Sunny Lockdown on NRDB

I gotta tell you guys, I had a great new year. Two days later, after fully recovering from my hangover, I flicked over to NRDB to see what wonders were in store for me from you generous, kind people whom I adore.

Whatever it is, I know it’s going to be awesome. It’s 2016 guys, It’s gonna be a great year!

Sunny Lebeau: Security Specialist Event (12)

3x Career Fair •••

1x Legwork ••

2x Modded ••••

2x Quality Time ••

3x Sure Gamble

1x Vamp •• Hardware (4)

2x Clone Chip ••••

2x Security Nexus Resource (24)

3x Daily Casts

3x Data Folding

3x Earthrise Hotel

1x Film Critic •

2x Globalsec Security Clearance

2x Kati Jones

2x New Angeles City Hall

2x Same Old Thing

2x Street Peddler ••

1x Symmetrical Visage

3x Underworld Contact Icebreaker (6)

2x GS Sherman M3

2x GS Shrike M2

2x GS Striker M1 Program (4)

1x Clot ••

3x Multithreader ••• 25 influence spent (max 23)

50 cards (min 50)

Cards up to Data and Destiny

Oh.

Guys, what happened? We all agreed D&D was done last week I thought, so probably just a mix up or something… You know what it’s fine. This is fine. It’s 2016 guys, I can roll with this.

So Sunny is a… netrunner card… you know the great thing about a 50 card deck is that you can fit in 5 more of your favorite cards so… that’s pretty good…

Alright seriously guys? This is the same sunny deck we’ve all been looking at since D&D was spoiled. There are literally 30 other, older sunny decks on NRDB that run the exact same cards:

So I asked myself, what’s the real reason this is deck of the week?, it’s not a particularly unique or interesting list – the only logical explanation is that this is happening to me on purpose — clearly you wonderful (sadistic) people (jerkwads) just want to hear my scholarly opinion on momhackz!

Buckle up kiddos, we’re going to disney land!

JK, it’s the dentist.

ID

2 link means only 1 thing to a deckbuilder: Underworld Contacts. Apparently pad campaign was too good for runners because you are gifted a gigantic 50 card stack to find them all in. Good luck. 50 cards is pretty bad. Sure, sure I know what you are going to say:

‘Chill, my prepaid kate deck is 49 cards anyways, who cares about 50???’

The problem with a 50 card deck is not necessarily that you are just injecting a few percentage points more randomness into your card draws (anathema in any cardgame) something you may never even notice or feel while piloting a superogatory deck – the real problem with a big deck is when you are in game and it comes down to needing to draw something that is left in your deck.

The inherent unreliability of a draw in a large deck is compounded in any clutch situation in which you have to gamble on a click draw. It happens often in high level play when players are more equally matched, sometimes the odds are better that you can draw an answer and get at a remote, than to take a random access off of a central – this is not so when playing Sunny, and it’s something that I think sub-pro tier players like myself may only rarely encounter. Be aware of it, it’s a big flaw and it will sneak up on you faster than a blogger who has to write about Sunny goes to the liquor store.

Card Pool

The main reason to play Sunny has to be her amazing card pool right. Security Nexus is a great sentry breaker, and Nexus decks are already seeing play (probably more since the restricted list), so at this point we can all understand this card is strong, even without rabbit holes because targeted bypassing of ICE is pretty insane even if it doesn’t cost 0.

Secuity Nexus rating: Not Desperado/10

Jak Sinclair is a hell of a card, a free click per turn every turn forever for 1 credit and 1 card is pretty strong. It’s not even mandatory like Adam directives, the obvious combo is sec nexus, and I haven’t seen Jak imported into Andromeda yet – with the MWL it may never happen.

Jak Sinclair: Who plays RP anyways/10

Breaker suite. They all have the exact same name, and do the exact same thing because…. THEME…. If that’s not lazy card design I don’t know what is. Some of these cards might be playable, but I couldn’t tell you because I’ve never actually read any of them. It’s a 12 credit rig and there may be ICE that GS’s break more efficiently than anything else; however getting to those ICE often means making a bunch of inefficient breaks along the way. Good 2 credit data sucker value on some pumps, but for such a steep setup cost, it’s pretty hard to get good value out of.

GS Breakers: I don’t know what these cards do/10

Globalsec is another card that I have never read before, but people tell me that it does a woman in the red dress thing where you get a single R&D peek every turn if you give up a click. If this card is any good at all, it would probably only be in a stealth rig. The loss of a click is pretty crippling to maintain your “lock”.

‘Lock’ is really a misnomer, if you need an agenda you can spend a turn drawing cards and have a bunch of fresh ones to choose from, you can fire jackson before you draw or before Sunny accesses, and fast track sees fair amounts of play.

Globalsec Security: would rather save my click every turn and run deep thought, because at least my opponent might skip their turn to purge it sometimes/10

Strategy

Since dinosaurus walked the nets, nerdbears have been trying to make full clickless economy deck a thing. Dyson Memory Chip and Underworld Contact — What is with this art by the way:

Is the runner supposed to be the guy in the bathroom talking on a razr flip phone and getting extorted by a mafioso? How is this worth 1 credit per turn? Are you the one making him work for you – is that why you need two links worth of dirt on him before he starts paying you? That’s pretty twisted FFG.

Anyway, you’ve got all the clickless econ cards and you mash them together into a famously slow deck named Congress clickless economy has been around for a while, that’s just the name that stuck. Getting the UC working for you faster seemed like enough of a benefit for people to try this strategy in Sunny. Hence the mammoth archive of past sunny decks doing the same. old. thing.

Shaper cards are pretty good though, if you are just comparing this strategy out of Kate vs Sunny, then Kate just wins every time. Kate just has more quality cards at her disposal than you can make up for with 25 influence in Sunny; “This strategy is better in another ID” is kind of a lousy argument I know, but if you want to play Sunny – Congress is probably the only reasonable economy strategy you can employ in a sunny deck.

There are some really weird things you can do with Sunny if you want to deviate from the norm, I would have loved to talk about this deck for example, any Sunny fans still in the room should definitely check it out.

Execution

Like a beautiful swan, gracefully careening across the surface of a lake, artfully darting between cherry blossom petals, you will unsleeve your cards and return them to their storage container after a series of disappointing games.

There is something to be said for designing a deck which, rather than being fast, is fast enough. Daine’s congress deck walks this line precariously, and right now, Sunny is just on the wrong side of it. A purple diesel would even the odds a little bit, but if every deck was exactly the same, what would be the fun of that?

So you draw cards like crazy, install everything with a modded or career fair to make up all of the tempo you lose from having to click draw so much and overpay for your rig, and hope the game goes long enough for your drip economy to voltron into a tempo steamroller that you can win with.

All in all, you are doing a ton of work to just play a completely fair game of netrunner. While everyone else is cheating with Faust and Drug Dealer, or otherwise violating the spirit of the game we hold dear by rolling 3/2’s off of a SanSan – Mom will be dropping the kids off at daycare.

Before you sleeve up

Swap that Vamp for a legwork. I know the vamp here is kind of the unique thing about this deck, but an exploratory romp would be pretty unique too. If you are playing Sunny, don’t handicap yourself needlessly by tying up two influence in a card that is just going to stare back at you all game long because you can’t afford to use it when it would actually matter. Not to mention that it is somewhat at odds with running Multithreader. If you want to get value out of MT, you need to run and encounter ICE – if all of the Corp’s ICE is face up already, the impact of a vamp is greatly diminished.

It’s cool to experiment with cards (and learn why they are bad) I heartily suggest that you take your favorite Kate deck and mash some purple cards into it for a much more hospitable testing ground that the 2 link 50 card wasteland that is a Sunny deck.

On a personal note, I’d like to express that I am in fact, contractually obligated to play the deck of the week each week until the end of time immemorial per the stipulations of an agreement with Satan. So before you carelessly click that like button, know that there is a damned soul suffering for your choices.

Hey, DLR Val is pretty interesting I hear, let’s get that one to the top… have a people!

Ruining the game,

Chill84