SF/Glass House Worlds Gagarin Prison

This is an archetype that is probably going to be present in the cut at worlds, if not the archetype that in my view is most likely to win the entire tournament.

There just isn't realistic hate for asset spam in the meta. Most all of the tools you can play to combat this archetype don't actually help you beat it, they just make the game take longer.

This is just exactly the hottubs archetype as most of you will remember it. Your win conditions are largely the same. Use a combination of HNN spam + Zelous Judge to lock your opponent in tag hell while accumulating a massive bankroll of credits from your assets. If your opponent refuses to interact, charge up Mumbad Construction Co. behind ice and score 7 points in one turn.

At first we thought that just playing Val + 3 Mining Accident + 3 Scrubber + 2 Salsette Slums + Magnum Opus would be easily strong enough to beat this deck. After a couple games of adjusting to the matchup, it became clear that those were not enough tools to actually reliably win the game. The Gagarin deck does largely the exact same hyper-consistent thing every game.

Step 1) Install every asset you draw. Use Tech Startup to get bullets as needed, or turtlebacks in the earlygame.

Step 2) Ice centrals with at least 1 ice. If you know the meta and can figure out their breakers this helps a lot, since Sandburg is your main lock piece for later on.

Step 3) Make a ton of money, threaten HHN + Boom at all times. Try to get Zelous Judge behind ice.

Tip: Any asset behind ice is as good as permanently affixed for the remainder of the game. Your deck can race and tax out Mopus without a ton of difficultly. It will take time, but you will ultimately win if you get at least one Hostile and one Museum behind ice.

There is tech to be aware of, but the deck handles most all of it.

Elizabeth Mills + immediately overwrite her + shuffle her in scrubs badpub pretty quickly and easily. Its critical to not allow mills to stay installed in case your opponent is on Salsette (as her getting removed from the game is your answer to that!)

Whampoa Reclaimation is your main answer to flood. Notably if you have Whampoa Rec you can always float an agenda in HQ, which is a nice perk older gagarin decks were not really allotted.

Best Defense beats Aeneas, Sac Con, Misdirection, and Tapwrm. Use it and recur it well!

This deck also beats most every runner, because its extremely "fast" (the game is often over by turn 6-8 whether or not that is recognized by your opponents.)