Running Hell - 8th @ Americas Online Megacity

This is the list I brought to the Americas Online Megacity Championship event where it finished the event going 2W-2L.

As I was preparing for this tournament, I first tried to narrow down the types of runners I would need to beat with my corp deck. I landed on targeting five different runner decks, those being tag-me Seb, dive Sable, reg twinning Sable, Mag, & reg Hosh. All these runner decks present different threats and have different weaknesses, but I wanted to try and build a corp that can give me the best chance of beating all these decks.

After posting my last Au Co. list, I took some time to analyze my own list and what others were playing to see if I still wanted to play Au Co. at all. Ultimately, I decided that the ID and core set of cards that enable the ID are some of the strongest cards you can play in this format.

However, when I was reflecting on my performance at the Summer Showdown a few things stood out. First, I was noticing that I was rarely utilizing The Holo Man and its synergy with my agenda suite wasn’t as effective as I had hoped. Additionally, I was noticing more and more runners playing Cupellation in the past month which completely shuts down Hostile Architecture. Lastly, I was not a big fan of Longevity Serum or Hybrid Release even if they opened some wacky lines to trip up the runner.

That’s when I looked at Dee’s Au Co. that won the Summer Showdown tournament, and I liked the idea of including a tag & bag win condition. Doing this solves multiple key issues with my first deck. The obvious advantage here is that I can improve my matchup vs Seb decks that want to float a tag by threatening an EotL kill. Oppo also adds a great way to slow down runners by taxing both credits and clicks if they play too aggressively early. Finally, Playing 3x SHTR means that now almost all my agendas do damage independent of Phat, and I can also set up further damage with the tag.

From there, it was a matter of finding the right ratio of Oppo to EotL that I felt comfortable with. I landed on a split of 2x & 2x because I value being able to consistently set up the tag & bag kill with SHTR. Playing a 2nd EotL also means I don’t get locked out of using it should a cheeky runner touch my 1x EotL with Cup. As the final kicker, using 12 influence for 4 cards means I can save deck slots which is very important for me.

The last big question was what my 19th and 20th agenda point would be. Orbital makes sense, but I wanted to keep my deck as flexible as possible, so I opted for 2x Regenesis because I love Fuji flips and this gives me realistic scoring outs vs passive runners (Mag / Stoneship Hosh / Hippocampic shenanigans).

Before the tournament I wrote down matchup notes to prepare myself against the five most popular runners, and I wanted to share them in case you’re thinking about playing the deck.

Vs. Seb (Key cards: Semak, Mav, EotL, Mindscaping)

• Ice HQ, Ice archives for ToW / Privileged Access
• Force threats early before their econ comes online
• Need to build a lockout state to limit recursion, then focus on killing / scoring

Vs. Dive Sable (Key cards: Anemone, Phat, Reaper)

• Playing 11 agendas and 5x 1 pointers means you still dilute points on deep dives
• Delay or stop the dive altogether with chip damage
• Lie Low can clear tags for cheap, so use Oppo to tax clicks rather than credits

Vs. Reg Sable (Key cards: Phat, Oppo, Sting!, Semak)

• Slower than dive sable, therefore you can spam earlier (dodge ToW with rezzes)
• Present threats early that tax money & cards, and a flatline should present itself
• Don’t commit to early to one game plan, you have time to develop a board

Vs. Mag (Key cards: Regen, Mav, Oppo, SHTR)

• Win fast by scoring 7 points OR deal 9 damage (Reaper + Phat + SHTR + EotL)
• Make Mag play “scrappy” by presenting threats, purge fermenters, and follow up with Oppo after they trash / steal early

Vs. Reg Hosh (Key cards: Tithe, Semak, Mav, Regen, Oppo)

• Easily the hardest matchup, ID gives money & cards, Twinning raids your centrals, Fermenter + Steel / Strike gives money and damage prevention
• You need to force a scoring threat early so Fuji flip is good here, which forces Hosh to make runs and check remotes instead of playing econ cards / charging twinning

My final thought on the deck is that my record does not reflect the power of the deck in my opinion. My last two games were full of misplays on my end, and I could have come out with the W in both had I simply played better. The deck does have a high skill ceiling as you must monitor what the runner is doing and adjust your play towards finding the best win condition in that game. However, I believe you have enough tools and enough draw via your ID to set up these complex board states, it’s just up to you to find the winning lines.

As a final piece of advice, I would also suggest reading Whiteblade’s 2020 article on improving your asset spam play which I found to be a really good resource while making / practicing different Au Co. decks.

With that, I want to thank everyone that put in the hard work to run this awesome tournament. Thank you Droid, OF15-15, nbkelly, Kror, junipertheory, and anyone else I may have missed!

As always, huge shoutout to The Future Perfect, The King, and the Baltimore Meta for all their help in getting me prepared for this tournament. I will post the replays from the event as I get permission but if you have any questions, please feel free to comment or hit me up on Discord :D

Round 3 vs Cyrcle on Esa: https://www.jinteki.net/replay/2757245f-312b-4fd2-bcf9-79e0a0604b3f

Round 5 vs ArminFirecracker on Hosh: https://www.jinteki.net/replay/993e6139-02e8-445e-8d31-6bd39166b1b7

Cut Round 2 vs CyberShark: https://www.jinteki.net/replay/bd548c20-0348-4526-a8a5-cba33304b82e