La Cosa Nostra (5-1, 10th @ US Nationals)

yucaBEAN 81

This deck performed well for me at US Nationals this year. I have been playing it for the last 2-3 months. Basically it's a fast Palana deck. When La Costa Grid came out, my first thought was that never-advancing Nisei MK II would be amazing -- after trying that out for a bit, I found that it was a bit niche and that La Costa is less of a SanSan and more of a sick drip econ card. La Costa building up Bio Vault, NGO, and Trick of Light counters accelerates you a lot and is an annoying card for runners to trash. It enables a lot of bluffing opportunities as well. Single-advancing Obokata or SSL is nice. Scoring a 3/2 and jamming another is also great. If you squint very hard, an over-advanced Project Yagi-Uda is kind of like a crappy Nisei counter for your remote.

The deck is able to go fast with cheap ice and gear checks of each type. (Cortex Lock is a pseudo-gear check especially when trying to score Obokata) In addition Scarcity of Resources is ridiculous when there are only 5 non-Obokata agendas in the deck.

It is not hard to get to 5 points with this deck, and from there you have multiple ways to close the game even if the runner gets set up. Half of the agendas are fast advance-able. You also have 3x Border 3x Bio Vault that can help you score the last agenda -- in addition these help protect you against Diversion of Funds and Apocalypse.

I had a lot of fun at this event. Thanks to everyone for making it a great weekend.

5 comments
6 Nov 2019 formerteen

this is neat! can i ask why you play envelope over kakugo?

6 Nov 2019 swan

Can't farm turning wheel vs envelope for free

6 Nov 2019 Ajar

I like Trick of Light as another destination for advancements you put on La Costa itself when you have no other targets. I'll probably test that out in my build.

6 Nov 2019 shanodin

Extremely strong deck name

7 Nov 2019 yucaBEAN

Thanks!

@formerteenyeah as @Swan said that's a big part of it, it's also just more taxing creditwise (3c instead of 1 for Corroder and Tycoon, 2 Yusuf counters) and keeps Aumakua out until they're on 3. I'm not really trying to attrition the runner on cards here or lean in heavily to the "make Obo impossible to steal" plan. Though I can definitely see the merits of using Kakugo here instead.