The new face of NBN (1@South-East Regionals)

"If can't fairly and ethically wage economic warfare on my runner opponents, then I am left with no choice but mislead and cheat them to an early grave" - The Holo Man, after seeing the Bellona ban, probably.

The meta continues to be an exercise in taking runners off guard with a new threat before they can adapt to it. With PD and AgInf as the things to beat going into the day, I was ready to gamble it all on seeing fewer Stoneship's this time around.

The EV of this gamble is still not very clear, the deck as currently built felt poorer than I'd want. I only got out of a lot of tricky board states by getting lucky to draw and score two False Leads.

The Big Question, NEH or R+:

It is no secret that I am somewhat addicted to 17 influence IDs, but will attempt to give both options a fair shot. Naturally, the impetus to revisit this archetype came from MihauStunet great performance in German nats with a remodeled version of False Lead R+ (and OF15-15 previously at EMEA, both versions cooked up by TorpedoTyrus). The biggest reason I ended back on NEH was comfort, having practiced a bunch with Dee's list in previous metas. Assuming you have time to become comfortable in the nuances of both, there are some pro's and cons:

In favour of R+:

-You can weather economic downturns much better. NEH becomes a massive underdog if you find and trash a Regolith before they can use it. Whereas R+ would be sad still, but have the ability to fight back with 0 cost Oppos and cheaper Beholds.

-You flood less (or get to open slots by cutting Attitudes, your choice). The extra NEH draw means you will find False Leads and kill pieces at about the same rate as R+ (even a bit higher, depending on assumptions made), but this comes at the cost of also putting more agendas in your hand through this draw.

In favour of NEH:

-Runners cannot exhaust your installs. The draw power of NEH is such that you will have things to put on the board turn after turn without pause, presenting dilemmas to the runner and doing a better job of hiding false leads. On the other hand the R+ can run out of gas if it's Rashidas and federals get trashed (you can obviously use the id for draw if necessary, but then you are forfeiting your economic power, so it will be contextual when that is enough to exhaust runners ability to check remotes)

-You have 2 more influence. This could be made to matter more than it currently does, as WW is not the most obvious upgrade between the two (see inf section below)

How Should You Use Your Flex Slots:

-SIU: the way I see it the amount of SIUs you want in the deck is 0.5, since the majority of your kills come from false lead combinations. So flip a coin at the start of each tournament to decide whether to include it or not (cutting Public Trail for it, since both cards get defeated in similar ways)

-4th Ice (Ping): Im not excited to add more ice, but the pressure of Trick Shot forces your hand to commit some respect to centrals.

-Reeducation: don't get too fancy with it. We just don't have access to 5/3s that have text, and it theoretically helps against a runner that sits on 3 Steelskins without doing nothing, but that is a situation that will almost never come up in practice.

-Lady Liberty & The Holo Man: Primarily here to safely get False Lead into the score area, both have very nice secondary properties. Liberty putting a 3 pointer into the score area is very good against interaction shy runners (enables threat 3 letting you get kills off a reaper trash or false lead steal). Holo forces interaction like SIU, since it can combine with Tomorrowʼs Headline to get a kill, but dont play to this out unless your opponent is literally doing nothing, the interaction punish kills are much simpler.

Mismanagement of Influence:

-Core: 1eotl, 2 Mindscaping, though not in all of the original lists, second mindscaping is crucial. All of the closest calls of the tournament involved having just enough damage against a careful runner thanks to Mindscaping scaling. Don't leave home without 2.

-Extra Damage: 2 Reaper, Malia: you need some extra clickless damage, and these do it best (Malia specifically against Stoneships, and just generally valuable in blanking asset hate)

-Wage Workers: looks a lot worse now when the deck emerged. It is a card that helps snowball when you have a good early start and the runner fumbles so cant trash it. The problem is that runner decks nowadays very rarely stumble, and trickshot clearing it up nicely is a problem. Though I didn't spot all these issues until after the tournament, so in the deck it remained.

Possible WW replacements:

-the classic Snare! would have been very helpful this tournament specifically. But I don't think it is a good card generically, it is just too hard to fire and kill against runners that are already respecting behold. I think of it specifically anti-Steelskin tech, but it is a bit inconsistent at that.

-Pivot: is a card in generally very hot on but couldn't find space for (either inf or slots wise). The extra credit means that I am not convinced in cutting Gaslight for it. And the threat requirement can make it tough get to the credit thresholds you need. (most kills of the day had an extra click to spare, so that part isnt a big concern)