Embarrassing Misunderstanding Argus - 88th at Worlds 2019

Pokerface 57

This is the corp deck I took to worlds 2019. Originally, I had planned to take it to CoL and take a more standard and serious Argus list for the main event, but I ended up doing the opposite.

I’m a fairly recent player, so I thought that if I wanted to win a few matches I needed to surprise people a bit. Especially with Argus, which has been explored and played to death by a lot of much better players than me, who know exactly how to play it and how to play against it. Now, I thought the latest MWL changes would be interesting for Weyland because of the Laamb removal: all of a sudden, Str 8 multi sub barriers could not be broken for 5 anymore. So a Glacier plan could make a good sense. And with Laamb removed and Engolo restricted, there would be a lot of turtle-based and brahman based decks. So… Why not go full Chiyashi ?

So the base plan of the deck is really to bet on an embarrassing misunderstanding: your opponent will respect the HHNs and tag punishment you don’t have in your deck, and on your side you are building a big glacier and scoring naked agendas if you are flooded (only 8 agendas in the deck, but it can happen). You start by icing up centrals and quickly put ICE on the remote, let stew a few agendas masquerading as prisec or such, bait a run by IAA a bio dome and generally strangle them slowly.

Building blocks is awesome in the deck, as it helps you build up the remote, pump the strength of the Surveyors and rez really expensive ICE like Bulwark and Chiyashi (5 targets in all in the deck). Bio vaults are there to make them lose time and money and wear their resources out (stimhacks, Lady tokens, Kati money, whatever). Thimbelrig is also awesome as you can switch a second or third rezzzed Chiyashi from R&D or HQ to the remote when you want to score.

Questionable choices: the breached dome is probably not the most optimal choice, and could be a second thimblerig or a reversed accounts, I feel. The deck is also probably missing an Under the Bus or maybe a sea source (Ganelon, you were right!) to get rid of film critics, loaded Kati Jones, etc. Bio vault is nice but a bit too slow. I’ll try to switch it to either Code Replicator or Letheia Nisei, probably, to see what happens – no guarantees there.

In the end, from my hazy recollections of the event, the deck went 5 or 6 – 1 or 2 in Swiss, losing to smoke and perhaps Hayley, not sure anymore, and wining against Hayley, Apex, Val, 419. Matches were quite tense, and very good netrunner. Many thanks to my opponents for being such good sports and nice people, and most of all many thanks to the wonderful people at Nisei who did such a great job of organizing the event and keeping the flame alive!

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