Trail Mix (5-1 Worlds 2023)

My Corp deck that I took to Worlds 23! It went 5-1 on the day, with wins against 2 Hermes Hoshiko, a Maw Hoshiko, Tao and a Turbine Lat, with the sole loss coming against a Patchwork Hoshiko.

The initial idea for this deck came from an idle thought about whether rigshooter was a viable deck in the current meta. Short answer: sort of? You can rigshoot, but it doesn’t really help you win. After some experimentation (I swear I’ll make my HB ZATO Grid deck work one day) this was what I came upon.

The 3 x Snare! are fairly straightforward to explain – protecting R&D is super important from multi-access and it’s probably the best card available to Outfit for that. It can also get you some cheeky wins as most opponents probably are not expecting it. Trojan Horse is a great card for this meta, as many runners are a little too cavalier about their programs and can get locked out if it lands. Econ Warfare is here to support the Trojan Horse. Public Trail is a bit of an odd include but it has a nice double use here: secretly it’s an econ denial card, as many runners will pay the 8 to avoid a tag (which makes landing the Trojan Horse easier). If they choose to take the tag, well then you can start trashing things or playing EotL.

For how the deck plays, ideally you want to begin with icing a central (preferably R&D, but against Crim or Esa it’s HQ), icing a remote and playing an econ card. You’re hoping to get a Tucana early and start pushing agendas. Tucana is fantastic – one of the problems you can face in Outfit is if your opponent denies you getting bad pub from rezzing your Ice (you ever tried to score a Reg Capture with one bad pub?), and Tucana allows you to generate the bad pub from agenda scores! You’re looking for Valentao or Trebuchet in the early game, and probably Border Control in the late game. Generally, you are looking to score out but if the opportunity presents you can play your operations to trash programs to make this easier. The kill threat is an option, but is rarely the way you will win (outside of Snare). At Worlds it worked pretty well! It has a fairly decent matchup against Hoshiko and Crim, with Clot Shaper probably being your kryptonite.

With upcoming changes, I’d like to find some room for a Pivot or Gaslight to make finding your operations easier. The Phoneutria is cute, but if you want to swap that out for something else then feel free!

Also, thanks to everyone who made Worlds such a great time! All the folks at NSG, PSK for organizing, everyone from Team UK and all the people I met along the way!