Adam

I have always been interested in Adam. I would go as far as to say he is my second favorite character after Andromeda. I am always trying to find a way to use him to good effect. This version is probably better than any other that I have made so far, at least I feel more confident with it.

The biggest problem with Adam (IMHO) has always been with Safety First. Safety First is amazing card draw, no doubt about it. The cost is just too high, though. Getting stuck early on 3 cards in hand is a death sentence for Adam. Substantially every Adam deck out there goes to a lot of effort to rid itself of the drawback that comes along with Safety First. Most will play at least 3 cards to increase their hand size, many will play even more. With a staple like Public Sympathy rotated out, that gets even harder.

The thing is, it never feels good to play a thing just to increase your maximum hand size. So even if you switch your Public Sympathies for Brain Cages, it still feels really bad (not to mention it sucks to give yourself brain damage and the card works against its' own benefits).

This deck solves that problem by throwing out Safety First. I know that also throws out the best free draw engine in the game and it's really painful to throw that out, but I think it's something that has to be done.

It's incredibly painful to lose that "restricted free click" (must be used to draw a card) every turn, but hopefully the end result is worth it.

By throwing out Safety First, that also allows me to bring in Find The Truth. Find The Truth also allows us to play with the amazing card that is RNG Key. It is my hope that Find The Truth + RNG Key is more upside less downside than Safety First + Anything.

FWIW, I believe that the current ruling is that you CAN name the cost of an already rezzed upgrade and access that first and it WILL work to get the RNG Key money, because the "reveal" part is a part of an effect (do as much as you can) rather than part of a cost (you must do this or the ability doesn't work).

IMHO, the "plus hand size" on the Brain Chip is the only reason that Brain Chip was necessary to use with this runner. With no Safety First, we can get a new console. What I chose was The Gauntlet. The Gauntlet stacks with Neutralize All Threats and will ensure that the Corporation will want to multiple ice HQ (tempo hit for them) and it will punish them for multiple icing HQ at the same time (more accesses for you on success).

The Gauntlet also comes with 2x MUs which is very useful with Adam, because Adam really wants to have a lot of programs installed, probably more than any other runner does.

That brings us to the breaker suite. Adam really wants to have an AI installed, and that has traditionally been something like Overmind or Crypsis, because they are neutral AIs. Overmind also has some synergy with Brain Chip which was another plus in its favor.

For this deck, I went with Aumakua. I think Aumakua is one of the best AIs to come out in recent times, especially because you can run something like Archives to pump it which gives them a good reason to heavily ice Archives (tempo hit for the Corporation). This also pays you every time you hit HQ and fail which makes such instances less bad. You never want to fail to get agendas, but if you do then it makes Aumakua better.

The other choices are "good stuff" breakers. Corroder has been top tier since day 1 of Netrunner. Nanotech is fair and better in situations where the Corporation is using multiple ice, which this deck encourages them to do. Study Guide is a big influence hit, but I really like how this grows with you throughout the game. Logic Bomb is also a "good stuff" icebreaker here which makes it much harder for the Corporation to catch you with punishing ice.

Study Guide also combos VERY well with Multithreader, which is one of the best programs in the game and something we really want to have installed. In addition to Multithreader, we also have Cyberfeeder to do effectively the same job. Every one of either of those that comes out it becomes much more expensive for the Corporation to try to keep you out. They are excellent economy cards and they encourage you to do what you want to do anyway which is making runs. I had a spare card and a spare influence after making the deck and I threw in a random 1x Akamatsu Mem Chip just in case it lets me put out another Multithreader.

To get around the downside of Neutralize All Threats, I included 3x Scrubbers. I think it is important to try to mitigate the drawbacks of the built in rig and Scrubber goes a long way toward doing that when you are forced to trash every card you possibly can.

Dreamnet and Symmetrical Visage help to get around the drawback of Always Be Running in their ways. Both of them do well to enable you to get more value out of each click you are spending.

Street Peddler shrinks your deck and helps you get things online more quickly. With only one card in four or so being an event, it's unlikely you pull triple events with her in this deck. Even if you do, you probably want to get past those events anyway. Most of the time, you want to be putting something on the board that is going to stay there and provide you benefits on later turns anyway.

The rest of the deck is more economy to help bring everything online.

The Armitage Codebusting is probably the first to drop if you want to modify the deck. Some things that might work there instead could be Stimhack, No One Home, Drug Dealer, or Caldera.