Hey guys, welcome to our impressions and theorycrafted decks for the recently spoiled Council of the Crest datapack!

eXer Anarch Program: Virus Cost: 2 ••• When you access cards from R&D, access 1 additional card. Trash eXer if the Corp purges virus counters.

It’s the return of R&D Interface, but purgeable! Certainly no Medium but decent multi access. I think this is a bit like Tapwrm, where you run it along Sacrificial Construct as your only virus so the Corp doesn’t get good purge value.

Friday Chip Anarch Hardware: Chip Cost: 2 •• Whenever you trash a Corp card, you may place 1 virus counter on Friday Chip. When your turn begins, you may move 1 hosted virus counter to a virus program.

Very interesting little card and allows for infinite Imp combos which makes me very happy indeed. Also fairly easy to charge up again after a purge and start reloading your Imp. Seems like it’s meant to work in the upcoming Freedom Khumalo tons-of-viruses decks.

Crypt Anarch Hardware: Virtual Cost: 0 • Whenever you make a successful run on Archives, you may place 1 virus counter on Crypt. [click], [trash], 3 hosted virus counters: Search your stack for a virus program and install it (paying its install cost), then shuffle your stack.

Remember how Djinn did this but easier, and nobody ever played Djinn? Yeah…

Corporate “Grant” Criminal Event: Current Cost: 1 ••• This card is not trashed until another current is played or an agenda is scored. The first time you install a card each turn, the Corp loses 1[credit].

Oh baby, Crim denial is coming back. This could be the first legitimately good Criminal current. Seems to work best in the minifaction of Geist though, as you know that guy wants to install most of his deck.

No One Home Criminal Resource: Virtual Cost: 0 • The first time you would take any number of tags or suffer any amount of net damage each turn, you may trash No One Home to force the Corp to “Trace0 If unsuccessful, the Runner avoids any number of tags or prevents any amount of net damage.”

Design 101: mash On the Lam and Recon Drone together and call it a day. Definitely better against Hard Hitting News though. One influence is pretty significant too. CTM doesn’t get affected by the recent MWL changes and is already really powerful, so having a one influence tech card available is probably healthy for the game.

Marathon Shaper Event: Run Cost: 1 ••••• Make a run on a remote server. When the run ends, gain [click] and add Marathon to your grip instead of trashing it if the run was successful. You may not make another run on that server for the remainder of this turn.

Cute and theoretically nice against asset spam. By Any Means + Marathon + Paparazzi anyone?

Gbahali Shaper Resource: Virtual Cost: 2 • [trash]: Break the last subroutine on the encountered piece of ice.

Design 201: split Grappling Hook up into pieces and jam all the pieces into Shaper. This is the same effect as Kongamato but slightly more expensive and slightly better (sometimes). Generally if you have ICE with multiple unique subroutines (as opposed to Komainu, Brainstorm etc) AND you care about getting into a server (as opposed to Mausolus etc which taxes but doesn’t ETR), the End the Run subroutine tends to be the last one. So this is probably useful in a glory run where you’re OK with facetanking a bunch of damage/program trashing to get through.

I couldn’t figure out how to put a deck with this stuff, so here’s one by 2016 World Champion Chris Dyer that I changed three cards in (that he suggested). This is something I love about Netrunner, how the community can come up with bonkers stuff all the time!

Pirate Hayley – 1st at Bristol SC

Hayley Kaplan: Universal Scholar

Event (13)

3x Deep Data Mining

3x Diesel

1x Interdiction

1x Legwork ●●

2x Levy AR Lab Access 🦄

3x Sure Gamble

Hardware (2)

2x Astrolabe

Resource (22)

1x Beth Kilrain-Chang

3x Daily Casts

3x Gbahali

3x Kongamato

3x Laguna Velasco District

1x Political Operative ●

2x Same Old Thing

3x Street Peddler ●●●

3x Tech Trader ●●●

Icebreaker (2)

1x Inti

1x Savant

Program (6)

1x Dhegdheer

3x Grappling Hook ●●●●● ●

2x Self-modifying Code

White Hat Sunny-Lebeau Event Cost: 0 ••••• Play only if you made a successful run on a central server this turn. Force the Corp to “Trace3 If unsuccessful, reveal all cards in HQ. The Runner may choose up to 2 of the revealed cards. Shuffle those cards into R&D.”

Oh dang Sunny. This is a pretty significant effect. Sunny is already on the edge of being competitively strong and this ability to slow down the Corp could be a big deal for her. FFG are certainly showing the minifactions some love this cycle!

♦ Kuwinda K4H1U3 Haas-Bioroid Asset: Bioroid Cost: 3 •••• Trash: 3 When your turn begins, you may traceX If successful, do 1 brain damage and trash Kuwinda K4H1U3. If unsuccessful, place 1 power counter on Kuwinda K4H1U3. X is the number of power counters on Kuwinda K4H1U3.

The brain damage HB dream continues. This has the incredible payout of…one brain damage! Hard pass.

NEXT Sapphire Haas-Bioroid Ice: Code Gate – NEXT Cost: 4 ••• Strength: 2 X is the number of rezzed NEXT ice. [subroutine] Draw up to X cards. [subroutine] Add up to X cards from Archives to HQ. [subroutine] Shuffle up to X cards from HQ into R&D.

A high value facecheck and 3 subroutines is good against Black Orchestra. Currently the playable NEXT ICE are Gold and Silver. This could have value in a rushy NEXT shell as it can add significant click compression.

Anansi Jinteki Ice: Sentry – AP Cost: 8 •••• Whenever an encounter with Anansi ends, do 3 net damage unless the Runner broke all subroutines on it. [subroutine] Look at the top 5 cards of R&D and arrange them in any order. [subroutine] You may draw 1 card. The Runner may pay 2[credit] to draw 1 card. [subroutine] Do 1 net damage.

This is an insanely nasty facecheck. 4 guaranteed net damage if you don’t have a Sentry breaker! And they jammed Precognition into there too, because why not? The strength hasn’t been spoiled yet but this looks like a pretty damn nasty piece of ICE to me. Jinteki glacier is getting real spooky, even with Rumor Mill back.

Code Replicator Jinteki Upgrade Cost: 2 •• Trash: 2 When the Runner passes a rezzed piece of ice protecting this server, you may trash Code Replicator to force the Runner to approach that piece of ice again.

This could have some solid value. Mumbad City Grid has seen some amount of play, forcing the Runner to repeatedly run into costly Grail ICE or other taxing Jinteki ICE. I certainly don’t want to have to break one more DNA Tracker than I expected on a run.

Reverse Infection Jinteki Operation Cost: 0 • Choose one: Purge virus counters.Trash 1 card from the top of the stack for every 3 virus counters removed.

Gain 2[credit].

Given this is a one influence, zero cost card, this could be a safety valve card in case Freedom Khumalo decks start blowing up the meta. Apart from Aumakua it doesn’t have any real value right now.

Azmari EdTech: Shaping the Future NBN Identity 40 / 15 When your turn ends, you may name a card type. Gain 2[credit] the first time each turn the Runner plays or installs a card that has the type you last named this way.

This is an interesting one. On one hand, it has the credit symbol and the words “each turn” on it, which is usually really good. On the other hand, CTM exists and is unquestionably really good. The strongest IDs with a similar trigger in the past have been Engineering the Future and Palana Foods, which both have triggers you can reasonably expect to fire once a turn. This is controlled by the Runner and isn’t an action as fundamental as drawing a card which means it’s likely to fire less but the payout is greater. From the rest of the cards in the cycle it looks like the devs are expecting that we’ll put an installed card back on top of the stack, then name that card type so we’ll always know what’s coming.

There’s another way to deal with this though – play Scarcity of Resources and use Azmari to name Event. That way either the Runner pays 2 credits extra for their econ, or they give you money at the same time. This does fold to Opus pretty hard but those decks aren’t really in the meta right now. Here’s an idea for a tempo/econ war deck that aims to drain the Runner’s credits, prevent them from gaining money without paying you as well, and adds a bunch of their cards back into the stack so they have to pay for them twice.

Hypercapitalism

Azmari EdTech: Shaping the Future

Agenda (8)

2x Corporate Sales Team

3x Project Beale

3x Degree Mill

Asset (3)

3x Marilyn Campaign ●●●

Upgrade (6)

3x Ash 2X3ZB9CY ●●●●● ●

3x Red Herrings

Operation (12)

3x Economic Warfare ●●●●● ●

3x Hedge Fund

3x IPO

3x Scarcity of Resources

Barrier (5)

3x IP Block

2x Resistor

Code Gate (7)

2x Enigma

1x Little Engine

2x Pop-up Window

2x Tollbooth

Sentry (3)

2x Jua

1x Turnpike

The gameplan: NBN never advance glacier. Gain money, take away theirs, uninstall their stuff, repeatedly drag them through a taxing remote. Little Engine and Pop-Up might be a bit cute but we’re going for a money gearcheck strat here.

Degree Mill NBN Agenda: Initiative Cost: 5 Points: 3 As an additional cost to steal Degree Mill, the Runner must shuffle 2 installed Runner cards into the stack.

I dig this in some settings. It’s not GFI but it can be pretty damn punishing to steal. It’s also basically unstealable turn 1 which is neat. That said, the Runner could play around it by having something like a Same Old Thing and an almost empty Daily Casts installed and using that. Also, Film Critic exists. Actually the more I look at this the more it might not actually be good.

Personalized Portal Nbn Asset Cost: 3 •• Trash: 3 When your turn begins, the Runner draws 1 card, then you may gain 1[credit] for every 2 cards in the grip.

It’s like Palana Agroplex! Which is not a good card. Ideally this can gain you 3+ credits a turn though, which is much better. Plus maybe you’re going for a super econ denial strategy and making them not be able afford any of their stuff. Giving the other side resources is pretty much always a bad idea though so this doesn’t look good to me.

Armed Intimidation Weyland-Consortium Agenda: Security Cost: 4 Points: 2 When you score Armed Intimidation, the Runner must either suffer 5 meat damage or take 2 tags.

Hold up, what? Weyland gets Breaking News on crack? It’s a 4/2 instead of a 2/1 so way worse in that regard, but damn! And the tags don’t get removed! This is interesting because you need to change up your scoring pattern to get the most out of the threat, leaving 2 clicks free after score to threaten BOOM! and 1 for something like Closed Accounts, All-Seeing I or the recently spoiled High-Profile Target. 5 meat damage is actually a lot and will kill the Runner a decent percentage of the time, not to mention being huge tempo. Bonus points if you manage to stagger this out to coincide with Urban Renewal but good luck pulling that off. Weyland is getting some really powerful tools this cycle, let’s see if it can come together into a deck.

Death and Taxes Weyland-Consortium Operation: Current – Transaction Cost: 2 ••• This card is not trashed until another current is played or an agenda is stolen. Whenever the Runner installs a card or trashes an installed card, you may gain 1[credit].

The “whenever” part of this is good, but there’s a good chance this never pays out. Plus there’s a lot of currents floating around right now. Also the payout isn’t really that good. Not worth slotting over Scarcity in the current meta.

Trojan Horse Weyland-Consortium Operation: Gray Ops Cost: 1 ••• Play only if the Runner accessed at least 1 card during his or her last turn. Trace4 If successful, trash 1 installed program with an install cost equal to or less than the amount by which your trace strength exceeded the Runner’s link strength.

Very easy trigger condition. The average cost of commonly played programs is around 3 (based entirely on feels) and topping out around 4 with exceptions like Femme and Opus. If you’ve also hit them with an Economic Warfare or two then you probably have a good shot at hitting something good. It’s also a nice way to get rid of annoying 0 cost programs like RNG Key.

♦ TechnoCo Neutral-Corp Asset: Corporation Cost: 2 Trash: 2 The install cost of each program, piece of hardware, and virtual resource is increased by 1. Whenever the Runner installs a program, piece of hardware, or virtual resource, you may gain 1[credit].

Here’s what happens with this: you put it behind a barrier, they get a breaker, there’s a 1 credit swing and they trash it. That’s the end.