1.6 Deck archetypes 101
Netrunner decks can be very unique, but they tend to cluster into some common patterns in the end. Here we’ll look at some common ones, and I’ll give some example lists. These likely include a lot of cards you’ve never seen before. You don’t have to go through everything and read every single card if it bores you, but it’s probably helpful to try and get a sense of how the deck does the thing that it does. Some of the deck writeups are also very informative.
Corp archetypes
The Corp is the player responsible for driving the game and setting the pace by presenting the Runner with problems to solve. A Corp deck that can’t do this in a coherent and clear way will fall behind. Therefore, Corps have to stick to a clear archetype that is very focused on a specific gameplan: it’s rare for Corps to just be “good stuff” decks.
Corp decks can be very diverse, and all of the choices made during deckbuilding will reflect their gameplan of choice: agendas chosen, kinds and quantity of ice, type of economy cards. An important distinction is between fair and unfair decks: the former try to play Netrunner “normally”, scoring agendas behind ice in a way that the Runner can easily interact with by making money and using icebreakers. Unfair decks tend to have some extra tricks up their sleeves: they often have a kill plan, or try to limit the Runner’s options for interaction. Some of them forgo a scoring plan completely, or go about it in very unconventional ways.
Rush decks go very fast and try to get to 7 points before Runners can do much about it. Early agendas are scored behind cheap gearcheck ice; this can rarely be achieved so fast that the Runner can’t get the right breakers before the Corp scores out, so there is often some extra trick involved – usually some amount of fast advance.
This HB deck is a perfect example of a rush deck. While it doesn’t fast advance agendas, it can score them quickly by using extra advancement counters from Seamless Launch and La Costa Grid, and can fairly often push another agenda on the same turn that the previous one was scored. It can easily find points to score with the draw power of Rashida Jaheem and Violet Level Clearance. When the Runner has gotten their bearings, it tries to use tricks such as Manegarm Skunkworks and Border Control to force a final score.
Glacier decks, by contrast, tend to go slow. They play economy cards that get them a lot of money, play a lot of ice in the moderate-to-big range, and use strong defensive upgrades to protect their scoring remote. Because of the level of protection that they get after such a long time of building up, they can usually afford to play big, impactful agendas rather than the small ones that are more common in rush decks.
This NBN deck is a great glacier deck. Seven of its pieces of ice cost 6 or more, so it takes a very long time to amass resources to build a remote (mainly by sitting on Daily Quest), and once it feels safe, pushes very big agendas in it, then tries to use an Echo Chamber to get the last point.
Fast advance decks are very similar to rush decks, but they go a little or a lot harder on the fast advance plan, with maybe something like 4-6 cards that allow them to FA agendas. Some of them are just rush decks with a little something extra; some play few ice and don’t even bother creating a scoring remote, just scoring everything from hand.
This HB deck is a fast advance deck. It has a relatively low ice count, so it can score an agenda or two behind ice, then relies on its five fast advance operations and on its 2/1s to ensure a win. The two big 5/3 agendas are not intended to be scored, but are just here to soak up some of the required points during deckbuilding to ensure that the deck has non-agenda cards that allow it to be efficient.
Tag and bag decks have a main gameplan, such as for example being a rush or a glacier deck, but they can supplement it with two important pieces: some way to try and proactively tag the runner if they try to interact with the Corp’s gameplan too carelessly, and some piece of tag punishment that damages the Runner if they’re tagged. These decks are so popular that designers have always kept printing cards to ensure their existence.
This Weyland deck plays a rush game backed by a tag-and-bag threat of Hard-Hitting News combined with BOOM!. If the Runner overextends too much while trying to contest the scoring remote, they risk dying to the combo of these two cards. Once the deck has secured a few points, it can win by fast advancing agendas such as Regulatory Capture.
Horizontal decks, or asset decks (sometimes also wide decks) try to put a lot of assets on the board and create many servers. Their economy is usually derived from economy assets more than operations, and their number is such that the Runner won’t usually have the tempo to clear the whole board. The actual win condition of these decks can vary – some try to score out behind ice or with fast advance, some use a combination of scary assets and other cards to create a combo that will kill. Horizontal decks that go particularly wide are often called asset spam decks. Some play ambushes, putting them on the board along with agendas so that Runners have to make risky runs: these are usually called shell game decks.
This NBN deck is an asset spam deck. It keeps spamming the board with assets that consistently make money or other kinds of value, and threatens to put SanSan City Grid behind ice and fast advance agendas in that server if the Runner spends too much time “contesting” the board.
Grinder decks try to consistently deal damage to the Runner, even if not in amounts big enough to kill them, until they can get them to a point where they’re out of cards and they cannot take actions without risking death anymore. They are primarily played out of Jinteki. There is a strong overlap with shell game horizontal decks, with some of these decks leaning more on the benefits they get from spamming the board and keeping the Runner’s tempo down with small sources of damage, while keeping the “grind” as a potential option for the endgame.
This Jinteki deck can deal a lot of damage during the course of the game, and tries to constantly fork the Runner into bad choices by filling the remote with cards that will deal damage whether the Runner tries to get to them or not.
Prison decks are the epitome of unfair. These are usually decks that try to build a board state that severely limits the Runner’s options, until they can win easily, usually by killing them. This often involves managing to keep a very dangerous asset on the board for a few turns, maybe defending it with upgrades.
This Jinteki deck never scores agendas (and only plays 59 cards because that allows you to play 8 agendas that become very difficult to find. Rules of thumb are made to be broken). Its only purpose is to install Dr. Vientiane Keeling in a remote and keep it in there for six turns, so that the Runner will flatline when having to discard to -1 hand size at the end of their turn. To do so, it exploits the synergy between very taxing ice and Anoetic Void, and a combo between Aginfusion and Cold Site Server (can you figure out how it works?)
Combo decks try to exploit some very strong interaction between some cards in the cardpool that is so explosive that they can just win the game if they pull it off. These decks don’t always exist, and if they do they will often get hit by the next banlist, but they tend to be very unique and important when they are part of the meta.
This HB deck draws the whole deck and then scores 7 points in a single turn. I’m not going to explain how it works, and you don’t have to figure it out now. Consider yourself lucky that this isn’t around anymore.
Taxonomy is hard. Some decks are hybrids of the archetypes I have listed, trying to get the benefits of more than one gameplan while minimizing the downsides of not focusing enough on a single one. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes the cardpool provides the resources to do things just right. Ultimately, the territory is more complex than the map.
Runner archetypes
Usually, the Corp is the player that leads the game and sets the pace, and Runners take on a more reactive role. As a consequence, Runner decks tend to fall way less into archetypes and are often just well-rounded lists. Good Runner decks often do not have a strongly proactive gameplan, but mostly try to react to Corps in an organic way: they want to quickly get into a position where they can contest remote servers and not give up scoring windows to the Corp, then when the board is secure they can bring out the multiaccess and start smashing centrals.
All of these Runner decks are fair. They are Reg or Regass (regular-ass) decks, that just do “normal Runner things”. While they aren’t differentiated by gameplan, they can have different speeds at which they can react to the Corp: some can quickly shut down rush decks, while others slowly build up economy until they can fight the defenses of the toughest of glaciers.
Reg Runners can sport different economic engines from each other, and have different sets of tricks for challenging Corps, even though their overall gameplan is mostly the same. Consider these three Reg decks: An Anarch one, a Criminal one, and a Shaper one. They may make money in different ways, they may have tech for different types of Corp, they may have different tricks to get past ice, but overall their plan is always to have some way to get past initial defenses, be able to build money, establish a lock, and eventually win with multiaccess (and they do so at different speeds, with a variable ability to react to fast or slow Corps: for example, the Criminal deck is clearly the one that punishes fast decks the best, whereas the Shaper one takes way more time to set up).
While Reg Runners are usually prevalent, most metas also include one or more Runner decks that have a more focused gameplan: let’s call these linear Runners. These usually take some card or combination of cards that can have a big payoff and try to focus on performing that. It’s hard to talk of “archetypes”, because the way these decks work depends on the peculiarities of the cards that are being abused, and they are often just named around those cards. For example, Apocalypse is such a strong card (and one that you need to fully commit to in terms of gameplan!) that Apocalypse decks existed basically for the whole time in which it was legal. Similarly, Sabotage is a mechanic that really pays off if you dedicate your whole deck to it, so Sabotage decks tend to be very linear and proactive. While the idea of doing your own thing rather than letting the Corp choose what game you’re playing is attractive, by fully dedicating to a proactive gameplan in this way, you usually lose your ability to react to what most Corps are doing, and your whole plan tends to fizzle if countered by strong enough tech.