Thanks to Unband for the Bananas, and the place to stay after worlds. Was great to meet you all!

Overview

For corp see:
- Changing Clothes [Worlds: 5-3]

This was my updated version of Bridgeman's interconts list:
[Intercontinentals] Simpler and Cleaner Hosh 3-0 4th Place.

Deck building

Bost was most concerned about:
- PD/Asa
- NEH kill
- Ob rush

I was very adamant about keeping my influence suite as is. However, I still wanted tech cards for the above matchups. This meant I was looking for options in faction/neutral.

Mayfly

In the leadup to worlds I was personally enjoying Bridgeman's list a lot. However, found a few particular issues in general which Mayfly solved almost all of:

• Gear checking before I found my necessary breakers
  
• Requiring my sentry breaker in many matchups before face checking ice
  
• Stavka + Hafrún combos in Ob with early pushed SDS for rig shooting forks.

Mayfly was particularly useful into the Ob matchup, and became a valuable tech card there, as it both allows you to get past the Stavka + Hafrún combo before having both Carmens, while also allowing steals on any pushed SDS.

I like to think of Mayfly in two regards:

1. Its a double run event that allows you to break any ice needed at a "fine" price to prevent early lockouts
   
2. Its a tool that allows face checking of early ice like:
   Drafter, Saisentan, Anansi, Trebuchet, and Stavka

Is Boomerang better?

Yes? ...but it costs influence, and I wanted to be able to pressure multiple servers, plus 2 ice deep remotes.

Talking to Sokka:

• After the tournament, I chatted with Sokka about his runner list, and its approach towards solving the same issues. While I still think Mayfly is good in my list, I really liked how he filled this gap/tech slot with the combination of both Bankhar + Boomerang.
• I had found Boomerang alone didn't hold up to what I wanted out of Mayfly. However, with Sokka's combination of Bankhar for multi-iced servers I think it's an overall stronger tech option for the issue.

Light the Fire!

This is nice tech for PD, and Asa with the Skunk + Void remotes.

I found surprising use out of this across multiple other matchups, including forcing an NGO bait pre-pop to prevent running through an Ob remote.

Overall, an interesting tech card I was glad to have the support of, but could have possibly been at 1x

Marrow

This was to deal with the NEH kill list.

In testing Bost found the NEH felt like a rather concerning matchup. The NEH felt quite powerful, without a specific gameplan to take it down.

We had a fair amount of initial discussion around Marrow. With it you could even go tag me into the matchup so long as you trashed out their Reaper Functions. However, it hadn't made my list, as we expected the overall presence of the NEH to be low within the meta and felt the tech slot might not be worth it into the general field.

I added it 2 minutes before deck registration, as for the 46 card list :p

I never did encounter the NEH throughout the tournament, but I did still find it to be useful vs Punitive RH.

Definitely an interesting tech option if you're concerned about kill decks.

Tournament Results [5-3]:

Few highlights:

Mayfly got two standout performances:

1. Allowed for entry to a 2 ice deep skunk Asa remote to snipe an early Offworld Office.
   
   • I did end up sadly misplaying that game though, tunneling to hard trying to close out the game shooting from the hip, eventually losing, rather than building up to find a win on full rig, but lessons learned.
     
2. Allowed for a clutch HQ run to steal the winning agenda, which I would have otherwise most likely lost.
   

CoS [3-1-1]:

For CoS, I had the following swaps from this list, keeping Mayfly a secret:
- 2x Mayfly
- 1x Marrow
+ 1x Hippo
+ 1x Cleaver

Retrospective:

Is this the best list?
- No.

Do I think this is a solid list for the gameplan/build style I was going for?
- Yes.

I think one of many things I've learned from worlds it that doing a lot more prep and exploration would have been valuable. Trying new options even if I didn't plan to play them. For example, I found Boomerang wasn't filling the slot I wanted, but with more exploration I could have possibly gotten to the combination with Bankhar, or just generally slotting Bankhar may have been better.

I am overall pleased with my tournament performance on this deck, but also recognizing how to improve, and the additional value of exploration throughout.