It’s here – Android: Netrunner’s final set. No time for sadness though – we’ve got cards to make snap judgements and terrible decks around! For this article, all the theorycrafting will be for the IDs in the pack using as many new cards as possible, for science.

Nathaniel “Gnat” Hall: 40 cards is exciting but I’m not really feeling the ability. Val gets a couple of free credits every turn without having to jump through hoops. A+++++ flavor text though and since Chaos Theory grew up it’s neat having another runner that’s just a cocky 12 year old. Can’t really play Zer0 with him either so that’s a bummer.

Divide and Conquer: Pretty good and highly Anarch flavored on its own, fucking bonkers with Turning Wheel, eXer and what have you. If you use Turning Wheel during a D&C run you get to see extra cards from both HQ and R&D! That’s insane! I’d be amazed if you don’t see this in top decks come Worlds.

Guinea Pig: Honestly, this is pretty sick even outside Gnat. It’s not hard to sculpt your hand to have just a couple of conspiracy breakers and dropping them into the bin while gaining 6 credits is nuts. Could replace Dirty Laundry or Mining Accident depending on your deck’s plan.

Patchwork: Bonkers. BONKERS. The only downsides to this are that you might not want to play it with Zer0, because it could be too much milling, and that you can’t play Turntable which is very nice in the current meta (but maybe not the R&R meta). Breakers in the bin, second Patchwork in the bin, get value all the time. Great console.

Hijacked Router: The first of a mini cycle in this box – every cycle gets something to deal with asset spam. This is good for asset spam and pretty garbage against everything else, so it’s a hard meta call. If you just really hate Moons and Gagarin, this is the card for you.

Cradle: Yog 2.0! Except balanced, and maybe bad. Seriously cool mechanic especially when combined with Gnat, Patchwork and Guinea Pig. If you’re Gnat you want to be sitting on 2 cards anyway, which makes this strength 3, which you could make work with Datasucker and Ice Carver as well as just playing cards. I’d rather pay 2 credits than approximately a million with Black Orchestra any day.

District 99: This feels great for MaxX but it’s…slow. Real slow. Still, it’s definitely a thing that happens a lot so you could definitely get back key stuff like Stimhack…but it’s slow. Could be really interesting in Geist if you’re playing the cloud breakers – Diversion of Funds for days!

tiny aggro child Nathaniel “Gnat” Hall: One-of-a-Kind Event (16)

3x Dirty Laundry

2x Divide and Conquer

2x Guinea Pig

3x I’ve Had Worse

2x Inject

1x Retrieval Run

3x Sure Gamble Hardware (2)

2x Patchwork Resource (11)

3x Daily Casts

2x Find the Truth ●●●●● ●

3x Liberated Account

3x The Turning Wheel ●●● Icebreaker (6)

2x Cradle

2x MKUltra

2x Paperclip Program (5)

3x Bankroll ●●●●● ●

2x RNG Key 15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

40 cards (min 40)

Cards up to Reign and Reverie Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

This is my attempt at an aggressive Gnat deck that tries to run a lot to build up Turning Wheel counters while getting Bankroll and RNG Key triggers.

Liza Talking Thunder: This seems extremely powerful. You want to be making runs on centrals anyway, there are a lot of ways to get extra value on top of accesses and getting 2 draws on top of all that is nuts. We’ve seen before that draw with a downside (MaxX) is very strong when you turn the downside into an upside. Citadel Sanctuary and Power Tap is the obvious combo and interacts very well with Thunder Art Gallery. The other option is just to go full tagme with Counter Surveillance, Rogue Trading and such which could have a lot of potential. Also – incredible art. Netrunner continues to be unbelievably good for representation.

Hot Pursuit: Hey, it’s a penguin! You’ll note that this is not an access replacement – just a regular run. In a Citadel or tagme deck it’s mega-Dirty Laundry.

Paragon: Man we’re doing well for consoles so far! This is a really powerful effect. It obviously doesn’t have the same ongoing economic effect as Desperado but still provides a tangible economic benefit along with deck filtering. I see no reason why this wouldn’t go straight into every non-Nexus Crim deck. Could even go out of faction into an aggressive Anarch.

Bankroll: Oh look, we found Desperado. Much like Paragon, if you’re a Criminal that runs a lot (like if you have Aumakua, for example) there seems no reason not to run this. And it’s clickless to get the money! Hit an unexpected DNA Tracker out of Mti? Rip your money off this and cruise through. If you’re at full MU, just pop it the second you draw the second one and don’t even worry about it. Think you might get hit by some Hard Hitting News? Bam, money (not mid trace though!) Great card.

Tycoon: Great numbers but you never want to give the Corp money (although it’s pretty funny with PAD Tap). The exception to this is if you’re doing the aforementioned Counter Surveillance deck and the only time you use it is to see 26 cards off R&D.

Thunder Art Gallery: Very strong synergy for the Citadel Sanctuary decks. Clickless installs with a discount? Sign me up.

Miss Bones: Pretty unbelievable efficiency for dealing with assets. This looks like the best of the anti-asset cards in the set to me. Generally better than Scrubber – gain 10 credits? That’s a hell of a lot.

nexus liza Liza Talking Thunder: Prominent Legislator Event (21)

1x Build Script ●

2x Credit Kiting

3x Deuces Wild ●●●

3x Diversion of Funds

3x Employee Strike ●●●

3x Hot Pursuit

3x Special Order

3x Sure Gamble Hardware (2)

2x Security Nexus ●●●●● ● Resource (21)

3x Citadel Sanctuary

3x Daily Casts

3x Earthrise Hotel

2x Maxwell James

3x Power Tap

3x Rogue Trading

2x The Turning Wheel ●●

2x Thunder Art Gallery Icebreaker (6)

2x Amina

2x Femme Fatale

2x Tycoon 15 influence spent (max 15, available 0)

50 cards (min 50)

Cards up to Reign and Reverie Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

This is a Nexus Liza deck that tries to exploit Thunder Art Gallery and Citadel Sanctuary with her ability. I figure Tycoon is fine in this kind of deck since you’re just breaking with Nexus and Maxwell most of the time.

Akiko Nisei: I honestly love everything about this. The ability is great – Lamprey the Corp every time you hit R&D or you get extra accesses. The flavor is fucking incredible – Caprice’s older sister gone rogue, and slightly crazy??? Amazing. She has a link, which comes in handy. The only thing I’m not sure about is whether the ability warrants 3 less influence.

Insight: Cool and interesting effect…it’s like an Indexing, but without making a run, and forces the Corp to make some pretty unusual decisions. Plus you’ll end up having a really good idea of what’s coming up. Probably not as good as just playing Indexing though.

Mind’s Eye: There’s one thing I don’t love about the Shaper cards in this pack. I never liked the style of Shaper back in the days of R&D Interface where the entire goal was R&D lock. The game’s moved away from it pretty significantly with rotation but this pack adds a bit more of that kind of focus back. Anyway, my prediction for Mind’s Eye is that it will get you 1, maybe 2 extra R&D accesses per game (plus possible Akiko bonuses) without having to pay through ice. Is that better than Astrolabe? Seems worth trying.

Mache: More asset hate! Combos nicely with Imp and Freedom, oddly enough. It also helps you keep up tempo against asset spam which is fairly vital.

Ika: The install cost of this is extremely compelling. Sentries are in a bit of an odd spot right now, with the most commonly played being News Hound, Surveyor, Archer and Anansi by a decent margin. The issue with comparing this to Shaper’s other great option, Na’Not’K, is that Na’Not’K scales so it’s a bit hard to judge. This is 4 to break News Hound (pretty good), 8 to break Archer (pretty rough, but so is everything), 5 to break Anansi (really good) and scales pretty well with Surveyor which is usually strength 4 (4 to break), 6 (6 to break) or 8 (again 6 to break). Plus you have to consider moving it around and thanks to Surveyor Corps are actually stacking sentries. Nice synergy with Flame-Out – you can host it, use Flame-Out credits to boost the strength and move it off, then break the subroutines and it won’t get trashed.

Kyuban: This has a lot of potential. If you can hit a server once a turn and get value out of it, this is giving you Daily Casts money – any more and you’re in value town. If the Corp trashes the ice to get rid of it, that’s a serious win.

Reavershop Akiko Akiko Nisei: Head Case Event (14)

3x Diesel

3x Indexing

1x Legwork ●●

1x Mad Dash

3x Scavenge

3x Sure Gamble Hardware (2)

2x Mind’s Eye Resource (10)

3x Aesop’s Pawnshop 🦄

1x Beth Kilrain-Chang

3x Daily Casts

3x Sacrificial Construct Icebreaker (6)

1x Brahman

1x Cerberus “Lady” H1

2x Cyber-Cypher

1x Inti

1x Na’Not’K Program (13)

3x Cache ●●●

1x Dhegdheer

3x Harbinger ●●●

2x Kyuban

1x Reaver ●●●●

3x Self-modifying Code 12 influence spent (max 12, available 0)

45 cards (min 45)

Cards up to Reign and Reverie Deck built on https://netrunnerdb.com.

I’ll be real – I don’t know how to build Shaper decks. They always seem so poor! So here’s a list that I borrowed from this one and made like 4 changes. I’m sorry, Internet.

Algernon: I like this a lot. Adam is the most interesting when he’s super aggro, and this is a card that enables being super aggro. Could lead to you snowballing mighty hard in the early game at the expense of being very dead late game against glacier. But for 0 install, maybe that’s fine.

Reboot: I dunno man, it’s Apex. Good in the Aesop decks, for what that’s worth.

Office Supplies: This is serious business for Sunny. On turn 1 it’s like mini Quality Time, drawing 4 cards for 2 credits, before we get into extra link from Nexus and whatnot. Given Sunny’s weakness is setup time this could be huge. To be honest, I kind of hope it’s not. I dislike Nexus decks in general, as well as runners that don’t interact early but just build up to a crushing lategame. But we’ll see.

DJ Fenris: Well this is certainly an interesting effect! Here’s the list of legal g-mods: Chaos Theory, Smoke, Hayley and Kabonesa Wu for Shaper; Geist, Liza Talking Thunder, Los and Steve for Crim; and MaxX, Quetzal and Reina for Anarchs. The most obvious combination is Geist and Hayley, which would work pretty well out of either ID to start with. My instinct is that Geist would benefit the most from importing Hayley’s ability. Bringing Steve’s ability into play could be really neat for Anarch decks running Zer0 or Inject, or just wanting to recur power cards in general. Chaos Theory, Smoke, Los and all the Anarchs seem fairly pointless outside of pretty niche scenarios. It needs testing, but I’d be extremely surprised if this doesn’t find a home in Geist decks to use Hayley’s ability. The sheer weirdness of this card screams potential.

The runner side of this box is super strong and has a ton of deck building potential. I’m really excited to see what all you crazies can come up with. Stay tuned for the Corp side of Reign and Reverie!