Pew-freaking-hoo (GNK 1st-place) on NRDB

When Elizabeth Mills started playing Netrunner, she found the corp side to be too thought-intensive and boring. Protecting centrals? Scoring windows? Who has the time to count credits and make actual strategic decisions? That’s why the first time Elizabeth played Weyland, she knew tag n’ bag was for her.

Tag n’ Bag: the corp archetype for players who prefer running.

Weyland Consortium: Builder of Nations Agenda (9)

2x Hostile Takeover

3x Oaktown Renovation

2x Project Atlas

2x The Cleaners Asset (9)

3x Jackson Howard ●●●

3x Snare! ●●●●● ●

3x Zealous Judge Upgrade (3)

3x Prisec Operation (12)

3x Hedge Fund

3x Restructure

3x Scorched Earth

2x Subliminal Messaging

1x Trick of Light ●●● Barrier (5)

2x Fire Wall

3x Ice Wall Code Gate (3)

2x Builder

1x Wormhole Sentry (3)

1x Archer

2x Shadow 12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)

18 agenda points (between 18 and 19)

44 cards (min 40)

Cards up to Blood$

Like many of you, my first reaction upon seeing Venali’s decklist was to throw my smart phone against the wall as hard as I possibly could, then driving 5 miles to the nearest AT&T store to get my weekly replacement phone while screaming at the top of my lungs. We’ve all been there before. However, after playing the deck several times — I can confirm that it is actually even worse than it looks.

Who even votes for this nonsense? If anything interesting came out of Venali’s local game night it was his Khan deck which has an equally stupid name but at least looks like it would be fun to play. Alas, we will never know. It seems that Weyland decks with positive win rates are so rare and special that people them without even reading the lists.

The Deck

I’d like to run through all of the things that are wrong with this deck as quickly as possible so we can move on to more useful discussions.

If you are wondering how this deck can even win, there are actually several possible paths to victory:

Scoring 7 agenda points behind an ice wall before the runner finds an answer. There may be an awkward wormhole or archer check that gives you more time if you draw perfectly and your opponent continues to find no answer to single subroutine barriers. Accidentally flatlining someone who does not understand basic strategy Protecting a zealous judge behind previously mentioned unanswered barriers while your opponent runs on clicks 3 and 4 and takes a tag without a way to remove the tag and run the judge server. Realize you can’t protect any agendas from being stolen, then using trick of light and jackson howard to score all of your atlas projects + all of your hostiles out of hand to get to 6 points, but then offering a handshake to your opponent and saying “good game” after adding it to your score area to try and trick them into thinking you have 7 points.

Clearly if you are playing a traps deck you need to be playing enough 3/2 agendas that you can get lucky draws and possibly win by playing guess the snare with the runner every turn. Oaktown is a good card, so it doesn’t really have a place in this deck — when you have 2 agendas for every ice that can actually end the run, scoring is pretty pointless. The cleaners probably has good synergy with the ID, but no one will ever be able to test it out.

The claim “This deck has a lot of money” is pretty trite, I seem to read it anytime someone puts a copy of restructure in their deck. Personally, I define “a lot of money” as being able to threaten to do things to actually win with a large credit pool

In this deck, you will end up clicking for credits to snare while discarding restructures because your hand is 5 agendas. Especially if your gameplan revolves around activating snare, please just play beanstalk royalties.

If your opponent clicks for credits every turn and runs every advanced card on click 1, you cannot possibly win. Since weyland agendas are so chunky to score, your opponent doesn’t even have to contest every agenda and can casually stroll into their inevitable late game phase without fear.

I know you are out there die-hard Weyland players (every meta has 1), please take note that you need to be building your BoN deck assuming the runner will take this angle of attack before you can proudly declare that your deck is truly “a solid tier 2”.

Before You Sleeve Up

My best advice would be to give yourself a fighting chance by adding another way to tag runners, midseason’s replacement or sea source over the trick of light to leverage the fabled “lot of money” in this deck.

Cut an oaktown for the third atlas, consider just doing a government takeover package to double-down on the high-risk strategy this deck employs.

Cut all of the shadows wormholes and builders, probably 1-2 restructures for Rush Ice like quandary, enigma and archer/cobra/caduceus. Anything that you can rush out makes playing never advance games easier if you have to later.

My suggested changes amount to transposing the supermodernism shell into the ID:

Weyland Consortium: Builder of Nations Agenda (10)

3x Hostile Takeover

3x Oaktown Renovation

3x Project Atlas

1x The Cleaners Asset (8)

3x Jackson Howard ●●●

3x Snare! ●●●●● ●

2x Zealous Judge Upgrade (3)

3x Prisec Operation (11)

3x Beanstalk Royalties

1x Fast Track

3x Hedge Fund

3x Scorched Earth

1x SEA Source ●● Barrier (5)

2x Fire Wall

3x Ice Wall Code Gate (4)

2x Enigma

2x Quandary Sentry (3)

2x Archer

1x Rototurret ●

Conclusions

I’ve heard some people were having fun with this ID, so overall, I’m greatful to all of you nerdbears out there who voted for this deck and gave me the opportunity to dump on it this week. To all of you rabid Weyland fans out there foaming at the mouth and preparing your counter-arguments for the comments section: Don’t ever change.

What would Netrunner be like without all of you belligerent Weyland lunatics suggesting that people add Janus1.0, casting call and space camp to every green deck?

Ruining the game,

-Chill84