My Spombo for NtScape SC (Top10)

This is my version of Spombo that I chose to play in Akis Store Championship. In total I ended up placing 10th missing the cut by 1 tiebreaker game. The deck itself managed to achieve a record of 3-2.

The Games:

The 2 losses were both accumulated vs Hoshiko. One of the Hoshiko lists was teched extremely well for the matchup since she was playing 3 Imps in combination with 2 Friday Chips. With that combination she was able to trash all of the agendas until she was able to put 7 points in the bin. The other Hoshiko wasnt teched at all on the matchup and won the game barely by stealing a vacheron on T1 from a single R&D access (that was my tiebreaker game so it felt extra bad too). The games I won were vs a shaper and 2 Criminals with no tech for the matchups thus it fairly easy cruising through those games for me.

Choices in Deckbuilding:

Arella vs News Team package: I first started out playing the Havvys Spombo lite deck he played in the Stevenage SC. After playtesting that deck a bit and making changes that he suggested (like cutting the nico campaigns) I felt like the extra tempo that Arella didnt really feel necessary and her role in the combo was negligably as well. Thus I decided to cut her for 2 News Teams and Boom!.

Exchange of Information vs Boom!: This is is the decision Im still the most unsure of in my deckbuilding. Boom! offers you the opportunity to instantly win the game if the runner slips up while Exchange requires more setups/needs some things to fall into place like the runner stealing a vacheron to win you the game. The tradeoff is that it forces the runner to remove both tags instead of just 1 to be safe. If your opponent hasnt discovered yet that you are on EoI over Boom they might just remove 1 tag and lose because of that decision. That improves your win% in swiss games. Im not sure how necessary those extra percentages are though. The deck already is a monster in the swiss. Additionally EoI costs 1 less influence which you can spend i other places.

No Meridian: In testing I discovered that players would never take Meridian as a -1 Agenda. The tax it presents isnt relevant in nearly any matchups with Paperclip breaking it for only 3c. That just isnt high enough especially when taxing the runner out is rarely part of your gameplan. In addition to that it gets broken easily by botulus and thus doesnt offer any help vs MaxX which is one the worse matchups for this deck.

Influence: The autoinclude influence in this represents at least 2 Stock Buy-Back and 3 Spin Doctors. That leaves you with 8 Influence to spend on other cards. I chose to play a News Team package that cost me additional 6 Influence. Thus I was left with 2 Influence to spend at my leasure. I chose to spend that on 2 Predictive Planograms since they offer extra draw to dig towards your combo and cheap money to recover from a DoF if necessary. Additionally they synergize fairly well with news team. Despite all this Im not sure that it was the correct choice for my leftover influence since it cost me 2 Slots while including either an additional news team or Stock buyback mightve just been better to conserve on slots.

Tech Cards: The deck runs quite a few tech cards. First of all I chose to move the ICE suite around a bit to make room for 3 Magnets to combat maxx and other botulus decks better. Additionally I ran 2 CVS to also help out vs all the virus decks as well as Clot. The last tech card past those that I chose to include was Best Defense. Its a great answer to Artist colony while having some fringe applications in the Maxx matchup for destroying Progenitors that are hosting important viruses.

False Lead vs Personality Profiles: One of these 2 will most likely fill out your the last 2 Agenda points you need to play. False Lead synergizes more with the News Team plan of the deck when scored while Personality Profiles can help out vs Maxx when scored. I believe it was a mistake during deckbuilding for me to include False Lead over Profiles in my deck since forfeiting False Lead to make the Tags stick is less effective with EoI as punishment than it would be in a Boom! deck. With EoI it "only" gains you 1 point (which can still be relevant) while in a Boom deck it obviously just wins you the game. I didnt face any Maxx in my tournament so it ended up not mattering but its something that should be considered.

General Opinion on the Deck:

I think Spombo is positioned fairly well in the meta despite having a losing matchup vs Maxx. It beats most other runners unless they bring big amounts of tech to combat your deck. In a meta with alot of other strong corp choices spombo is in a great spot because it requires very specific tech that runner need to beat it. Runners will have to decide during deckbuilding wether or not they plan on beating Spombo or if they will just accept it as a losing matchup and focus on the corps instead. If choose to ignore Spombo you can pick up some nearly free wins when playing spombo while still having game vs the other runners. There is the danger however that the meta can turn on you and everybody is playing hate for your deck. If thats the case you will most definitely have a rough time so watch out for that.

This has been my first extensive writeup on a deck I made so Id be appreciative of as much feedback as possible on the writeup itself as wel as the deck.