I'll think of something funnier when I'm aWAKE [16th @Notts]

I didn't have loads of time to build and test entirely new decks for Nottingham Outlaw CO and the new meta that came with it, so I ported some older decks I'd been working on to the new meta and worked with those. My Corp was Ob.

The plan is to get Dr. Nuka Vrolyck down as early as possible and charge her to boost your setup speed. We have Bravado to help with early aggression there as well - an ideal turn one is installing Nuka and then Bravado-ing R&D to charge Nuka and hopefully make some money. We also have Propeller and Pelangi for early game aggression, hopefully getting you an agenda or two.

In the mid-game, Hyperbaric with Pelangi allows us to sail through big ice for cheap (build your own boat, I guess), especially if you use Overclock to quickly charge up the Hyperbaric like the Stimhack + Study Guide combos of the olden days. The Gauss also means that you can break low-strength barriers without having to spend Propeller counters - I was particularly targeting Ping, Border Control, Ablative Barrier and Tatu-Bola with that include, and it definitely worked. That being said, you have enough Simulchip that you can probably recycle Propeller enough, but they're also sometimes needed to recycle Pelangi.

Our win condition is WAKE Implant v2A-JRJ, which can be fully charged in as little as one HQ run by using Padma's charge and a Flux Capacitor on an R&D run.

How did it do?

It went 1-3, but the games were all very close. Here's a brief summary of the four games the deck had:

Round 1 vs CobraBubbles on Aginfusion (W): I got a Hyperbaric at 5 strength and WAKE set up, rendering his Attini on HQ as a minor inconvenience. A few great HQ runs and 3-counter WAKE runs later stole me the agendas I needed, although I had to also contest multiple Dr. Vientiane Keeling which took a few years off my life.

Round 2 vs echo/ on R+ (L): I got scared of running R&D so was never able to set up the early game tempo I needed. Combined with losing Aniccam to an early Retribution off a scored Tomorrow's Headline, I never got back to a good economic place. I managed to steal two Artificial Cryptocrash from the remote but it wasn't enough.

Round 3 vs secondskin on Ob (L): I was too aggressive early, stole a few agendas from lucky single accesses but then petered out a bit. My early game luck was paid back for with some empty 3-counter WAKE accesses. It was very close though - 7-6 at the end.

Round 4 vs Utati on PD (L): Another close one. Managed to steal four points early by challenging a single Hagen remote with Propeller, but then Utati managed to build up enough to make R&D miserably taxing. I kept missing in HQ and didn't build up enough to challenge R&D protected by 2x Ansel 1.0, a Gatekeeper and a Manegarm Skunkworks. Very close, although I think if I'd sat back a little bit I could have made enough money to get one more 3-counter WAKE access.

So even though my win record was a little disappointing, the games were very close and I think if I were a better player I'd have won one or two more.

Deck changes

I don't think the Bravado are necessary any more - it's a stunning card, but due to the rotation of Hard-Hitting News I can run early with fewer worries, and the influence may be spent on more credit-heavy economy. A single Beatriz Friere Gonzalez might also help with the stacked R&D from the PD game, but I'm not sure where to make a slot for her (especially as that slot would probably rather be pure economy).

Special thanks

A few quick bits of special thanks (this is the same on both of my writeups):

• Thanks to all of my opponents for the fun games, particularly CobraBubbles who I'd met online before (from him testing the Starlit Knight spoiler story) and was as lovely in person as on Discord :)
• Thanks to my metamates in the Birmingham/Warwick crew that travelled up to the tourney with me: Ams, Harper and Fern.
• Thanks to my plush axolotl, Axi, for keeping me from tilting.
• And thanks to MattOhNo and dreadmaw for organising the CO in the first place and liaising with such a lovely venue!

okay I'm done now thanks for reading