Android Netrunner

Android Netrunner

Sunday, January 19, 2014

The Professor - A Toolbox to Sell

Oh dear. He's finally lost it. The Professor. How are we ever going to really justify this as a deck list that is worth it?



Well remember. These decks may not be competitive. They may not be good. Hell they may even be terribad. But hopefully they make us think.

Everyone has looked at the Professor as a Jack of All Trades deck - the idea is that with the abundance of cards to search your deck (Tutor) for whatever program you need in house for Shaper, the Professor can stack his deck with one off's to fix the problems he comes up against.

The problem becomes that of those cards, those that are actually useful more than once or twice in a blue moon don't make up enough influence to justify using The Professor - if its less than 15 inf, why not just stick it in Kate or Kit or G-mod or hell even Exile?

What if we look at it a little differently?


A Toolbox to Sell 

(Or otherwise known as: OMG THE PRGMS; Sell 'em)

The Professor: Keeper of Knowledge (Creation and Control)

Event (9)
2x Diesel (Core Set)
3x Freelance Coding Contract (Creation and Control)
1x Levy AR Lab Access (Creation and Control)
3x Test Run (Cyber Exodus)

Hardware (5)
3x Clone Chip (Creation and Control)
2x Dinosaurus (Cyber Exodus)

Resource (1)
1x Same Old Thing (Creation and Control)

Icebreaker (5)
1x Atman (Creation and Control)
1x Corroder (Core Set) ••
1x Knight (Mala Tempora) ••
1x Ninja (Core Set) ••
1x Torch (Mala Tempora)

Program (25)
1x Chakana (Creation and Control)
1x Copycat (Second Thoughts)
1x Crescentus (A Study in Static)
1x Deep Thought (Future Proof)
1x Disrupter (A Study in Static)
1x Djinn (Core Set) ••
1x Expert Schedule Analyzer (Mala Tempora) ••
1x Gorman Drip v1 (Opening Moves)
1x Keyhole (True Colors) •••
3x Magnum Opus (Core Set)
1x Medium (Core Set) •••
1x Nerve Agent (Cyber Exodus) ••
1x Parasite (Core Set) ••
1x Paricia (Creation and Control)
1x Pawn (Opening Moves)
1x Pheromones (Humanity's Shadow) ••
1x Sahasrara (Creation and Control)
1x Scheherazade (Second Thoughts)
3x Self-modifying Code (Creation and Control)
1x Sneakdoor Beta (Core Set) •••
1x Snitch (Cyber Exodus) ••

Deck built on NetrunnerDB.

For those of you counting, that's 33 Influence. Well, we're certainly making use of his card ability now.

So here we just stuck every single non breaker program in the Professor. What does it do? Don't care. Don't care at all. Sure it might be useful once in a blue moon, and you'll be happy you have it then, but really? What is it good for? 99% of the time nothing but throwing to Freelance Coding Contract to get giant bursts of money. Who cares what it does, just toss it. Then with the most effective breakers in the set, money wise (Garrote could be included but Memory wise its probably better to keep it with Ninja unless you want to find room for some Mem Chips) you'll be able to break into any server quickly, efficiently, and often.


A burst of 10 creds when you use it would be pretty good way to suddenly break into a server where the Corp thought you were going to be stuck clicking for Magnum Opus credits a turn before being able to break it. One click for 10 creds, as long as it's not a trap you're running into ...

Forget about the toolbox... Sell it! To make money for breaking things!

And while you're tossing cards that you don't need, if the Corp pulls out something strange or weird, you will have the card you need in their somewhere. And this is Shaper. you have the ability to go get it, out of the Heap or out of the Stack, there is a way.


Hmm. I didn't include Deus X. Or Net Shield. Maybe those could be fit in there...

What else can we do with it?

Well this was thrown together by literally just clicking 1 of everything i could that wasn't an ICE Breaker on Netrunnerdb.com. More card draw, maybe another economic engine of some sort (Professional Contacts comes to light as a good idea, Quality Time as well). Possibly might want to consider some funky town cards like Escher or other interesting but little seen Shaper cards for throwing out another surprise.

In all fairness though, this deck violates one of the cardinal rules of deckbuilding. Focus. So...

Will it work? Who knows. Will it make you think? I hope so.

4 comments:

  1. Professional Contacts would really work well with a deck like this. A lot of the time, you're looking for your card draw, you'll just be base clicking for a draw. This is pretty inefficient. Being able to also take a credit with the draw will work really well with Freelance Coding Contract.

    Also, Freelance Coding Contract really has great synergy with Quality Time than Diesel.

    Deck space is tight though... Here's how I'd change it up: I'm not quite sure what to swap out. Maybe remove the excess Magnum Opuses for Professional Contacts and replace the Diesels with Quality Time?

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    1. Probably not a bad idea. The Magnum are only in there cause they can be a tutor'd economy - trying to find Professional Contacts if you don't draw one would be kinda brutal, but between the two, possibly a better choice.

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  2. My professor deck was pretty similar, it was an fcc toolbox. Honestly, itbwas a lot of fun and having a response to just about anything cannot be overestimated. My problem was that there was a very narrow window where tempo was in you're favor:when you're winning or losing hard, you're just too shallow to really take the lead or keep it. I dont think we'll have to wait too long for some kind of cohesion, and that need not be "focus", just some better synergy with those high influence programs like sneakdoor or Morningstar

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