Gagarin should stay banned (undefeated worlds, Hun. nats)

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nbkelly 959

This is the gagarin list I used at Hungarian Nationals, and is (close enough to) the gag list I used at worlds. It was undefeated at both events (5-0 /2nd in swiss at Hungarian Nationals, 2-0 at worlds). Big thanks to necro for running a great event, and thanks to NISEI for running a great worlds.

The core idea is that enough people are playing punishment gag that I don't need to. If the runner contests my economy, that's fine. They're the ones wasting time. Also since for both events, I was effectively playing from midnight onwards, I decided I didn't want to use the brainpower that HHN math requires. The onus of thinking is entirely on my opponent.

There's a single econ warfare in this version to drive the ruse home.

If they let me have it, even better. I can find the pieces I need to fast advance, and bury agendas that I don't want to score.

I think the core concept of gagarin is pretty powerful, but it isn't too busted. the only thing gagarin does is doubles the opportunity cost for checking remotes (from 1c to 2c), and this is negated with a single point of bad publicity.

The only genuinely busted card is commercial bankers group, and I genuinely think that card should be banned. It's OK for assets to be good, and fine for them to have strong win conditions, but that card is just far too polarizing for all of the matchups that it's in.

TechnoCo is in the deck Because I Can, and because it either forces shapers and anarchs (the decks I expected to be prevalent) to interact, or taxes them bigly for setting up.

4 comments
29 Nov 2021 Longi

Hey, congrats on results! Why Akhet over Border Control?

30 Nov 2021 nbkelly

Thanks!

Akhet is mainly there because it's cheaper, it punishes anybody who thinks they're too good for paperclip (4c with Sherman, gauss), and the advancement token can provide some good bait to make the runner waste more time interacting.

Actually keeping the runner out seems untenable, so I figured the border control ability would be pretty lackluster - there's a good argument for using it to waste stargate or khusyuk triggers though.

2 Dec 2021 Saan

Genuine question: if people know you're not on HHN, how do you keep Bankers alive? So often in a non HHN deck, I find that Bankers becomes "gain 2c, runner loses a click and 3c." If the runner is struggling economically, that's still great, but if they get some cash early it just makes me sad.

2 Dec 2021 nbkelly

Fair question. When I was testing this with my group, we found that (just like titan) if you're doing anything except challenging centrals or hunting agendas, you're giving the corporation time to win.

It's actually surprising how little money you need to win with recoco lists. You can win with 3 agendas spending no more than 7 credits.

On the day, I believe the only game where I was allowed to have bankers was vs. Odol on smoke. The other games, the tempo/click tax of trashing assets was enough to let me find pieces.