BathtOb Water - 2nd at US Continentals (Cascadia, 6-2)

Cascadia was a blast. Honestly the most fun Netrunner event I've been to so far. Got to reunite with old friends, make new ones, and play some of the tightest netrunner of my life. This deck felt like a beast all day, and even though it didn't quite get me there, it's brought me the most joy of any Corp deck. Getting second to Rongydoge when we flew across the country together(ish) was an honor, he absolutely deserved that win, and it was such a good game to go out on.

I want to start this by thanking Eric (Whiteblade111) for not only hosting Cascadia but also putting his body on the line for my performance. Pictured below is floor bed that Eric used the night before the cut while suffering from a busted ankle so that I could get a good nights rest on the real bed.

This deck also wouldn't be this good with Eric, Dan (cablecarnage) and Jonas (tbu3k) giving me a ton of feedback. This deck feels like it was made for me, and feels like it's at least even with every runner in the field, and favored against most of the decks I faced on the day. The deck stretches every runner to keep up and can tax, fast advance, and build doom upgrade remotes. I played a version of this at East Coast Nats before the new cards were released and went undefeated. The Anarch matchup was a bit shaky, and a I definitely got lucky with some matchups on the day.

But with the rotation of the bin breakers really changed the viability of the deck. The Stavka threat became much bigger, but the fundamentals of the deck are still really strong and flexible to the runner options. This list can certainly be tuned, but right now I feel like every slot in this is justified (Slash and Burn Agriculture maybe excepted).

I've seen people go harder into Hafrún/Stavka running 2/3, but I really liked Vovô Ozetti as a way to extend my ability to rez ice and present threats to the runner. I also really value having a good 1 cost target because you want an Extract target in essentially all board states. I think you could find some other way to spend the 2 influence (a third Magnet or a Seamless Launch are two cards I was waffling on).

This is an aggressive deck, You want to usually be scoring by turn 3/4 - and I have had many many games where turn one I installed Oaktown, advance, and install a good piece of ice. That leaves you at 6 credits and has a lot of different possible threats on the ice. But while you do really well with rush (and it's really your primary plan against a lot of shapers) - with Stavka you have a lot of lategame legs against Anarch and Criminal because it's practically quite difficult for them to apply pressure and respect your threats. I could see a 3rd Stavka being worth the slot just to more consistently rigshoot, but it's one of the only ice you can't really score behind, which is a big part of the deck.

Going to go in detail on a few cards below, but in this list Tucana is the MVP. The deck has a lot of ice that is good in a particular board state, and Tucana gets you there. It also means when you're ahead you can start thinning out your deck even further so you can draw the agendas you need to win. Most of my Tucana triggers went on R&D.

I'm going to just go through the weirder card choices, but if you questions about any of the slots I'm happy to talk about it - and I'll probably be making a video about this deck in the near future.

• Regolith: The deck probably needs a little more econ than it has, and this is one of the highest value single econ cards you can slot right now. I tried Yakov Erikovich Avdakov in some earlier iterations (along with Cybersand Harvester) and both cards are a bit too inconsistent. You don't need to get that much value, the deck generally needs to only resolve a few econ cards, so getting 6-9 credits off Regolith is often enough.
• Slash and Burn Agriculture: This was the card I most regretted, it's a fairly tempo negative score, and I never needed it to fast advance. But taking it out means you probably need a second Audacity, so it's tricky. Swapping it for an Offworld Office or another Azef Protocol is probably good enough.
• Vovô Ozetti: This card is the most questionable influence in the deck, but it opens up the threat you can put on the runner a lot. Threat 4 often happens really early in the game, and rezzing and trashing a Mavirus for 1 credit and searching for a 2 cost is great. And rezzing 1-2 ice with him is great, and lets you trash him later for a Spin Doctor or a Rashida at a key point. And just having another upgrade in the remote to make the runner's calculus harder is a big deal. There are 7 upgrades, all of which have immediate impact on the board state if there is an agenda in the remote, and need to be treated differently by the runner. In many ways the whole theme of the deck is making the runner have to make impossible gambles where you come out ahead, and Vovo helps with that.
• Whitespace: You really just want some 2 cost ice that you can pull on a generic board state after using a Border Control into Magnet/Sandstone to score an want to boost back into the game.
• Tithe: This card rocks with Bukhgalter banned. Making HQ just slightly annoying is often all you need (though most of my games I never iced HQ)
• Magnet: This card is by far the best for its ability to make life difficult for Aumakua and Botulus (it's fairly mediorce against Arissana, but running a strategy around aggressively trashing your own ice gives you a lot of leverage in that matchup.)
• Manegeram Skunkworks - Without Formicary this card seems too "fair", but it add a significant tax to the runner at often low relative cost (using Mavirus to fetch it - most runners have viruses you want to hit). Even if it doesn't protect your agenda, it usually opens you up to jam immediately again the next turn.

The decks two losses where a game in swiss where 6 points were stolen off of ~8 R&D accesses by turn 4, and I almost clawed all the way back (being 1 turn off winning), and against Ian who played a beautiful game against it in the finals. You should watch it, it's on of the most dynamic games of netrunner I've ever played.

The deckname comes from Eric who through trial and error discovered that the bathtub was the best way to get water at 3 am.