Real Fake Points - 1st place/Undefeated NYC GNK

Real Fake Points!

This deck went 4-0 and took 1st out of 13 in the first NISEI GNK in NYC. It beat kysra on Crowdfunding Hayley, OnTheNightTrain on Engolo Adam, tcody616 aka poltergeist on Crowdfunding Leela, and groenkaaf on Crowdfunding Freedom (noticing a pattern with these runner decks?). The Crowdfunding engine is everywhere (I was also on Crowdfunding Hayley for the event ?) and this deck responds to the Crowdfunding meta in a few different ways.

Crowdfunding Response

It's no secret that Corps are in a somewhat rough spot right now. Moreover, asset decks are in the worst shape since I started playing during Mumbad cycle. This means that runner decks can build quite narrowly for the type of economic pressure presented by Corps with a single remote and can tech with relatively few cards for net damage or tag matchups without having to sacrifice much of their overall game plan. However, the Crowdfunding engine does have 2 notable weaknesses:

1. With Aesop, the Crowdfunding reinstalls are worth 14 credits for 3 runs. Thus, if you can ice up centrals quickly with taxing ice, you can slow this engine way down. Even 2-3 credits per run can be huge in destroying the value of the engine.

2. Crowdfunding costs 9 influence in Shaper which has significantly reduced the amount of D4vid and Clot in Shaper decks.

Game Plan

The normal game plan of this deck has two stages:

1. Never-advance your way to 4 points or 3 and a spare Domestic Sleepers, hopefully giving up some REAL FAKE POINTS along the way. Slow down the runner's setup by slowing down the Crowdfunding by making centrals taxing and annoying and baiting them through the remote with NA plays.

2. Wait until they proc your 1 card CI combo and FA a Global Food Initiative for the game. Usually this involves a Giordano Memorial Field on R&D or HQ depending on where the agendas are and waiting until you get an Archived Memories for the trashed Game Changer. Keep stacking ice on vulnerable centrals and NA-ing garbage in the remote.

There is a lot of flexibility in this plan depending on the draw. Also against non-Shaper opponents you may be able to NA more points than 4. If you manage to find both Game Changers and/or AM your life is even simpler. In the game against groenkaaf, I FAed GFI 2 turns in a row going from 1-7 pts in 2 turns.

Card Choices

• GFI restricted is semi-mandatory because it forces minimum 4 agenda steals. Regarding the agenda suite in general, I've seen others on Game Changer decks with many more agendas (especially one-pointers), but in testing I found (a) you don't usually need them to proc your combo, (b) it increases the slot machine nature of those decks more than I was happy with. I've found this suite (10 postive points agendas) to be a good balance, YMMV. Remote Enforcement is pretty mediocre, but we need 1 4/2.
• News Team is the real star of the show, the Fakest Point of All. Most/all of the top runner decks now are on resource econ, and if they trash it and clear the tags it cuts off archives for Crowdfunding which is still pretty good value. If they hit it click 3-4 they generally have to take it. I think 3x is right bc seeing one early slows the game down a TON and almost always ensures you will have time to combo.
• The ice suite is constructed with Na'Not'K, Engolo, and Corroder/Lady in mind. However, the anarch breaker suite gets hit in the crossfire pretty well. The code gates are weak to Amina but Crim has other problems in this matchup that make up for that. D4 out of Shaper decks makes Seidr viable and Eli/Seidr is a tradeoff between either taxing Corroder with Eli or taxing Lady counters with the number of barriers. FC2, while extremely porous, lines up extremely favorably against Engolo, costing 5 if broken. One of these will usually end up on archives against Shaper bc it degrades Crowdfunding value so well. Na'Not'K has big problems on servers with few ice. For this reason I try to devote most/all of the sentries to centrals in that matchup. Similarly to FC2 a single Architect on a central costs 5 for Na'Not'K hugely degrading Crowdfunding value. Obviously we will ice up more over time but our first 4-5 ice will be icing all centrals + 1 remote so we need ice to do work taxing on single ice servers. Special shoutout to groenkaaf and shiiuga for talking me out of playing Sherlock 2.0 ?
• Archer gets a mention of its own. It is arguably the best high strength sentry currently in the game and the ETR sub is huge. It gives us extra value from Sleepers and is amazing value as a single ice on a central against Na'Not'K. Against Anarch and Crim it is fine on the remote, but in the anarch matchup be cognizant of Hippo. It's just a very awkward for most breaker suites right now with D4 at it's lowest point in a long time.
• Stock Buy-Back is crazy recovery econ in the mid-game and usually I find it gives you the money you need (11) for your GFI score the turn before you win while leaving a little extra room for last turn ice rezzes.

Silver Bullets and Final Thoughts

This deck gets teched hard by Artist Colony and Data Dealer, but those cards are pretty bad on their own (compared to Shadow Net RIP). If Clot makes a resurgence I think you make space for 1x Ark Lockdown which isn't zero-value even in your other matchups. Moreover, every tech card runners have to devote to the fake points matchup is one fewer tech card or accelerant for their other matchups. Making the Corp meta less narrow improves all Corps by increasing the number of runner dead draws. Just gotta find a couple more viable (if narrow) Corp plans that require tech cards and we might get back to Runner-Corp parity.

Also please let me know here or on Slack if you have thoughts on the archetype, I think you could go a few different ways with it, especially with the ice and I'm open to ideas.