A Truly Diverse Portfolio - Top 4 at Lockdown 5

While looking into decks to play for the fifth edition of (Iberian) Lockdown, I noticed that I had no overlapping factions across all previous editions. I thought it would be fun to top with HB and Anarch, since I topped in three previous editions, And I managed to do so.

I knew I wanted to play Reina, but that didn't leave me a ton of choices in terms of corp ID. I tried out asset spam Seidr but found it easily countered if you play correctly. Architects of Tomorrow is pretty strong but that would leave me at 9 points, while my strategy has always been to aim for the 5 to 7. And Stronger Together has had extremely poor showings at past editions. So that left me with Cybernetics Divison.

Instead of playing glacier, I decided to make use of the smaller hand size ability (and the exepected lack of Criminals with their Falsified Credentials) and play a trap heavy HB. I am not super familiar with this archetype and irl I suck at bluffing, but I figured online I wouldn't have to pretend to have a poker face.

My mind games worked out in swiss, where I beat Gnat (who lost his entire rig to Aggressive Secretary first!) and Kit via scoring out, and Chaos Theory via Show of Force Kill. In the top cut it was losing to Smoke when my connection crapped out and I couldn't rejoin, so I decided to concede. Victory wasn't impossible, but unlikely.

As for card choices, it has some pretty standard trap choices. Marcus Batty was there to get cheap kills and rig shooting with NEXT Gold, but without Bronze and Silver it was too unreliable. Helheim also leaned into this, but I never drew it. Najja is a cheap barrier that still cost two to break and does not die instantly to Chisel.

As always, big shoutout to my opponents and to Vesper for another great tournament, and looking forward to the next one