Congress
Decklist
Identity
Events
Hardware
Programs
Resources
Deck Notes
This has been my tournament deck for most of this season and I want to publish it here in case anyone is looking for a good runner deck for nationals (which I'm not attending). In my opinion, this is the best deck I've ever built by a wide margin.
I call this deck Congress because the goal is to get paid an ungodly sum of money for doing absolutely nothing. You work hard to get elected and then nobody expects you do to a damned thing.
The goal of the deck is fairly straight forward: get a 6-credit-per-turn drip economy up as soon as possible and use that to counter any problem the corp tries to create. Use SMC + stimhack to be aggressive early, but only if you need to. This deck is so demoralizingly powerful in mid- and late-game that you can afford to let the corp get an agenda or two without too much worry that you'll lose the game. Even an astro scored early isn't a problem as long as you are doing ok on getting set up properly (clot will prevent them from using that counter anyway).
Draw like a mad person early game. With 3 modded and 3 career fair you can afford to quality time on click 2 or diesel on click 3 and be fairly certain you won't be trashing or wasting cards. Additionally, drawing often makes the corp mistakenly think that you're struggling (even while you're looking at an SMC and stimhack in hand) and they'll feed you an agenda you can easily steal.
This deck has grown to 48 cards because of the utility I threw on top (sacrificial construct and 2 feedback filters). The second game I lost with this deck at a regional was to a PE deck and my local meta was starting to fill up with Batty kill decks and occasional jank Cybernetics decks so I made the change and have been very happy. I very commonly end up drawing and installing the last card of the deck, so the fact that I'm over the minimum deck size hasn't been a problem for me. Having 3 or 4 of my drip economy cards at the bottom of my pile sometimes happens, but this deck loses so infrequently that it hasn't been a problem I have felt needs addressing.
The easiest way to lose with this deck is by being too aggressive. People will think this deck is an aggro PPVP Kate (struggling to find its voice pads) and will realize too late that it's a hard control deck. While I didn't win any regionals I played in with this deck (missed top 8 by a strength of schedule cut because my 1st round opponent won the scorched earth prize and my corps did poorly every time), I did beat loads of good players with it including the eventual tournament champion in St. Louis.
The key is to know your match ups and change your play style accordingly. Rely on clot against fastrobiotics (sac con can save it from a cyberdex purge), keep 4 cards in hand against butcher shop and run on any server with 2 cards in it (so they can't San San an installed Breaking News into a double scorch), and make Weyland score 7 points against you rather than letting them SEA Source you. Just breathe and have confidence that every long game is yours. While 2 of my losses were to NBN, they also represented an absolute majority of my 16 wins as well. The matchup is a favorable one.
I've tried dozens of permutations to this deck and there are lots of ways to adjust the archetype to your personal style. I've had worse works almost as well as inject but gives some damage protection. I've experimented with a few day jobs and have loved them early game. Gordian blade works if you're not expecting many code gates (though study guide is surprisingly awesome. I'd highly highly recommend keeping it). I've even tried the supplier rather than career fair to some success (though I felt it was a bit too slow, even for this slower archetype).
As always, questions and criticisms are welcome.