[NEO] DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK (2-2, 2nd @NeoBelfast GNK)

Neo is a format for people who enjoy prison

Inflammatory remarks out of the way, when I looked at the Neo banlist and mused on what the best decks would be, I instantly was like "well we can just play the 6 agenda R+ Drago deck from Standard". Which I did. I messaged cablecarnage and the two of us combined came up wth this beasty.

If you were unlucky enough to miss out on the Drago R+ Standard meta, the combo is that R+ lets you use Drago for free each turn, so you can consistently give the runner a tag each turn at no tempo loss. We combine this with the best single tag punishment in the format in Retribution, a bunch of recursion, some annoying ice, and an incredibly toxic agenda suite. We also include La Costa because it lets you keep up the Drago pressure, and frees up a click to use Archived Memories to get back your tag punishment. Because we're on La Costa, we also play Reversed Accounts to make sure our opponent can't get their bail fund raised to get out of prison. Once we've rigshot them, we just score out Bellonas behind Gold Farmer and close with Backroom Machinations.

This deck is slow and grindy and a bit miserable to be on the receiving end. Which means I fucking love it and I was jazzed to play it the first opportunity I got.

Round 1 vs Lat

My opponent was on a really cool PPVP Lat deck with Spark of Inspiration and big programs. Unfortuntaely, Retribution loves big programs, and despite dealing with the first two Dragos, a ticking Reversed Accounts dealt with their money and I was able to recur a Drago and close it out with Backroom.

1-0

Round 2 vs Loup

Funnily enough, this ened up being a horrible matchup because my opponent didn't really have a rig. His breaker suite was 3 Mayfly and then a few Botuli and Chisels, so he was able to deal with my Gold Farmers really nicely. Three Imps goes a long way at dealing with Bellona, as did the sabotage from Nga, Time Bomb, and the Fake Noise Anarch resource. It got very close though, and I was one turn away from being decked out, but I didn't respect the Fake Noise Anarch resource and got milled out.

1-1

Round 3 vs Hoshiko

I was able to get Drago set up really early, and found AMs and Retributions aplenty, which took care of my opponent's two corroders. I was also able to land two Public Trails in quick succession, so his credits were absolutely tanked. Despite this, a clutch Katorga Breakout got the Corroder back so I couldn't lock out in time before he was able to find 2 Send a Messages in HQ and win on time.

1-2

Round 4 vs Az

This was a bit of a misery fest for the runner. Early Drago behind a Gold Farmer meant their cool rig of Telework Contracts and cool cheap cybernetic hardware was prime for the baseball batting. I was eventually able to slowly tick up Bellonas and win with a Backroom to seal second place.

I think this deck is the best corp in the format, and there's room for refinement. I think I'd have won my game vs Loup had I had tech for runner going tag me in the form of Shipment from Vlad. Without Boom, the runner can go tag me with relative freedom, if they have the rig to support it. A copy of SFV would have allowed me to close out the game. End of the Line is a maybe obvious missing include but this isn't a kill deck. We want to grind the runner out of options and slowly win with hard to steal 6 pointers and annoying ice. Remember, we're playing prison.

I think Neo is a fun format but I am extremely worried about the problematic elements of the corp side. I think there's potentially a really great Keeling deck in the format that demands you have Pinhole or lose, similar to this. I think as well the best decks in the format are corps that can abuse the defensive 5/3s (Bellona and SDS Drone Deployment). I mused with cablecarnage a while ago about a 6 agenda Built to Last Cayambe deck that sounds utterly miserable. I think there's big issues on the corp side that I would address if I were in charge of the format.

Thanks to Conor and the Belfast crew for having me! It was great travelling up for the first event up there and I hope to see your faces again, and look forward to seeing ye all at Nats in September!