The Accelerated Diagnostics + Boom! combo is particularly uncomfortable to play against, but it’s a glass cannon. With a little preparation, you can turn the odds in your favour. Here’s a plan for avoiding Game Over. Hope this helps.

There are a couple of factions this combo can be played out of but the most common and intimidating (to me) is probably SYNC. I’ll be assuming the combo is in NBN from here. Small deck size sets up the combo faster and Breaking News + 24/7 makes for some cheap and hard to avoid tags. If you can figure out the means your opponent is using to tag in another faction that looks like they’re using this combo, play around it accordingly.

It’s important to note that at the Breaking News, Jackson Howard and Power Shutdown stages, there’s some measure of counterplay. Therefore, a deck that’s just really good at making money and locking down servers (R&D in particular) might not need any tech cards to deal with this archetype. That’s the dream any way.

The Scary Combo

On a previous turn, score Breaking News

Click 1: Install Jackson Howard

Click 2: Power Shutdown for the whole deck

Trigger Jackson’s ability to shuffle 24/7 News Cycle and 2 BOOM! into R&D

Click 3: Accelerated Diagnostics, 24/7 triggering Breaking News’ when scored ability to give the runner 2 tags, then both BOOM!s

At each link in the chain there’s weakness.

Breaking News

Score them before the corporation does. This could be through early pressure, locking down R&D.

Use Clot or The Source to prevent Breaking News being scored in one turn, giving you a window to score.

Maybe, live dangerously and Turntable for the last one.

Jackson Howard

Trash Jacksons before they hit the table.

Also, if the shuffle targets have been removed from the game (by Archives Interface and Salsette Slums), then the combo is broken.

Tech cards vs Jackson include Councilman and Rumor Mill.

Power Shutdown and Accelerated Diagnostics

Operation trashing (by Demolition Run, Edward Kim, Keyhole and Imp, or “soft” trashing by Maya) will remove these as a factor. There are usually only 2 Shutdowns in each list because of influence, I think.

A corp on 0 credits with no Jackson on the board can’t afford this combo.

If you know the Shutdown’s ready to go, don’t run. They can’t play it if you didn’t run last turn. This might give you the time to find disruption pieces or build for another out, like winning the game in one turn. You’ll force the corp to try and score out.

Also, Hades Shard or Eden Shard (and maybe even Utopia Shard) after the Shutdown will usually win you the game. “Instant” speed installing viruses as Noise will also do the trick.

My heroes will constrict the corp’s hand size to 2 or 1 with Itinerant Protesters.

Avoiding The Tags

New Angeles City Hall and Forger + Decoy(s) will keep you tagless, or any other on-demand clickless tag removal.

Surviving The BOOM!s

It’s 14 meat damage, so assuming a full hand:

One Plascrete Carapace and two I’ve Had Worse/Sports Hopper

Two Plascrete Carapaces and one I’ve Had Worse/Sports Hopper

Three Plascrete Carapaces

Three Sports Hoppers

First Responders and a tonne of money (if you survive the first hit)

Guru Davinder

Sacrificial Clone + Origami x 2

Be Apex with lots of cards installed

Handsize increasing cards like Obelus and Brain Chip and Box-E (combined with other draw/damage prevention)

Muresh Bodysuit might help (don’t think that’s the strongest choice in most metas right now though)

Other Considerations

You can always just win before the corp assembles the combo.

Pressuring centrals and locking down R&D will let you know what stage the combo is at and how soon it will be assembled.

The corp, if they’re smart, will try to have a scoring strategy or other tagging options, that you might have to tangle with.

Be wary of the singleton BOOM off a Breaking News scored over 2 turns; own the remote.

The corp probably spent all of their influence dedicating themselves to this combo (thank you MWL) – please encourage them to consider other options by winning.