Better Call Solo Boy: Lets Have a Party – 1st Madison, WI on NRDB

NBN speed has defined the metagame since Project Beale was printed in 2013. Through this long reign, the only reasonable complaint that an NBN player could make about their faction was “HB ICE is a little better!” What a tragedy, let’s break out the violins.

The rest of us should all sleep a little bit safer at night knowing that FFG would never print a back-breakingly cost effective gear check sentry and give it to yellow for thematically questionable reasons.

Right?

New Angeles Sol: Your News Agenda (10)

3x AstroScript Pilot Program

1x Breaking News

1x Global Food Initiative •

2x NAPD Contract

3x Project Beale Asset (4)

3x Jackson Howard

1x Lily Lockwell

Upgrade (8)

2x Ash 2X3ZB9CY ••••

3x Product Placement

3x SanSan City Grid Operation (11)

3x Hedge Fund

3x Paywall Implementation ••••• •

3x Sweeps Week

2x Targeted Marketing Barrier (4)

2x Eli 1.0 ••

2x Wraparound Code Gate (7)

1x Archangel

3x Pop-up Window

3x Tollbooth Sentry (5)

1x Architect ••

1x Assassin

3x News Hound 15 influence spent (max 15)

20 agenda points (between 20 and 21)

49 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Data and Destiny

Suddenly: Jolteons. News Hound is the new alpha to the pack of ICE dogs, alone it’s an overpriced hunter – with a tiny bit of support, it’s a gear check that you can’t pass with just a mimic.

This is actually the second blog post I’ve written about NBN’s new Identity, last night I fell asleep at my desk, and when I went to proof my work this morning, I hadn’t written anything particularly profound or interesting about netrunner – in fact I had just written the name of former CNN broadcaster ‘Soledad O’Brien’ 88 times in a notebook.

It goes on like that for 7 more pages, it wasn’t pretty (unlike former CNN broadcaster ‘Soledad O’Brien’). Soledad O’Brien, — I’m doing it again. Guys, I think I have a problem. Deck author Gumonshoe has already completed a Sol pun hat trick with his deck name; expect all future Sol decks to be named either Solcoats or Solshop.

Not to mention that cool pic of Han Solo in the description, though I’m not as impressed by it this time around – future NRDB posters should top this by linking to a streaming leaked DVD of The Force Awakens.

Before we get to the big question, let’s talk a little bit about the deck itself. In netrunner, the credit doesn’t go to who thought of it first, it goes to who shared it first, In this case we can credit Stimhack League Winner thebigboy for his original Paywall Sol which served as the inspiration for Gumonshoe’s deck. The major change was adding more 0-cost currents to ensure News Hound goes online as soon as possible, then padding the deck with money and an extra Ash to form a more middle-ranged backbone.

If you are unsure of what to name on a targeted marketing, don’t sweat it too much, it’s probably not going to fire no matter what you name. If you don’t have a good read on your opponent’s deck, there is no harm in naming a breaker. Targeted Marketing is just there to turn on news hound until you get a paywall – any other value you can eke out of it until then is great.

Some people will claim that naming clone chip really messes up a Kate, but install that paywall as soon as possible, go for the guaranteed 15+ credits over the maybe 10 credits.

The Big Question:

The one that every yellow player has to ask himself at some point is of course:

“Soledad O’Brien, will you marry me?”

Oops… I mean….

“Why don’t I just play Near-Earth Hub?”

I’ll admit it is getting harder to answer that question lately, with Haarpsicorde shoring up the fast advance R&D weakness, and now this filling in gaps in NBN strategies. The Netrunner team at FFG has done a great job tempting us away from NEH by just printing more powerful NBN Identities to choose from.

It is especially hard to identify this when playtesting as an individual, because you have a lot of games that you will just win off the raw power of yellow agendas regardless of which ID power you have. It often comes down to the credits. In this case, you have an ID which literally gives you credits when the runner runs, so you don’t have to look hard for the literal value; however the variance is much higher…

You could have games where your ID is blank or reads “your opponent can’t play clone chip or account siphon” which is virtually the same as blank in practice. It’s also possible for you to have long stretches of game where your ID reads “your jolteons don’t work right”. Gumonshoe’s 5th current and Jackson mitigate these situations, but the fact is that it can still happen, and when you are comparing it to the always-on NEH, I think, despite how awesome News Hound is, that it still comes up short when weighed against that truly broken amount of free card draw and influence.

Before you sleeve up…

As integral a part of Lily Lockwell is to this decks strategy, I think we can safely put her back in the binder and replace her with any tech card of your choice. I suggest interns, but Fast Track, Cyberdex Virus Suite, or Freelancer could be good as well.

That’s the big trap of pet cards, there’s that one time you lab dogged a desperado, and then when it comes time to cut Old Yeller from the deck you just can’t pull the trigger.

Any other suggestions that I could make about the deck would be extremely nit-picky and ultimately this deck is already well-tuned, Gumonshoe has been working on this build for over a month and it shows. This deck is well-tuned, fun to play and it works Soledad O’Brien Soledad O’Brien.

Soledad O’Brien,

-Soledad O’Brien