[SUNSET] An Attempt At Disproving "NBN is Bad in Sunset"

I don't like it when cards or factions are called "bad". I'm just trying to have fun with cards because I find them cool and interesting, rather than only those which are most competitively viable or whatever the metric is for a card to not be called bad! So when Sunset was announced, and I saw people saying that NBN was bad, I wanted to try and do something with NBN to try and show that there are good NBN decks in the format.

I went 1-3 with this at the February Sunset AMT, pulling the great performance of my Mercury deck down. Most of the losses were due to flood, which we'll talk about later - I genuinely believe there's a good deck in here, but it certainly didn't do a good job of proving my point.

Let's talk about the deck.

The aim is to take a suite of excellent 4/2s - Artificial Cryptocrash, Offworld Office and Tomorrowʼs Headline (a 3/2 that you'd love to have a click spare with) - and score them without advancing them on the turn you install them via Seamless Launch or Pravdivost Consulting: Political Solutions's ability on the runner turn. Seamless Launch + Vladisibirsk City Grid is a combo we've seen in the past: you can advance a previously installed Vladisibirsk with Seamless to fast advance a 3/2.

We have a collection of advanceable targets for the turns that you're not scoring: Akhet, Pharos, Tree Line, Mestnichestvo, Reversed Accounts and Vladisibirsk City Grid, so in theory you should be getting a lot of mileage out of the ability. We also have Magnet because a fair few of the ice are vulnerable to Botulus.

Finally, we have a reasonable amount of credit denial through Reversed Accounts, Mestnichestvo and Artificial Cryptocrash. Sadly we don't have Bellona to back it up, but generally taxing the runner given some of the ice they have to go through is its own reward.

How'd the games go?

I think I angered some kind of deity recently given some of these games.

Round 1 vs awildturtok (win vs Sable) - This is the only game where I find a good remote ice early enough to threaten some early scores. Prav's ability gives me two counters on a Reversed Accounts in the early game, tanking Sable's economy. An early Regolith Mining License sorts out my economy, I get a Mestnichestvo and start scoring behind two ice. The rest of the game is fairly standard glacier, with a nice 5/3 Project Beale scored at the end.

Round 2 vs krysdreavus (loss vs Arissana) - I only get one ice in a mulligan so install it protecting R&D, and install Reversed Accounts and Vladisibirsk City Grid in remotes. By end of turn 3, I have three agendas in my hand and no iced remote. I find a Magnet quickly enough, but ey uses various Mayfly and Compile tricks to repeatedly challenge the remote. I have to keep the agendas in HQ for a bit to try and stabilise, but then ey runs HQ (steal one of the three agendas in there), R&D (steal an agenda from the top when there's only 4 in 27), Archives and plays Deep Dive to find another agenda. This game was streamed if you want to relive my mistakes in real time. Ey had a really cool deck, so I can't be too mad, although my luck was pretty brutal.

Round 3 vs Stwyde (loss vs Mercury) - I found my first remote ice on turn 7. The agendas piled up massively in HQ because of this. Turn 9, when I finally stabilised a little, was Chrysopoeian Skimming (I chose to reveal R&D because I had three agendas in hand and did not want Mercury focusing on HQ), Divide and Conquer taking two accesses from HQ (stealing 4pts) and then four accesses from R&D (stealing another 4pts because apparently Skimming revealed even more points), taking Mercury from 0pts to 8pts in one click. Honestly don't know what I could have done here, maybe the Magnet I installed on R&D turn 1 should have been saved for the remote or something.

Round 4 vs Scarius (loss vs 419) - Realising the common pattern in the previous few games, I install a Magnet protecting HQ and the remote on turn 1 rather than R&D. He gets a Shibboleth early, which breaks both of the ice for 1c. I don't find a second remote ice until turn 9, a Hydra which I can barely afford. I stabilise a bit, but it's not enough to come back from a few steals leading the game to 6-2 in his favour.

Oh dear.

Yeah that wasn't great was it? My opponents played well but I definitely got some rough draws. The universal theme seemed to be flood without finding appropriate remote ice, so I would consider changing the ice suite a little. I like F2P and Unsmiling Tsarevna, but they may be better served as ice that are more effective on the remote. Hydra is a favourite of mine but I think it's a little too expensive for the deck, especially when we already have a Pharos (even if, if I remember correctly, I never drew it on the day) and Mestnichestvo in the painful taxing slot.

Jua was surprisingly effective, and would have really set krysdreavus back in our game if ey hadn't stolen six points in that turn. (I'm told the commentators liked it at least!) At 3str it's a nuisance to break so may genuinely work as a 2x. That might also push you towards Degree Mill, but I'm unsure about that.

There's work to be done and the idea is cool even if the execution wasn't ideal. Anyway, thanks to all of my opponents, our nameless TO, and Kror for judging! And of course QEH for being a supportive environment for building stuff like this.