying Code #'s 4-6, but if you don't need it for that, you extra chips serve their traditional role as insurance against a miscalculated run that leaves one of your breakers in the heap. Oh and it can instant speed re-install a Clot, so there's that.

Economy:

Magnum Opus is the grandaddy of econ cards IF you can swing the MU cost. Well, CT can run this and the full suite naturally, even without drawing any of the deck's MU support. The raw, flexible econ advantage that this gives you over the course of the game is staggering, and since we are taking the good old fashioned route of actually paying credits to get in places, it is just what we need. This is the very first thing I want to get online in any game.

Personal Workshop is another extremely powerful econ card, and one that grants a great deal of flexibility in addition to turning Stimhack into a busted money card (which of course is the basis of the venerable StimShop combo). Something that I have noticed in a world of tagging and All Seeing I's is that Personal Workshop can often mitigate the risk of resource trashing by at least letting you emergency install hardware and programs when you have taken an unexpected tag. It isn't ideal, but having the option is better than not having the option. And of course, the shop let's you wait til mid-run to react to what is going on, a la Self-modifying Code, increasing our ability to react effectively to changing circumstances. Finally, worst case for Personal Workshop is credit per turn econ resource that costs 1 (assuming you have a stream of things you need to install, which this deck does).

Multithreader was the actual inspiration for this deck. While brewing this deck, I came across @feisty's Theory of Simplicity, which was basically what I had been aiming at, and which gave me a lot of good ideas. Multithreader is absurd. If you can use it (say, to crack an SMC) the turn you install it, then it effectively costs 1. After that, it is a 2 credit per turn drip economy in a deck that basically just runs and uses traditional breakers. For the cherry on top, once you have Study Guide out, you can just funnel any unused Multithreader credits (Threadits?) into permanent strength boosts for the Guide. Did I mention that it costs 1 influence? Seems fair.

Stimhack: Winners don't use drugs. I mean, not like, recreationally. But they certainly use them for business and profit! I'm not explaining anything new here, but when you Stimhack with Self-modifying Code and things on your Personal Workshop, the result is turbo setup, mid-run. And the corp often isn't prepared for you to suddenly have 9 more credits than they anticipated while making decisions. The Brain damage is worth it. Late game, you can use the second one for a glory turn if you are in scoring position.

Modded is Sure Gamble, but better for us. Same click efficiency, but let's you Diesel and overdraw to find things, then get your hand size down to avoid discards. And this deck is chock full of 3+ credit hardware and programs. A no-brainer, especially since there isn't room for Sure Gamble.

Memory Support: All of this sounds great, but what I am describing is super memory intensive, so...

Maya is a fantastic console for this deck. The fact that it is 2MU is huge, and spares us the indignity of running clunky CyberSolutions Mem Chips like a damn peasant. It can be Modded out for free, AND it has a very helpful ability, acting as a faux-R&D interface. Great upgrade from Astrolabe, which would have been my second choice.

Leprechaun may seem odd, but the deck definitely needs more shots at memory expansion than just 2x Maya and the other options are Akamatsu Mem Chip and CyberSolutions Mem Chip. The former doesn't add as much memory for a single card and the latter is a little more expensive. And neither of them give you extra bonus help with Magnum Opus and Hyperdriver. Since Leprechaun doesn't care about MU cost, you can dump you big stuff on there later, if that's the order it comes in. The deck doesn't NEED to get this order, but it is a bonus, meaning that a late game Hyperdriver when your rig is full, can still be installed. Plus, getting 2 out nets you 3 MU minimum (more if anything on it is more than 1 MU), which is better than 2 Akamatsu Mem Chip. Oh, and it can be SMC'd in a corner case where you don't need the SMC for anything else. And clone chipped.

Breakers:

Corroder is great. You know it is great. The end.

GS Shrike M2 is a wee bit expensive to get up and running, but ultimately, this deck has a lot of money, and for 2 influence, this will deal with the broadest range of sentries out of any available breakers. I think the slowness of GS Shrike M2 might be a weak point against certain decks. Open to suggestions, but I don't see anything as flexible, and I don't know if the deck has room for an early AND late game killer.

Study Guide wins out over Gordian Blade as a good all purpose decoder because of Multithreader. The ability to just "tick it up" every turn if you don't need the Threadits (it's a word!) for anything else is great. And after the initial investment, you just sail through anything late game.

Miscellaneous:

Artist Colony is just a very useful 1 of to help A) turn early 1 pointers into whatever piece of your rig you are missing (again, mid run), B) to trash negative agendas like News Team (or to eat a 15 Minutes before they can reshuffle it), and C) as a panic button to grab Plascrete Carapace. It's in-faction, so why not?

The Turning Wheel is a 1 influence alternative to the HQ Interface I wish I could fit.

R&D Interface is just good clean fun and stacks with Maya to give you a good late-game alternative to going remote.

Film Critic is just common sense. Don't run without protection kids.

Plascrete Carapace ibid.

Clot is insurance against Fast Advance, and we get a lot of bites at it with 3 Self-modifying Code and 3 Clone Chips.

Hyperdriver is my favorite little addition to this deck. Normally you think of janky combos (which I love) when this card is involved. But here, we just use it for pure value. Because we can! We've got the memory to install this AND SMC turn 1, to give us a burst of extra clicks to dig, install, get money or whatever on turn 2 while trying to set up. Later on, we can probably fit it onto a Leprechaun. I look at it as a more flexible Diesel. You can take any combination of cards or credits, or even runs. And if you've already got Magnum Opus out, then those clicks are extra valuable. It is suddenly a delayed +5 credits.

And that's it! Let me know what you think. I'm always happy for constructive feedback. I've been very much enjoying the refreshing feeling of just having credits and ways to get in and do stuff consistently. Makes a nice break from tripping over my own cleverness.