[Neo Liberation] 3 centrals, 3 installs, 3 payoffs, 3 stabs

Summary

Open the Chest for treasures! Exploit Masterwork (v37)'s clickless install to the fullest for up to 2 Chests openings and 1 Jeitinho score in a single turn!

Deck idea

2 new "Quest" (run all 3 central servers) cards just dropped in Liberation: Jeitinho and The Wizard’s Chest. Both are hardwares. Masterwork (v37) allows us to install both of them mid-run. So theoretically we can get 2 Chest openings and 1 assassination with nothing on the board starting our turn, maximizing our turn efficiency and also the surprise factor.

While many Jeitinho decks use The Wizard’s Chest to tutor out the blade, I think opening the Chest should put you far ahead, beyond just fetching 1/3 of the win, since the longer the game goes, the harder it is to Quest, and Jeitinho decks often run out of steam. With this in mind, what can we find in the Chest?

• Resource: Liberated Account and The Class Act for econ.
• Program: Basically a free Spark of Inspiration with doubled flexibility.
• Hardware: gamble for a Jeitinho (not recommended given our plethora of hardware, especially Boomerangs)

Jeitinho decks suffer when the Corp figures out what you're up to, so typically we only have one narrow timing in the early game to get an explosive start before they ICE up heavily. And such an explosive start we can get with popping 2 The Wizard’s Chests! Always name resources for our first one, to get either quality draw or 16c. The second one can be an Icebreaker to set up future runs, or further resource value.

With our clickless hardware install, our questing turns also become more flexible. We can afford to bypass with Alarm Clock, play an extra Sure Gamble or clicking Liberated Account to money up, or S-Dobrado for double bypass.

Piloting the deck and challenges (suggestions welcome)

While we want an explosive first quest start, it's not easy for the deck to draw and find the hardware we need. I always mulligan for at least 1 card draw card (Console/Class Act are ideal).

In the early game, usually 1 Boomerang and 1 bypass event should be enough to get through all centrals, and it's honestly worth spending them. Facecheck with Bravado whenever possible, to avoid planting into Logjam and wasting Boomerangs. Against Jinteki, it's good to have Flip Switch as a panic button against Anansi or Cloud Eater to jack out on approach before encounter.

Another problem is that you'll typically burn away a lot of your resources on the questing turn, and the payoff only comes later. So we are rather weak to retaliations, especially if we steal any agendas during the central runs. Security Testing is there to avoid being force-fed agendas in Archives and to snipe key remotes.

While it's easy to quest against asset matchups due to their few ICE, Working Prototype still poses a huge problem if we need to wait a turn to use Liberated Accounts, and they are typically good at retaliations.

There is also a tricky balance between setting up questing turns and challenging rushy Corps like Ob or PD, as we are unlikely to find all three Assassinations before they score out. This is likely an inherent weakness of the deck, but also could be piloting problems.

Cards to (not) consider

Prognostic Q-Loop: The more I play Az, the more I feel Masterwork (v37) and Q-Loop overlaps, as having both means one of the installs will not get the Az discount and have to pay 1c more on top for the clickless benefit. With off-turn installs, it could help thin our deck faster to find all blades, but I feel this deck doesn't have enough hardware to install to make it consistent enough.

Exploit: A card in Standard as a solid questing reward.

Femme Fatale: On paper it's a great Chest reward, free 9c and a permanent bypass that can work with Rejig. However that means including 2+ dead cards in our hand that we cannot play. At best we can Retrieval Run to cheat it out, but for consistency's sake Carmen is preferred.

Malandragem: Usable with Run events, more flexible than Femme Fatale. But it's just not cheap and consistent enough that I'd just play bypass events.

Capybara and Flip Switch: These are mostly sentry techs against Cloud Eater, Anansi and Hammer, but the number of copies of each I am not 100% sure.

Red Team: Could be a decent quest reward, clickless 3c (or 5c with Sec Testing) is really attractive. However that one-turn-delay between finishing the quest and being able to cash out means the Corp get to reinforce their centrals, which makes it less consistent than Liberated Account. The last thing we want is to have a quest reward that we can't benefit from immediately.

Sneakdoor Beta: Genuinely attractive for late game, especially with Alarm Clock incentivizing over-ICEing HQ. But it just gets revealed by The Wizard’s Chest too often to be worth a surprise.

Inside Job and Mutual Favor: Added as this deck struggled hard against rushy Corps, so they are here to keep the Corp more honest in the early game.