[Eternal]Unstoppable Shutdown Prision(almost undefeated@COS)

AugustusCaesar 1491

power shutdown combo in a nutshell

Do you hate it when runners have choices on what do. Do you miss the good old days where eternal had consistent turn 2 combos(*). Do you hate it when skilled runners snipe agendas off rnd. Coming to a net store near you soon is a solution to all of these problems, powered by some good old fashioned shutdowns. Offer only while stocks last, get the products quick, because it's for sure getting some eternal points slapped on it soon.

(*Terms and conditions apply, time of combo win evaluated at the point at which the runner has 0 odds to win and not when you are officially declared the winner)

This is a deck that me and @BaaRamWu brewed for COS, which we believe is utterly unbeatable by anything not on very specific tech combinations against it. The deck went almost undefeated at COS, it dropped a game against @maninthemoon's WT Wu because I punted and forgot to rez my cards to avoid councilman. The game would have been close without the punt since he was on polop+employee strike, though drawing the latter was proving hard in his large deck.

If anyone wants to try to refute this, bring it on, happy to accept challenges through discord. (emp strike/imp+pinhole/polop is the one way the deck looses that we are aware of)


The end game - removing all runner options

It is very cute of runners to use their well earned icebreakers to break our subroutines, but what if we didn't give them the option of doing that. Here we introduce the very fair and interactive bane of standards past, Nanisivik. With a Nanisivik in archives and a remote server, we can force ends of the run without interaction, creating the perfect conditions for a Regenesis score. Two Regenesis scores puts on a nice and clean 8 points, which I hear is enough to win a game of Netrunner.

The Set Up - Just two ingredients, simple and effective

Getting a Nanisivik on archives and with enough etr fuel for nanisiviks might sound hard, but we actually just need 2 cards to assemble the unbreakable lockout.

Step 1: Power Shutdown all cards left in rnd (don't be afraid we have a plan for our next draw phase)

Step 2: Friends in High Places. Now that our entire rnd is conveniently in archives, we can use friends in high places to install any card we could ever want. Here we will be choosing nanisivik to protect archives, and a Whampoa reclamation on a remote (or Jackson also works most of the time)

Step 3: start counting your chickens. They may not have hatched yet, but their hatching is inevitable, the runner can't ever access agendas since they are all in archives and we have a battery of 11 end the runs loaded for that. And Whampoa means we can stall out the loss to decking indefinitely.

Step 4: Use Whampoa or Jackson to draw a second friends in high places. This one installs Regenesis, protected by a nanisivik. The turn after, we score that, putting a Hades Fragment in the score area to further guarantee a win.

Step 5: Repeat, go to 8 points, win game.

The acceleration

A two card combo is great and all, but for us to be able to claim it can get turn 2 wins, we need more than just 3 copies of each (and it does get turn 2 wins, I am sorry to Eli, who was on the receiving end of a turn 2 in cos). For a long time we were on Consulting Visit to find shutdowns, but switched the inf to Jacksons, whose draw is very useful. But the all star of the deck in terms of speed is Simulation Reset. Since Shutdown-friends is only 2 clicks, we can use simulation reset to tutor a perfect hand, including getting a missing friends after the shutdown.

That is all the upside, below follow a couple of ways one might try to beat the deck that we are prepared for

Angles of Attack - running the battery out of ammo

11 end the runs is a lot of clicks to waste of a runner, but a persistent runner can try to run archives all clicks they have available and mess us up. For this we have two solutions, most straightforward, Kakurenbo provides us with 3 full reloads. We can either use it to place a Regenesis comfortably in a Nanisivik remote, or alternatively get 6 credits from an NGO.

The above gets significant harder if the runner has more than 4 clicks, Hyperdriver is the hardest runner card to lock out against, but that is what the 1 Crick is for. When we have the Nanisivik set up, crick is a 6 str must break, because a nifty trick causes it to have function of "reload 1 etr into the battery". If they let crick fire, we can use it to install a face-up ice in an empty remote, then a second crick fire lets us over-install another face-up into the same remote, and even though the runner knows what the card is, we never rezzed it, so it goes into archives face-down, readying our etr battery for that same run. Now, if there is a brave runner out there that can break a 6 str crick 20 times while having 2 hyperdriver installed, then good job to them, they got us, but that seems like a Sisyphean feat. (Single Hyperdriver doesn't get there because we still get one turn of setup between kakurenbos, whereas 2 Hyperdrivers force a Kaku every turn)

Angles of Attack - Credit Denial

One way to take down a careless user of the deck is Account Syphon, if you get put to 0 credits on a turn where you need to reload the battery, you can't Kakurenbo and loose. However, as soon as you leave yourself enough of a buffer in etr, click for creds twice into - friends for excavator+(whatever you need, probably Jackson) gets you guaranteed Kaku money any turn you need it (trashing the vanillas and similar that you used to defend central's early)

Angles of Attack - Rumor Mill

We tried really hard to dodge rumor mill, because it is, even on 3 points, the most busted eternal cars out there, and in a field likely to be full of ob, we expected a lot of it. I can't say we aren't sad to see a rumor mill, since I've found the Jackson lines are often the most straightforward paths to victory, but with Whampoa as a non-unique backup we have 0 issues with a rumor mill. (My own runners deck's(linkcomingsoon) rumor mill+clan vengeance is slightly more problematic, but you have to be very brave to rock up with 6 points of that and at most 1 in economy, see CV section below)

Angles of Attack - Employee Strike

Turning off our IG ability is rude, we paid a good bit of eternal points for that. But this really doesn't do much more than slow us down slightly, if you have used Whampoa on your turn and their turn you have no worry about them trashing it. With 1 card left in rnd after your draw phase, you can still friends for regen-nani. Then with exactly 0 in rnd Regenesis a Hades fragment to last forever. In practice, it is very possible that you would want to throw in a turn where you set up+friends a Jackson, giving you even more security. Though that will depend on if the runner is able to attack you well on the other angles in addition to having an emp strike.

Angles of Attack - Clan Vengeance

Clan Vengeance is the angle I am least sure about, we don't mind just having a raceoff to see if we get our 2 card combo faster than the runner. What we do if we loose that race, I was never able to test in a proper game, but our theoretical lines look decent.

Firstly, if we ever draw the 1-off Whampoa naturally, we have the easy line of stacking the bottom of the deck preemptively, then if they CV us before clicks we have lost nothing (or maybe they force a Regenesis from us) and we just draw for a second shutdown. If they let us take a first click shutdown, we threaten a lockout immediately, and/or after a click to draw if they use the vengeance.

If we don't get that, our backup plan would be to stick a Jackson, then Shutdown as normal, if they use CV, we can Jackson shuffle 2 friends, draw 1 and play it. We do 2 here so that the second one can do crick+second Jackson to guarantee a kakurembo next turn and not be stuck possibly drawing a friends when we need to reload the nani.

For this matchup, I also made a last minute switch of tatu bola to thimblerig, so that we can reasonably tax a CV Anarch and stop them from contesting our face-down remotes that may or may not be Jackson.

You will note that this plan relies really heavily on unique asset Jackson, so a combination of CV and Rumor Mill probably has very good odds into this deck.

Angles of Attack - Hades Shard

Ok, you got us, there is one card that beats us, Hades Shard. Obviously, they need to pay full price for it and they just take the agendas. They have priority in the PAW after they install it, so no Malia shenanigans will stop this.

However, I am confident that the deck is fast enough that the shard's 1 per deck limit means that we can often be faster than it. Citation needed on that claim though.

Baa Ram Wu's Wine Pairing

"This deck pairs great with Vinho Verde, because for both, you go in expecting a specific experience, but then get something completely different"

5 comments
19 Oct 2023 jan tuno

playing against this and continuously thinking i had maybe found the one way to win and then there still being More Bullshit was an experience. thanks so much for the games and talk <3

20 Oct 2023 AugustusCaesar

@jan tuno thank you too for the games! It was great fun the layering on backup plan after backup plan, and then even more awesome to see all that planning work over the board.

21 Oct 2023 Krasty

Do I understand, that Fisk Investment Seminar is a winning card against this? :D

22 Oct 2023 AugustusCaesar

@Krasty lol, it probably is. Make sure to also put in rumor mills to eliminate the possibility of double Jackson :P

9 Mar 2024 Council

This is love. Honorary IG membership card bestowed!