Anatomy of Anarchy

ColoradoNetrunner 3173

This was the Runner deck piloted by Steven Wooley at the 2014 Colorado Regional. Steven went 8-0 with it and finished 1st in Swiss and 1st in the double-elimination bracket. You can read a detailed write-up about it on the Team Covenant website, here: http://teamcovenant.com/botounami/2014/05/20/anatomy-of-anarchy/

45 comments
21 May 2014 x3r0h0ur

This facinates me, saving for account siphon, my noise deck was using deep red + overmind too. I'll have to apply the skeleton and see how I can make it grow.

21 May 2014 Diegofsv

Real close to my Noise deck that I enjoy playing...this deck is awesome

21 May 2014 gravity

Congrats to Steven for the win. He's always been a great Anarch player and truly deserves this spot.

21 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

Yep, several similarities to my Noise build that I won a Store Championship with, I can't wait to try this one out.

21 May 2014 ttsgosadow

Would love to see a competative Anarch list without Account Siphon!

21 May 2014 TheRyanBurke

Lots of consumable cards- I'd run this with a Levy AR instead of Indexing. Congrats to Steven. Undefeated all day is quite the accomplishment!

21 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

ttsgosadow, I strongly recommend reading the article linked above. =) To quote Steven...

"What, then, fits perfectly into this archetype? It’s not a hard question, and it is probably the answer that many people don’t want to hear. But it simply solves all of our problems, and so must be included. It’s Account Siphon, an Anarch card in disguise."

"This card does everything that we want. It fuels our economy (one of Anarch’s greatest problems), it keeps the Corp poor (a solution to two of the three problematic cards above), and it gives us a disadvantage that we’re particularly suited to play with. This card single-handedly makes Anarch top tier. We’re the best at being tagged and we’re the worst at economy. When you realize that we have the best event recursion in Deja Vu, and the availability of Same Old Thing, on top of the Anarch credit denial strategy (Vamp, Xanadu, Reina, Parasite), it becomes pretty obvious what we need to be doing."

22 May 2014 ttsgosadow

:) I did read that; a great write-up! I am struggling to get my Anarch to be more competative, and these decks with write-ups really help!

On the other hand, though, I am a bit saddened that Anarch needs a three off Account Siphon, which eats 12 influence. Cool that Siphon is that strong and a good card (also for Anarch), but would love to have competative Anarch build without it, so we can free up that 12 influence!

22 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

Something I'm experimenting with in my Whizzard deck at the moment is dropping a couple Siphons for Planned Assaults. While this reduces the number of Siphons you play, it increases the consistency with which you play them while enabling you to go fish cards like Indexing, Demolition Run, or Vamp when you need them the most. Saves a bit of influence too!

22 May 2014 hypomodern

I have a concern about the econ package here, but obviously I don't have a regionals win under my belt. Do people not concentrate on locking down HQ?

22 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

The economy's light for my taste as well. I've been running similar Noise and Whizzard Siphon Recursion decks, but I normally run 3 x Armitage Codebusting and 3 x Liberated Accounts. It's not like he played light ice decks either... half the decks he played against were HB Big Ice (2 x ETF, 2 x NEXT). His other Corp opponents were Jinteki Tennin, NBN AstroBiotics, NBN Midseason, and GRNDL Supermodernism.

22 May 2014 slevin38

Have you tried Dirty Laundry? It might work with the Planned Assault and help the light econ

22 May 2014 Lemmit

Been thinking that an E3-Feedback would fit nicely in here

22 May 2014 hypomodern

@CrimsonWraith I think that I must see a lot more pre-emptive HQ defense than most :). It's work getting in there with Siphons, but this is the basic Anarch template I've been playing since January. It's pretty strong, regardless of ID.

22 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

@Lemmit E3 works quite well in conjunction with both Knight and Overmind, not sure where I'd fit in with the influence though.

@hypomodern Yeah, as you know, I've been running my variants of your Hemo/Siphon Recursion Noise deck for a couple of months now. Got a couple plays in with this deck on OCTGN and haven't missed the extra economy cards yet. The versatility with Knight and Overmind is silly, they just couldn't keep me out of HQ. And the guy who went all-in on HQ defense got burned by Indexing. I'll do more testing (and would still probably feel more comfortable with a couple Liberated Accounts and full set of Armitage), but Knight and Overmind have easily paved the way for getting Siphons off thus far. It's certainly worth giving the deck a shot as is.

22 May 2014 yithian

Can I ask why you used Armitage Codebusting instead of Liberated Account?

23 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

Can't speak for Steven, but my two cents... I usually run them in conjunction with each other in Anarch. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd take Armitage. In it's typical usage (assuming you have tags), you're installing and using it three times... Liberated only nets you a credit more, and Armitage is a lot more flexible with its install cost being five credits less. Armitage also pays off more in the long run if the Corp doesn't trash on their next turn.

23 May 2014 ttsgosadow

Ran this deck, and its a beast. Got 6 account siphons off in the game, which led to an easy win.

24 May 2014 PeekaySK

Its problem aren't games where you can land siphons, it's games where you can't.

24 May 2014 hypomodern

@PeekaySK yep :).

24 May 2014 x3r0h0ur

I ran 2 planned assaults and 2 siphons with 2 vamps and 2 retruns, it worked very well for me with big breakers.

24 May 2014 PeekaySK

@x3r0h0ur which, of course, is an entirely different decktype.

24 May 2014 x3r0h0ur

I mean kind of, it still ran like 95% of Stevens skeleton, it's just tag me anarch running on the corps money.

25 May 2014 Echo2Omega

Went 3W 0L with this deck today at our local store tournament.

This deck is absolutely brutal on the corporation.

Data Leak Reversal won me my first game vs GRNDL. Milled cards with Data Leak Reversal and scored 4 points when I finally ran archives.

Game 2 was vs. HB EtF deck. Dropped a knight on his HQ ice. He blew all his credits to rez his ice since I was making an Account Siphon run. Between Account Siphon, and Deja Vu to hit them with account siphon again the corp was perpetually poor. Account Siphon and then plopping Rook on a remote scored me multiple agendas.

Game 3 was vs. Jinteki PE. was an epic battle that came down to time. I made an HQ run but was unable to steal his Fetal AI (ate the sub on an RSVP). Last click was my run on his remote. He had no credits to rez his ice so I walked and took a Future Perfect. Was my 5 agenda points vs. his 4 agenda points with time called.

This deck performed amazingly well. Stars of the show: Account Siphon (duh) but in combination with Deja Vu, Rook, Data Leak Reversal and Medium. It just puts pressure on HQ, R&D, AND Archives (not to mention remote servers).

Cards that saw little action: Vamp, Joshua B, and Same Old Thing

Anyway, Thank you for sharing !

26 May 2014 Thike

I don't know why I never noticed the interaction between Indexing and DLR before. Know what you're milling! I've been playing the archetype for a while, and it suits my style magnificently. Reina: the unrelenting psychopath. The breaker suite is nice, and damn are you right about deck space being an issue. I'm glad this deck is competitive. :)

26 May 2014 Alsciende

This decklist really needs a better name!

26 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

Done!

26 May 2014 CrimsonWraith

@Alsciende Any chance you can update the front page with the new deck name? =)

27 May 2014 Alsciende

@CrimsonWraith done :)

Did someone tried the same deck with 3x Fall Guy instead of Indexing?

27 May 2014 PeekaySK

@Alsciende it's worse. In the situations where DLR works, you don't need Fall Guys. When it doesn't, they aren't enough to make it work. Also, space is tight.

27 May 2014 Thike

@Alsciende I'll second what Peekay says. If you get 3x. DLR and 3x FG out, you're laughing. Getting to that point is another matter. It might work in decking-focussed build, but not here.

27 May 2014 EluThingol

I've been running something in this archetype for a little while and it's incredibly strong. The use of Overmind here, and the super-streamlined breaker suite in general, is very smart. Nice work!

29 May 2014 evilgaz

Had fun with this last night. For my money the Corroders aren't really adding that much value (maybe if you see a lot of the NBN Wraparound stuff they're worth it), and given the tense money situation sometimes I'm tempted to go for cyberfeeders for some Closed Account-proof economy for playing viruses and making runs. Really tempted to try a version of this at the UK Nationals warm up event on Saturday...

23 Jun 2014 miaxari

How do you handle glacier decks and deep servers? This deck type doesn't make nearly enough economy to break through Haas ice. One variation that makes this deck a lot stronger all round is to use e3 Feedback Implants to increase the efficiency of Knight and the duration of Overmind as well as giving you sever pressure against even the most heavily defended Bioroid servers. It does mean giving up some of that precious Account Siphon influence but I think it's worth it if it lets you cripple a whole faction.

Another issue is that if you by chance don't see an Account Siphon you'll barely have enough money to install an Overmind let alone use it to handle things like Komainu. This deck works brilliantly against light ice decks such as NBN fast advance but poorly against every thing else. I guess it depends on your meta.

24 Jun 2014 slevin38

Parasite and the recursion of that deals nicely with Komainu. Usually in this deck, I run with a light hand so if I end up face checking a Komainu and losing my hand, it isn't the end of the world.

I haven't played this against the Harmony Medtech: Biomedical Pioneer FA type, but against Jinteki I run a bit more conservatively since they are slower decks in general. Once you get Data Leak Reversal and/or a semi R&D lock, you're in good shape.

13 Jul 2014 Exo

@sydan Exactly the same thing that I have experienced with this deck. I played against a heavy glacier ICE HB deck and I wasn't able to do it mostly every games. I was missing clicks or credits all the times. Without the e3 Feedback Implants, I don't see this deck getting that much success against HB glacier decks.

7 Aug 2014 Kroen

May I ask why the need for Plascretes at all, let alone 3? With 3xAccound Siphon, 3xDeja Vu, 3xSOS and 1xVamp I would think the best Scorched defense is to simply never leave them without enough credits.

7 Aug 2014 Kroen

Also how does this deck perform against Redcoats? Overmind seems like an awfully inefficient breaker to deal with their ICE suite, and Parasite would take to long to kill them.

7 Aug 2014 PeekaySK

May I ask why the need for Plascretes at all, let alone 3?

Because if your deck includes cards that give you tags and cards that actually only work while you're tagged, not including carapaces is at best recklessly stupid, at worst completely suicidal.

Even leaving the aspect that for some matchups you just flat out need a carapace (GRNDL: Power Unleashed, for instance), you simply cannot bank on the corp being too broke to double-scorch you. That just doesn't happen, with how resilient corp economies have been for almost a full cycle by this point.

25 Jan 2015 starshard0

How does this deck handle against Blue Sun: Powering the Future? I've found that it's nearly impossible to keep the corp perpetually poor, and Hadrian's Wall and Curtain Wall are outside of Knight range, let alone the bouncing effect, which makes Parasite worthless.

26 Mar 2015 jwil

Hi. I'd like to try this deck, but I can't get Opening Moves for the Rooks. What would you suggest replacing it with? Bishop to stick with the Deep Red bonus? I'm a beginner, but it seems like the switch to Bishop would make it a lot harder to keep the Corp broke, which is a must for this deck, isn't it? Thoughts or suggestions?

26 Mar 2015 PeekaySK

Newer incarnations of the concept run Lamprey, though you need a somewhat different support package for it - for newer incarnations of a similar deck idea, check out this thread - forum.stimhack.com

26 Mar 2015 jwil

Unfortunately, that requires more packs that I don't have than this one does. How bad would using Bishop be?

26 Mar 2015 PeekaySK

Bishop doesn't actually help you in any meaningful fashion. Don't fall into the trap of playing a card just because it benefits from other cards in your deck, it has to provide some actual, tangible benefit as well.

For instance, Imps would be a much better replacement, despite not being Caissa. They're just universally useful, and also help your particular strategy here (both milling and denial)

26 Mar 2015 jwil

Thanks! Can't wait to try it out!