Incubator Freedom

I've been playing Freedom for about a month and this is where I landed. Unfortunately, it's still not as good as Val. It still took me to 13th at the Chicago Regional, and would have gotten me into the cut had I ID'd the last round.

The biggest departure from other Freedom lists is moving from Inject/Earthrise to Peddler/SMC. It's a little slower, but it lets you play the large number of programs without needing extra clicks from Clone Chip installs to undo the Inject tempo boost.

Because you're not on Inject and you're rewarded for Datasuckers, Mimic is your killer. Remember Mimic? It was in every deck until the end of 2016. It's still pretty good.

Knob is for the as well as getting the extra Consume counter. Paying 5 for it feels bad, but if you can get in after you install it you're good to go.

You can lose to rush pretty badly while you set up, so DDoS and Rumor Mill (for Rashida/Stinson/MCAAP) are clutch.

The econ package is a bit flawed. In theory Consume becomes your late game econ, and the main 4 econ cards (Gamble/Laundry/Casts/Lib) plus the Stimhacks and Datasucker tokens should tide you over. In reality, there's too many costly installables. I think it could work if the Incubator/Trypano package was dropped.

There's hardly any central pressure. Several games I was just trashing stuff out of HQ while they top decked agendas and jammed them in a really tall remote I couldn't get in because I was missing a breaker or something. In theory, The Turning Wheel is your multiaccess, but...

You always get tagged with this deck. Like, always. Are they Argus? You're tagged. CtM? Tagged. Hit a Str 6 Surveyor? Just take the tags. I can't afford to create pressure very well, so I just run when poor to trash stuff with virus counters and then I get tagged. I floated tags in 3 of 5 games at regionals and roughly half of my testing games. Hence the Paper Tripping can get you out of a game-ending situation if you happen to find it. I didn't see it on the day, but I also beat a CtM deck while floating 14 tags by trashing tag punishment with Freedom's ability, so I had that going for me. I might just put in a Counter Surveillance as a tagging tech card, haha.

Anyways, I think the Incubator/Trypano concept has legs in Freedom, but I can't quite crack the code. As much as I point out the weaknesses of the deck, it still wins me games and I have a ton of fun pushing virus counters around. And sometimes that's all you need.