Decklist of the week

Der Kaiser Sebastião - 👑 at Italian Nationals

Description by the author: Council 1725

Introduction

Before going on to read the writeup, please listen to this song. It will set the theme for the rest of the writing.

The Last Emperor (Main Title Theme) - David Byrne

Okay. Welcome to Sebastiao. Many people have been trying to get him to work, and I think this is the first functional list - as evidenced by an undefeated Nationals run (4-0). In fact, I will go further. I believe that this style of Sebastiao is the strongest runner in current standard, and also the most difficult one to play. Stay tuned to find out why.

How it began

I had of course dabbled with Sebastiao, particularly Class Act Sebastiao, as we all had. It seemed fine, but my personal interpretation of the Sebastiao engine was that you often spend your limited actions moving a Bishop back and forth to move a pawn ahead - a lot of fiddling, not much to show for it. As Jai also says, Seb is hungry for clicks.

On my flight back to Vienna from EMEA, I was lucky to get to hang out with TheRobin, who asked me “Did Unband explore Eye for an Eye Seb?”. No, we hadn’t. But that was a fresh concept.

Ver. 0.1 - 45 Card Seb

I didn’t actually end up slotting EfaE in the 1st version of the deck, but I do remember trying it out a bit. Note the thesis and meta spread.Shoutout to SebK as well who asked “can’t we just trash the Cookbook?”. It went out shortly after.

Ver. 0..55 - This is Grinder

Wanting to try a version with Lago Paranoa Shelter and Bankhar, I went up to 52 cards. I must admit Lago has always scared me a bit since it’s release. It’s a card that goes through the stack quite quickly, and many a Jinteki card have been banned on the basis that “not getting to play your cards is not fun” - why then are we doing this to ourselves? Well, dear reader, we have recursion, we will never be ground out, thanks to the 2 copies of Ashen Epilogue adorning our deck, one of which we can recur with our trusty DJ Steve.

I only have the courage today to slot Lago because QTM did it first, showing me that a deck with sufficient recursion loves to smack its stack into the heap.Jinteki is doing you a favor, no, really.

Oh, and of course the endless Imp + Friday Chip setup also means we are not only grinding ourselves, but the corp as well. This deck was a bit too slow, but the spirit was there.

Ver 1.0 - Stability

A first well-rounded version with a positive winrate on Jnet. Much of the inf spend would remain the same for the rest of development.

It is here I should begin to talk about the deck’s engine.

The core of our engine is comprised of Solidarity Badge and Amanuensis. We float 1 tag, get a Ama counter, meanwhile also found a trash to charge Solid Badge, and thus we draw 2 cards at the beginning of our turn. With the cards we draw, along with draws from Lago Paranoa Shelter, we can fuel our Bankhar to break more ice which lets us get more trashes. It is very much an ongoing thing (theme music).

There are many more peripheral moving parts within that engine. Leech enables our ice trashes, and wants central runs, which Imp also does to generate trashes and make the corp take net damage, which in turn protects our comrades via Seb’s 2nd line of text.

‘As an additional cost to trash a connection resource with the basic action, the Corp must trash 1 card from HQ.’

“I kind of need these cards” - London

This deck wins games. It’s solid. The long game is strong, and it has plenty of tools (Botulus, Crew, Physarum, Bankhar) to contest early scores. So what’s left?

Ver 1.05-1.32 - Simulchip, and other experiments

These versions were attempts at trying out some cards, like Simulchip, and cutting back to a saner amount of cards. Leave this to the historians.

1.05

1.11

1.2

1.31

1.32

In between I also make a couple of shells trying to slot some cards like Audrey and Consume, but they stop at the conceptual stage. I’m still trying to get used to piloting the deck wholesale, and don’t feel comfortable yet exploring further.

1.9 - 56 Card Seb

This is the version I end up on for a long time, and doing extensive testing with. I even do a little internal writeup justifying each and every single card in the deck.

This deck works - it really does. I start testing it with London, whose critical eye helps us iron out some inconsistencies. I also start testing it with Aksu, to get some high quality PD games in as a litmus test for speed. I believe Seb ended up going 10-1 against it, with the one loss coming from a Mavirus flatline, giving us the following gem.

”This deck is so fucked up and I don’t get it.” - Aksu

There was also a beautiful in-joke that blossomed from this testing, where Aksu remarked that every time Arruaceiras Crew trashes an ice, what really happens is that the ice ‘joins’ the crew. Tatu Bola - join the crew. Now also with complimentary eyebrows.

Join the Crew - Aksu “Quagsire” LeMonstre

The Sebtember Conspiracy

It is at this juncture that I decide to run a conspiracy: The Sebtember Conspiracy. Conspiracies are a bit like testing groups, but short-lived, focussed on developing a particular deck, invitees hand-picked with something to contribute to a particular idea. Since the Cafe at the End of the World (aka Unband) had largely become empty, I needed a new host of conspirators to plot a meta upset with. Luckily, many highly powerful actors quickly agreed, and soon we had an international network of connivers at the ready to develop and unfurl the conspiracy of Sebtember.

Ver. 1.98 sees a brief dance with Audrey and God of War. The change that ends up sticking is Ver 1.99, swapping a Chuck Tingle for Backla-B.

Physarum is a great card that fits into our overarching theory of being able to contest early, but adding Baklan as a ‘4th’ copy of Crew ended up winning out, quickly convincing me in play. The theoretical get of Praxising back Physarum just didn’t feel as smooth in practice, whereas Baklan actually felt really smooth with how the rest of the deck plays. Shoutout to [[[[[DATABASE ERROR - NAME NOT FOUND]]]]] for stimulating discussion towards Baklan - it was a card I was entertaining at the very inception of the deck, but it was it’s excellent suggestion that made me actually slot it and test it out - and it played great! Big thanks to lei.

We give God of War one more try in Ver. 2.0 - in theory the optionality of taking a tag is appealing, and Aumakua v. GoW break in very similar ways in this deck, but this version also doesn’t quite pan out and so we drop it for now.

We fork back to earlier versions with Ver. 1.9845 which is essentially what The King wants to do with the deck, and eerily similar to how the deck ultimately ends up - barring the Baklan and the 2nd copy of Devil Charm. It goes to show how good Brandon is at building big Anarch decks.

I meanwhile fork back to Ver. 1.987 , acknowledging that we could do with a bit more econ - I add the third FoaF (or Friendo). Note I cut any Devil Charms in this version.

This changes in Ver 1.999 - I go back up to 2 copies, cutting a Leech for it, as well as the 3rd copy of FoaF. Devil Charm is good in the AGInfusion Matchup, letting you trash an Anansi at instant speed.

—

Ver 2.0 Devil Bones Style

After [Name: Not Found] kicks my ass one too many times with Asa Grupp, I decide it’s time to slot a 2nd Miss Bones as a meta call, finally cutting the Ashen EP package. Some people play Nuka in this inf slot, but I hark back to the very beginning of this writeup - Seb is very click hungry - Nuka is a lot of clicks, and we have good in-faction draw.

And this brings us to where we’re at today:

Ver 2.1 Devil Bones Style

Deciding that the meta is very fast, I cut the last copy of Labor Rights in favor of a 3rd copy of Foaf and a 2nd copy of Hannah. I end up ruminating on a 3rd copy of Devil Charm for the AG MU on the tournament day, but ultimately decide that a 50/50 matchup is acceptable.

So with this in mind, the deck is complete. The 2nd Miss Bones is a meta call in my view, and you could spend that influence on other very good card if you expect less assets. My theory was that Miss Bones lets you wrangle down asset decks immediately, before they can grow out of control.

Strategy

What are we trying to do? Well, in essence we are interested in destroying the means of domination, that is, taking away the corporations wincon. The goal insofar is not to win the game, but to make it such that the corp has no more way to win the game themselves. In kink terms, we are interested in pummeling our opponent into submission and gaining a concession by means of lack of chance to win the game. This will look different depending on the type of corp we are playing against, but will usually involve trashing cards out of HQ with Imp.

Up against PD? Hard lock the remote via ice destruction and trash any Seamlesses you see out of hand.

Playing against meat damage-based kill? Trash their operations while finding your copy of Jarogniev Mercs.

Playing against a deck that punishes you for scoring agendas? Trash their cards. :) Imp their agendas. Don’t feel obliged to take steals you don’t want to, although threat 3 for Praxis is of course great.

In a lot of ways, this is where the other half of the difficulty of playing this deck comes from. The better you understand the corporations gameplan, the better you can dismantle it, piece by piece. We are constantly balancing the idea of operating our infernal machine, and pondering which move would hurt the corporation the most.

This is a very similar idea to another one of the best decks in the current meta - Sokka’s boring Lat. But whereas that deck feels like operating a scalpel to use your precision tool in the exact way you need it to to undo your opponents plan, this deck just throws a plethora of its many solutions to whatever problem the corp presents you with, adding an element of unpredictability. Thus, we also need an appetite for chaos and its proper management when playing this deck.

MulchInfusion

Augustus, Brandon, koga - these are not the only geniuses working tirelessly in the lab to restore Mulch, a beautiful, oversized Anarch deck recurring programs at instant speed to ruin to corp’s life. Unlike their approach at Necromancy, however, we took a different approach, choosing to mulch all the other runners, and infusing the dead body of mulch with new nutrients.

What do I mean by this? Well. We infuse Maxx: We mill ourselves for value, and then recur milled cards - our heap is like a 2nd hand.

We infuse Geist: We can very unexpectedly get into remotes that corp was sure we weren’t getting into - Praxis and Hannah do a lot of work here.

We infuse Liza: We draw 2 cards off of tags we take, with a side of Hayley; clicklessly installing our cards from hand while we’re at it.

Thus, the ghost of Mulch is reborn - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

Worlds2024

Sadly, I don’t expect many people to take this deck to worlds. It has a very steep learning curve, and it took me 50 games until I stopped being afraid of every little thing that could go wrong when playing it, and began to trust and believe in the deck. I think anybody who wants to take it would need to play 70-100 test games with it to become comfortable with it, which just seems unrealistic a time frame for the <2 weeks we have left. But if someone were to do well with it, it would make me very happy indeed. :)

Discography

For getting in the spirit of the deck:

Ongoing Thing - 20syl

“Don’t give it to me easy - I like a little challenge. Winning feels better when you take a little damage. Slow burning, fast earning, wheels turning - it’s an ongoing thing.”

Lenu - remix

”Tell me what I cannot do”

Volta - O Terno

For playing the deck:

-silence- (piloting the deck is hard enough as is)

Replays

DM me on discord if you’d like some replays of the piloting of the deck. I feel much of it is bound up in tacit knowledge that feels difficult to put into words, and many lines are highly contextual.

Goodbye

That’s all there is to it. Please enjoy the strongest, spicyest runner in the current meta.

Tja Wien, der letzte Kaiser bist du.