The Admiral Ackbar - 3rd @ Seattle CO

Once upon a time, I brought a cute brew to Worlds 2021 where it performed far beyond my expectations. It was a fun deck with lots of tricks and traps that made every game a fun puzzle.

Everything changed when the Boat Nation attacked. I had to retire the deck as it could not beat the new ubiquitous icebreaker on the scene.

Fast-forward to present day. Boats have been outlawed by divine decree. Runner meta is dominated by Anarch. I looked at the state of the game and reminisced fondly of when I had a fun deck for a runner meta that looked like this.

"Yeah. I'm thinking I'm back."

This deck is designed to be full of traps for the runner:

• Seamless Launch -> Reeducation -> Neurospike can kill a passive runner from as early as turn 3 or 4.

• Jua in front of any end-the-run ice will keep Anarch binbreakers stuck in the heap.

• Ping + Keegan Lane can trash any icebreakers that do get installed.

• Ark Lockdown for when the runner discards their binbreakers early.

• For nonstandard breakers, Magnet will suck up Botulus and Wraparound is your defense against AI.

The main win condition for this deck is Reeducation + Neurospike, but don't discount other paths to victory. Double Neurospike can end any runner when you score a Bellona, or you can just lock out a runner's ability to break barriers/code gates and score to 9 points safely.

At the Circuit Opener:

Round 1 vs Jason (syd7) on Greytongue Esa - The good thing about Greytongue Esa is that Azmari will pay out every turn just by calling Event. Jason's early game sabotage hit 2 agendas from RnD, but Spin Doctor showed up two turns later to save them (run archives after Chastushka, folks). Lockdown on the first Black Orchestra bought me enough breathing room to score Reeducation behind Enigma for the kill.

Round 2 vs Roman on Greytongue Esa - Roman was a newer/returning player, so he got caught in several of the deck's traps. I lost 3 points to sabotage, but was able to secure the remote and winning agenda before time was called.

Round 3 vs Marc on Tagme Zahya - Turns out it's hard to kill a runner with a handsize of 9. Spending Seamless to score means I have one less card to bottom to Reeducation, so I had to advance the agenda to 4. Advance -> Planogram -> Score gave me enough fuel to remove enough of Marc's hand to secure the kill.

Round 4 vs Malina on Adam - An early Logic Bomb put me on edge as my remote was just Jua and Ping. Find the Truth showed me they hadn't drawn any more icebreakers so I rushed out a Reeducation that they didn't contest in time.

Cut R1 vs Eric (whiteblade111) on ?Best Deck? Lat - I ran the same Lat deck as Eric at the CO, so I was familiar with the breaker suite and that his deck was suited to a long drawn out game. My first gambit was to rush out a Reeducation with a Neurospike in hand; he responded with 2 Stoneships and a Reaver. After scoring Reeducation with two clicks remaining, he used both Stoneships to draw up to 5 cards, but the fresh Reeducation cards did not find the second Neurospike. A few turns later, after surviving a big Conduit dig, I threatened another kill by advancing an agenda (Bellona) to 4 and installing Keegan onto RnD. Eric went deep into the tank for over 15 minutes, but eventually found the line to survive a potential double Neurospike. The remaining turns of the game were spent contesting Bellonas in the remote, but it ended in a timed win for Eric as we were tied 6-6 and he was the higher seed.

Cut R2 vs Charlie (Santa) on Reg Hoshiko - Charlie's runner deck was the aggressive kind of Hoshiko I like, with Boomerangs alongside Botulus for versatile early game pressure. He was able to apply them effectively to steal the first Reeducation. I built the remote higher with another Magnet, Lockdown'd a Paperclip, and then advanced the next Reeducation into the remote. He thought he had an extra turn, but I had Seamless to close out the game.

Thoughts on Playing this Deck in the Future:

This deck is positioned well against most Anarch decks. If you're scared of hyper-aggressive Esa Sabotage decks, consider swapping in Attitude Adjustment for a tutorable agenda management operation.

NGO Front is generally a bad fit for this deck, as it rushes too fast to take a turn off to setup an NGO. You also don't want to use it as bait in your remote since it will also allow runners to access an installed Keegan.

There's a lot of tech cards that can be effective against this. No One Home and Caldera are the obvious ones but there's more out there for runners to explore.

Enforcing Loyalty is a flex slot. I only used it once to trash Eric's Fermenter on turn 2.