A very long ramble about card choices and play patterns

Detailed thoughts on a silly deck
(https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/97346)

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I enjoy fast advance and complicated scoring combos. I’ve tried Nebula in the past, but I grew to really dislike the play style of the typical 20+ operation remoteless FA lists. Operation economy options when you get that high in operations are pretty underwhelming (compare Nonequivalent Exchange’s +3c to what runner econ looks like right now), and with that many operations in deck your draws can leave you needing to awkwardly play multiple operations in a turn, especially when you need money.

In theory, there’s another way. What if you just make a remote? The corp card pool has a lot of assets that could help scoring or defenses, even if only a single thing sticks. NBN has Magistrate Revontulet and Vladisibirsk City Grid. Regolith is way better money than most other operations, and gives you something good to do on the awkward turns you don’t want to draw. B-1001 is a defensive tool that is amazing with stuff like Funhouse on centrals. I even tried Nihilo Agent once. That one didn’t work very well.

Maninthemoon published a list with Vlad City Grid that I was pointed to by rongydoge and cribbed a lot of ideas from: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/bb8ee79e-f77e-453a-bf58-6a961b3eec72/mitm-scoring-nebula-6-1-worlds-2025

Koga recently published a list with wage workers, regolith, and anoetic void: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/a28e4b01-602c-432e-9980-62000ddf0084/etemenanki-fede-10th-hasselt-megacity

and while it’s not Standard, Mezzie published an very fun eternal Nebula list I played a few times at pubrunner that is happy to jam rashidas and agendas behind ice, which probably first inspired me to look at this style in standard: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/973cb6cd-f74b-45e0-bc20-6bc96ca858d7/-eternal-almost-undefeated-jamming-nebula.

So I added some copies of Vera.

Vera’s a very annoying card! I think people broadly understand the threat of a rezzed Phat, because the threat of “when you interact with the corp you might lose cards from hand” is real. Vera only takes one card and can’t flatline a runner, but it’s always the best card (and she doesn’t need to be prerezzed to charge up). She’s also not once per turn, although that doesn’t come up very often.

She also gives you full knowledge of the runner’s hand. Which brings us to Focus Group.

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In Defense of Focus Group

It may be helpful to refresh our memory of the text of this card. Many are unfamiliar with it.
1. Focus Group requires a successful run on the previous turn.
2. The card to be advanced must already be on the table.
3. And then you have to call a card type to get the privilege of paying for advancements up to the number of that card type in the runner’s hand.
4. Also this thing costs 3c whether you hit anything or not.

I’ll talk about 1 and 4.

1. The successful run trigger is interesting. In most corps that’s actually a pretty low bar. But in classic remoteless Nebula this is actually significantly more difficult. If the runner made a successful run that probably also means they flipped your ID so you don’t get an extra click back. So depending on what you’re trying to score, you may need to successfully hit 2 or even 3 of the same card type to actually fast advance.

But in a remote-containing nebula that’s not the case! If the runner runs a Vera (or pinholes it) to turn off the threat of hand hurty, that’s a successful run, and Focus Group is now online, *and* you might even still be on the click side of Nebula.

4. In Nebula, it is pretty well understood that Nanomanagement is a good card. From a standing start (unflipped), it lets you score a 3/2 out of hand. When flipped, it lets you score a 4/2 out of hand. It is simple and consistent. It’s also a lot of money. The difference between install 2x advance and nanomanagement install 4x advance is 6 credits, for essentially 2 free advancements.

For two advancements, the equivalent of nanomanagement, focus group is only 5c!  *And* sometimes you can get even more than 2! If you luck out and find 4 events in a crim hand, 7 credits for 4 advancements in one click is an incredible deal. It’s also in faction and not a cheap trash cost like Sudden Commandment.

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How do you play this deck?

You are Nebula. Every time you are on the front side (unflipped), you want to play exactly one operation. Before you play your last operation, you should try to make sure you have iced both centrals to make flipping you back cost something. It is totally fine (and often my typical line of play) to start the game by icing one central and playing an operation, allowing the runner to run the open central to flip us back. This is not a problem. If the runner does that they’re not setting up, they’re taking a random single, and they didn’t slow you down at all economically if you have access to another operation for the next turn. If you start with a lot of operations you can even keep a central open for multiple turns while you money up and potentially set up a remote.

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Ice placement

Bran goes on centrals. In this Hermes-rich environment, try to get ice rezzed. Runners are often incentivized to facecheck your centrals because (a) they’re not scared of NBN ice and (b) they want to flip your ID. But the trick for (b) is that if we’re not out of operations we don’t care if they flip us back, they’re still just running for singles. In addition to the 3x Bran there’s also 2x Grubber. These are worse than Bran for your centrals, but if you need a taxing barrier they are that. If you can hold out though, I’d often try and hold them in order to set up the remote with a Grubber. Your other option is to stack ice, typically sentries, on the same (central) server. Unsmiling Tsarevna and Doomscroll are both pretty decent taxing ice. Ideally you want the doomscrolls on the inside of the unsmiling (so if they take a tag doomscroll is a bit worse), and unsmiling is better on R&D than on HQ, but there’s huge issue if they’re swapped. Currently the killers people are commonly running are echelon, revolver, and carmen, all of which break 1/sub (either credit or counter). It is pretty reasonable to set up a central to tax 8-9 credits or counters per run, which is wildly unsustainable for any runner to do repeatedly.

On a central, Bran is often taxing enough by itself, costing something like 6-8 credits or a whole propeller each time, but you can put a second ice on top if the runner seems willing to click through. 2 Brans is a pretty hard lock on a server.

If you suspect the runner has Eru, put a doomscroll on archives. Maybe more than one if you actually see it played. Hopefully it doesn’t get you too badly, but Eru is good into this list.

Pirahnas is good central or remote ice. I didn’t rez them very often during my matches this tournament, and maybe they could be swapped for a cheaper (non-BP-giving) ice, but this is very taxing to break.

Flyswatter goes anywhere. Sometimes you can gearcheck to start the remote, sometimes it’s an extra ETR for HQ. Fermenter is very common and flyswatter is great.


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The agenda suite and scoring plan

We are on all 1 and 2 pointer agendas, so you’ll need to score 4 to win.

We are on Remastered Edition instead of Kingmaking or any 5/3s. Scoring a Remastered Edition is the highest priority, because that sets you up to be able to close out the game. Be somewhat patient with the counter, you really don’t want to use it to score to 5 or 6 and then get R&D locked out of the game. If you can score two of these, you’re on easy street.

Embedded Reporting is not a blank agenda. If you’ve played Nebula in person, once you have ice on centrals you’ll probably have experienced the runner groan when click one is a petty cash from hand because not only do they have to run to flip you again, they probably have to do it twice (or you can hold it in the bin as a fast advance tool). Embedded can be scored as a 4/2 that says “you will draw two more petty cashes this game.” It also tutors the one-of Nanomanagement, and economic bounceback cards (Predictive Planogram or Your Digital Life). It’s also great on either end of Cultivate - if you don’t like the cards you see, shuffle and put something you do like on top. If you need an agenda to score, grabbing the cultivate with this breaks lock and lets you search R&D 5 cards deep the next turn to find one. On top of all that, if you don’t need the operation searching ability you can still score it out as a blank 3/2! This agenda is great.

The 2x Post-Truth Dividend is an easy 7th point to score, that can also give you a Vera trigger if they let her stay on the table for a turn. You can also do the AU Co thing and just put it on the table uniced when Vera is installed and see if they run it.

Finally we have two Let them Dreams. This is here because I don’t like the other 2 point agenda options very much, so it’s more defensive than proactive. Try not to score the LtDs early, it takes a lot of your resources to score a 4/2 and the score effect is not really that great for us. Consider just pitching it and maybe later shuffling it back. You can also use this as bait if you want to drag the runner through the remote.

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The fast advance lines

Vladisibirsk City Grid and Business as Usual are an incredible fast advance combo. If you’re flipped and have an unadvanced Vlad Grid, install BAU advance advance scores a 4/2 agenda out of hand (advance both the grid and the agenda with BAU, rez vlad and move the counters over). Either of the preferred 4/2 agendas give you a lot in return - Remastered makes all your future scoring lines stronger, and Embedded Reporting counters are just great value.

Business as Usual by itself is also a clickless advancement if you’re flipped, so install BAU advance advance gets you a 3/2 agenda for 2 credits, and if you score a 2/1 out of hand using a BAU on the unflipped side you score for net zero credits and flip. Also sometimes you just incidentally hose a fermenter or leech.

Nanomanagement when flipped lets you go to 5 clicks, which lets you fast advance a 4/2 agenda from hand. This costs 8 credits (Nano, 4 advancements) at baseline.

Petty cash lets you get to 4 clicks, which lets you fast advance a 3/2 for net 1 credit. You don’t need to be that precious saving these as we have a lot of other tricks to score out, so sometimes the bin petty cash is best used to reduce the economic impact of using a nano or focus group to score something big.

Focus group is wildly situational. You shouldn’t use it blindly because whiffing gives up an agenda, but you can sometimes make educated guesses based on older Vera info or what cards they’ve been clearly holding on to (or if you have remastered counters or a nanomanagement in hand to save you if you only barely whiff). If you can successfully get 2 advancements in one click, install focus(2) advance gets you to a 3/2 for 6c, or a 4/2 for 7c if you’re flipped as well. If you can get 3+ advancements for a click this card is awesome. The best case scenario is typically when the runner runs Vera or pinholes to trash it after you’ve rezzed it to hit their hand. The card is also incidentally better if the opponent is Lat or they played a Class Act on the same turn they made a successful run, both of which are nice bonuses.

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Summary: is this deck actually good?

Maybe not! This obviously gains surprise value from remoteless Nebula being the only common playstyle. I played a lot of games where people throw out pinholes early because why would they need them? Obviously that’s a huge swing.

Focus group has high upside but it’s a little janky, and can be played around by the runner (in much the same way one used to play around Touch-ups, natch) either by sculpting the hand or by keeping a small grip. If the runner’s not at full hand size the card is significantly worse. It’s part of the reason I didn’t want to put this in as >1x, because it is probably not consistent enough to make the whole game plan, it’s more there as a situational second copy of nanomanagement.

I do strongly feel that the upside of maintaining a remote is very large, especially with newer cards like Grubber that are trying to incentivize remote play. But Vera is only one option (that combos nicely with Focus Group). There are loads of interesting alternatives - regolith, magistrate, wage workers, plutus, b-1001, malapert, tucana? So many options!

If you come up with anything cool in this direction, let me know!

Happy netrunning!