So you're a Netrunner player now. You've bought a few starter decks and a handful of booster packs. You're starting to get familiar with the cards and what they can do. You may have even tried constructing some of the deck designs that you've seen on the internet. Now you're ready to start designing your own decks. You have your work cut out for you, to say the least. With 270 cards in the basic set, and an additional 154 in the Proteus expansion, it can be a daunting task figuring out how many of each card to include in your deck. Well, I'm here to help you out. Below I'm going to outline a deck design method that will (hopefully) help you to organize and focus your design into something that you're happy with. It will also help you to analyze how your deck plays, and to fix anything that's not working out quite right.

This is a "modular" method of design. You may have heard terms like "divide-and-conquer", "separation of objectives", or "sub-goals". Same idea. Basically, you divide your deck idea into smaller groups (or "modules") of cards that are similar in function, and then deal with each module as a separate unit. When analyzing your deck, then, you look at the performance of each module, and make any necessary adjustments from there. For example, you will most likely have a module for "money". When play-testing your deck, you just look at your money situation. Rather than thinking about individual cards (Is my Broker coming up as often as I would like?), you can think of the cards as a group (Is my money coming out as fast as I need it to?). The idea being that it's easier to concentrate on the performance of a few groups rather than 45 (or more) separate cards.

The system

Step 1: Motivation

This seems at first like a trivial step. But it really is important. You'll want to think about why you want to make a particular deck. This motivation will guide all of the decisions you make from here on. When I say motivation, I'm really referring to what you want to accomplish while playing your deck. Do you want the deck to be fun to play? Do you want it to win? Do you want to clean up at a tournament? Do you want to try a particular card combo? Do you want to have a particular theme in the cards, art, etc.? Are you trying to make a workable deck around a particular card as a challenge? Most likely, your motivation will be a combination of many of these (especially the first two), each to a varying degree. Would you sacrifice efficiency for fun? Would you sacrifice fun for the sake of the artwork on the cards? Once you decide on the motivation behind the deck, you will be prepared to make the decisions that will come later in the design process.

Step 2: Idea/Theme

The idea (or theme) is what gives your deck its style. It's what separates your deck from the next guy's. All (or at least most) of the cards in your design should be focused on the central theme. Your theme can be just about anything. You can base your deck on your favorite character from a book. You can base it on a song. You can base it on a card combo. You can base it on Saddam Hussein. You can base it on the movie "Trainspotting". You can base it on a single card, or type of card. You can base it on your calculus professor. You can base it on just about anything you can think of. This can be the most interesting part of the design. Let your imagination run wild! The best ideas come from a combination of sources. Be creative. Have fun.

Step 3: Define your modules

Once you have the theme for your deck, you'll need to divide the idea into modules. The modules you select will depend on what the theme is, how the theme will interact with the cards and card functions, and, of course, whether it's a corp or runner deck.

Your first module will be your "primary" module. This will contain the core cards of your theme. If you are basing the deck on a card combo, these cards will be your primary module. Your theme may focus around certain icebreakers, certain agendas, certain resources, etc. Your primary module will most likely contain your primary "avenue to victory".

You will also want a "support" module. These are the cards that help your primary module function. For example, if your primary cards are icebreakers, your support cards may be stealth programs, or maybe clowns, daemons, etc.

Once you have your theme modules set up, you'll need to consider your "must have" modules. Most decks need money, so you will most likely have a module dedicated to your bit sources. Also, you'll probably want some sort of "card acquisition" module for drawing cards or retrieving cards from your draw or discard pile. If you are making a runner deck, you will probably need icebreakers and some sort of trace and tag avoidance. If you are designing a corp R&D, you'll most likely want some ice cards, and for sure you'll need agendas. Note that often many of these modules will already be incorporated in your primary or support modules. It's possible that you have some cards left over that don't fit into any module. You may end up just making an "other" module for all the odds and ends that don't really fit with anything else.

When you are done, you should have about 3-5 modules that cover all aspects of your deck design. At this point, you should look at the design and ask yourself this question: Can this design accomplish its task? If you think it can't, take a look at the modules you've defined and figure out what is missing. If everything looks good (or at least good enough), then you can proceed to ...

Step 4: Card selection

When selecting cards for your modules, you should keep in mind the following questions: How does this card fit in with my motivation? How does this card fit in with my theme? How does this card fit in with the other cards in the module? Does the characteristics of this card even fit at all in this module or deck? For example, let's say you are selecting cards for the "money" module of a new runner deck. What types of money cards should you include? To answer that you need to have a good grasp on the needs of your primary and support modules. Do they need a lot of bits in short bursts? Can they function with a few bits every turn? Do they need long-term supplies of bits? Answering these questions as they relate to your other modules will help you to decide on whether to go with the Newsgroup Filter, the Loan From Chiba, the Streetware Distributor, or maybe a combination of several cards.

How does this card fit in with my motivation? When considering cards for your modules, you need to think of your motivation. Are you trying to avoid cheesy combinations? Then you would select cards that reflect that. You would avoid putting in massive amounts of Precision Bribery and Time To Collect. Are you trying to make a nasty Olivia Salazar deck? Then you would want to have a variety of big ice for Olivia to rez for rock-bottom prices, or perhaps include some Proteus payback ice (ice that pays you when you rez it) so that you can collect the free money every time the runner runs.

How does this card fit in with your theme? If you were making a big, nasty ice deck, you would probably want to include Priority Requisition and leave out Viral Breeding Ground. Are you using Fubar as your only icebreaker? Then you would not want to waste a card on Cloak (as Fubar is noisy).

Another question that you will need to answer is Do I have the cards I need? That's something that will greatly affect what cards you put in. If you don't have the perfect card for your deck, can you get it? Do you trade a lot? Can you buy the single anywhere? Do you want to try playing with a proxy to see if it works?

Answer these questions for each card you're considering for your deck. Any cards that you decide to use, put a few of them into your "possibles" pile. Once you've collected the cards for each of your modules, take a second look at it. Are you forgetting anything? If not, then move on to the next step.

Step 5: Trimming the fat

If you're anything like me, now that you've collected all the cards you want in your deck, you have way too many cards. You need to start trimming it down. The best decks have the minimum number of cards allowed. The reason for this is that it allows you better control of what cards come up and when. The more cards you have, even if you have more of the same cards, the chances of what you want being further down in the deck is increased. For a runner deck, that means 45 cards. For the corp, that means 45, 50, 55, etc., depending on the number of agenda points you need. This means that you need to take some cards out.

Which cards do you take out? The cards you trim are just as important as the cards you put in, so it's important to think about what you want to trim. But it's not critical. One thing to remember is that this deck isn't written in stone. If you find that something is not working, you can always change it later. So when taking cards out, don't get too uptight. Just relax and have fun. That's the whole point, after all.

You should think about how much of each module you want. Do you want 1 card in 9 to be a money card? Do you want 1/3 of your deck to be ice? So while trimming cards out, be sure to watch the relative strengths of each module. Also keep an eye on the makeup of each module. If you want a balanced money supply, don't take out all of your fast-cash cards, leaving only slow, long term bit-gainers. Take out a few of each instead.

Your goal, of course, is to get your deck down to 45 cards. If your making a runner stack, then you have a little leeway. If you get it down to 49 cards and can't figure out what to cut, then leave it as is. You can always take something out later. If you have a corp deck of 49 cards, however, then you might want to consider adding an agenda rather than cutting your "must have" cards.

Step 6: Playtesting

Once you've trimmed down the deck, you're ready to play it. Tell your friends that you're trying out a new deck, so that they can offer their thoughts on it. Or maybe spring it on them by surprise and see what happens. However you decide to handle it, the first dozen or so games is when you have to keep an eye on how things are going.

Keep a close eye on each of the modules, maybe even take some notes. Look at how each module performed. Did you not get enough of the right cards when you needed them? Were your bit sources as useful as something else may have been? Look carefully at what you discarded. If you discarded many of one type of card, that means you didn't find it useful during the game. Do you really need that type of card in the deck? What would've worked better? Also consider the type of deck your opponent is playing. Does your design have a weakness to be compensated for? Does your deck have a particular strength to be highlighted?

Look at the performance of each module as a whole. Try not to pick apart individual cards. Did your primary module work as expected? Were your support cards doing their job? How was your cash flow working out? Try to think in general trends about each module; too much, not fast enough, ran out of steam, things like that. Once you have a general idea about each module, then you can look at the makeup of each module and see why the trends you noticed developed.

Step 7: Adjustments

If you're not entirely happy with the performance of the design, then some adjustments need to be made. There are two types of adjustments that you can make: module size adjustments, or module makeup adjustments.

Module size adjustments are made when cards of a certain type are coming up too often or not often enough. If you noticed you discarded a lot of ice, then maybe you should reduce the size of your ice module. If your primary cards were too few and far between, then maybe adding more cards to that module would be in order. When adding or subtracting cards from a module, always keep an eye on the module's makeup. Don't make the module lopsided. Keep the balance, unless you also want to make a module makeup adjustment.

Module makeup adjustments are made when you have enough of a certain module, but the cards are just not quite what you needed at the time. If you had plenty of Data Sifters, but found that the runner just wasn't trashing your nodes as you had expected, then maybe swapping them for a couple more Chance Observations would help. When swapping cards, try to keep the module size the same, unless you also wanted to make a module size adjustment.

Once you have completed your tweaking, then go back to step 6. Repeated iterations of steps 6 and 7 is what's called "tuning" your deck. The more you go through these steps, the better and better your deck should perform.

Step 8: Keep it or ditch it

Every time you evaluate your deck, you should compare the results to your initial motivation. Was the deck as fun to play as you wanted? Did it live up to your expectations? If it did, the great! You've successfully created a good deck design. If not, then you'll want to consider the fact that the idea itself wasn't good. If you think that might be the problem, then you should consider how much you wanted to make the deck work. If you didn't really care too much about it, then scrap it and start again. But if you were really hoping you could make it work, then I'd suggest sticking with it. Keep tweaking it a bit here and there. Ask your friends what they think. Maybe post a message to Netrunner-L, get that community's opinion on it. Maybe someone else has tried something similar and could offer you the benefit of their failures and successes. Who knows, you may eventually strike gold. Maybe you'll create a deck that you're proud to carry in your card box. And what's more, you will have created it yourself!