Let’s talk about the Corp. At the Gen Con Icebreaker Tournament, a good portion of the field built their decks around one card: Scorched Earth. The Scorched Earth trick deck isn’t bad per say, but the Corps best suited to run the deck have consistency problems. Weyland has a terrible Corp ability, bad agendas, and expensive ICE to boot. NBN needs to pay 8 Influence for Scorched Earth and 4 Influence for Archived Memories in order to hit the combo with any consistency, which doesn’t leave much room to get the juicy out of faction ICE. You knew you could put two advancement counters on Breaking News, score it on your next turn and get three actions with the Runner tagged, right? Well now you do. With consistency in mind, I’m going to build an NBN deck that doesn’t use Scorched Earth.
Since NBN specializes in tagging, let’s look at the benefits we get from the Runner being tagged. Closed Accounts and Psychographics are obviously good cards, but you can also destroy some pretty amazing Resources, like Wyldside, Amitage Codebusting, Wyldside, Sacrificial Construct, Wyldside, Bank Job and even Wyldside. NBN has another facet that no one seems to notice, and that is quickly advancing any card that can be advanced. With our goal in mind, on to deckbuilding:
Before we get too involved, I would like to make a quick note on card draw: the Corp doesn’t need it as much as the Runner. The Corp will churn through his deck whether he wants to or not. The ability to draw a card for an action means you can always fill up your hand in a pinch. The fact that having only a few cards doesn’t make you lose the game coupled with the fact that drawing too many cards does make you lose means that deck manipulation cards, like Precognition, will always be better for the Corp than card-draw cards, like Anonymous Tip. That being said, trying to water down the deck means we may not be able to get to Agendas when we want them, so we’ll run 2 Anonymous Tips because Jinteki is greedy with their psychosis.
Before we get too involved, I would like to make a quick note on card draw: the Corp doesn’t need it as much as the Runner. The Corp will churn through his deck whether he wants to or not. The ability to draw a card for an action means you can always fill up your hand in a pinch. The fact that having only a few cards doesn’t make you lose the game coupled with the fact that drawing too many cards does make you lose means that deck manipulation cards, like Precognition, will always be better for the Corp than card-draw cards, like Anonymous Tip. That being said, trying to water down the deck means we may not be able to get to Agendas when we want them, so we’ll run 2 Anonymous Tips because Jinteki is greedy with their psychosis.
We’re going to start by focusing on NBN’s second attribute by running 3 Astroscript Pilot Programs and shunning Breaking News altogether. We are also going to run 3 Matrix Analyzers for good measure. Lastly, we are going to run 2 Aggressive Secretaries and 3 Ghost Branches because nothing freaks out a runner like using Matrix Analyzer to advance the card that she’s running on. Remember, you can use APP’s hosted counter to advance a Trap after the Runner’s last chance to jack out.
Conventional wisdom suggests that we run between 17 and 20 ICE. With 3 Matrix Analzers, we want the rest of our ICE to end the run. Including Data Raven, we have 12 run ending ICE without going out of faction. Ice Wall is a clear choice given our lack of Barriers. Rototurret is also very good because it is the only ICE that trashes Programs, ends the run, and can’t have its subroutines broken by spending actions.
Every Corp got upgrades that support its main play-style, and NBN is no different. SanSan City Grid has so much potential, but paying 6 is too much of a detriment when you need money to rez ICE. Red Herrings, however, fits the bill quite nicely. Nothing ruins the Runner’s day like finding out that they don’t get to score your agenda because they had to pay the Tollbooth. Easily the best upgrade in the game, Red Herrings is so good I felt the need to dedicate most of a paragraph to talking about it.
Conventional wisdom suggests that we run between 17 and 20 ICE. With 3 Matrix Analzers, we want the rest of our ICE to end the run. Including Data Raven, we have 12 run ending ICE without going out of faction. Ice Wall is a clear choice given our lack of Barriers. Rototurret is also very good because it is the only ICE that trashes Programs, ends the run, and can’t have its subroutines broken by spending actions.
Every Corp got upgrades that support its main play-style, and NBN is no different. SanSan City Grid has so much potential, but paying 6 is too much of a detriment when you need money to rez ICE. Red Herrings, however, fits the bill quite nicely. Nothing ruins the Runner’s day like finding out that they don’t get to score your agenda because they had to pay the Tollbooth. Easily the best upgrade in the game, Red Herrings is so good I felt the need to dedicate most of a paragraph to talking about it.
Lastly, we come to NBN’s biggest problem: Money Generation. In trying to fix this problem, Hedge Fund is not enough. The last 6 influence will be spent on Adonis Campaign, because spending 4 bits for 12 is a good ratio even by Weyland standards.
So that’s NBN! Probably the second most flexible Corp behind Jinteki, NBN can probably play around the Runner’s fears of Scorched Earth without having to play the card, though a smart Runner may be able to count to 7 out of faction influence in time to change her strategy. The deck is 49 cards large to lower the chance that random pulls from R&D will pull an Agenda
Identity: NBN, “Making News”
ICE:
3 Data Raven
3 Tollbooth
3 Matrix Analyzer
3 Enigma
3 Wall of Static
3 Ice Wall
2 Rototurret
Agendas:
3 AstroScript Pilot Program
3 Priority Requisition
3 Private Security Force
Operations:
2 Closed Accounts
2 Psychographics
3 Hedge Fund
2 Anonymous Tip
Assets:
3 Adonic Campaign
3 Ghost Branch
2 Aggressive Secretary
Upgrade:
3 Red Herrings
Identity: NBN, “Making News”
ICE:
3 Data Raven
3 Tollbooth
3 Matrix Analyzer
3 Enigma
3 Wall of Static
3 Ice Wall
2 Rototurret
Agendas:
3 AstroScript Pilot Program
3 Priority Requisition
3 Private Security Force
Operations:
2 Closed Accounts
2 Psychographics
3 Hedge Fund
2 Anonymous Tip
Assets:
3 Adonic Campaign
3 Ghost Branch
2 Aggressive Secretary
Upgrade:
3 Red Herrings