Card of the Day

Written by Foolkiller

This agenda has been one of my favorites since the very beginning of Netrunner. The potential to lay heavy ice for NO cost in bits is very powerful. In these days of ever-increasing Runner deck technologies, this type of card gives the Corp some of the necessary power to compete.

The most obvious card to use in combination with Security Purge (S.P.) is Planning Consultants. Use the Consultants to set your R&D up before scoring S.P. to ensure that only ICE pops up when you reveal the top three cards. Unless you have extra actions or a method of scoring S.P. faster than normal you will need to install S.P. and use Planning Cosultants in one turn, and score S.P. the next. Don't forget to account for your draw on the next turn when you set your deck or you may end up drawing the ICE you hoped to install for free. Both Genetics-Visionary Acquisition and Networked Center will allow you to score S.P. faster than normal, as will the fast advance cards, but generally the two (S.P. and Fast Advance) are not compatible. The reason is because S.P.-based decks don't usually need many bits, so coming up with funds to fast advance may be difficult.

Five pieces of ICE are ideal for S.P. Unfortunately, for the less-than-obscene players, four are rares. The cards are:

1. Wall of Ice (cost 13 bits)
2. Toughonium Wall (cost 13 bits)
3. Colonel Failure (cost 17 bits)
4. Liche (cost 14 bits)
5. Haunting Inquisition (cost 8 bits)

Haunting Inquisition is the cheapest card in the list, but it is also the toughest Code Gate to date, so it fits in. All of these ICE are expensive and have a strength of at least 6. Loading up your forts with these makes running a daunting task for any Runner.

If you only have one or two S.P.s then tuning a deck around them is probably a mistake. Including them as a lark without making preparations to set your R&D will bring more heartache than joy. I've more than one time scored S.P. in desperation only to end up trashing another agenda, or some other card I really needed. At that point I gave up on using this card in anything but a tightly focused deck. It is best to combine this with some other agenda that will help your deck in some way (Superior Net Barriers, etc..) if only to avoid putting a minimum of nine in your deck to make it legal (somewhat difficult even for the deep-of-pocket!). 5 plus any combination of 8 points (like two Tychos) works very nicely. Keep in mind that the entire deck should still be tuned around S.P.

One problem with S.P. noted above is that money is usually not abundant with the need to include so many other types of cards in the deck, so protecting your subsidiary fort may be a problem. The key to solving this problem in the S.P. (and most other) decks is Emergency Rig. Rig a Liche for 3 turns on a subsidiary fort turn 1 or 2. This give you a fairly safe place to score your first agenda thus protecting whatever forts you wish on a permanent basis. The Rigs are still handy later on when you draw ICE into your hand. Use it to toughen a weak fort for a turn or two when you need it. This means you can afford to put several into your deck for early security and late utility.

Overall, S.P. is a very powerfull card with a very narrow use. If you can lay your hands on enough to build a dedicated deck, it is a very sound strategy that performs well even in the current, highly competitive environment of killer Runner decks. Good luck with it!