The Price of Freedom [2nd Salford CO]

At UK nats I ran a very out of date and clunky Engolo Freedom deck and inexplicably came 13th - it was technically undefeated, but I only played 4 rounds then ID'd into the cut. Had some very close games and a lot of luck!

Anyway this is a deck that is much better.

The CO ran Single-Sided Swiss, which was very fun! Big thanks to @mcg for running a lovely event :D

Card choices

I resisted it for a long time (Strike Fund just... doesn't look like it should be good??) but the Moshing + The Price econ suite is great for an extremely aggressive Freedom list. Being able to Mosh or even just play Strike Fund from low credits to play Sure Gamble is clutch when you're running aggressively and getting Oppo'd early.

Engolos are gone, replaced with Laamb, which

• Lets you use Yusuf to break things for cheap
• Is cheaper (in creds and inf) than Engolo
• Makes it a fair bit harder to deal with big remotes... but you were planning to win before that happened anyway right?

I went through about a billion iterations of the inf on this list before settling on the current spread about 2 nights before the CO. I think there's an argument for cutting one Simulchip for Bahia Bands, but this way you can trash one chip off The Price and not feel too bad. To be honest I'm not that sold on the Boomerang now that I'm on The Price - I trashed it a few times today. Shrug?

I also had a last minute panic last night and

• cut a second Solidarity Badge for Liberated: these cards are basically both for R+, one of each seems ok? Plus I've heard all the best decks run one Liberated one Earthrise;

• switched one Bankhar for Light the Fire: I did not struggle to find Bankhar in the games I needed it today, but ymmv; didn't use Light the Fire all day. But ONE OF THESE DAYS MARK MY WORDS I'll absolutely destroy one of those skunkvoid remotes, AND THEN YOU'LL SEE

Games

Some notes on the games - my memory is terrible so I can't promise these are entirely accurate.

Round 1 - Runner loss vs. Pauly's Precision Design Great tight, aggressive game on both sides. Ended up being just 2 credits short of stealing Ikawah with the two of us on game point. If only that early Mavirus off R&D hadn't got my fermenter! MAVIRUUUUUS!!! shakes fist

Round 2 - Corp loss vs. MattOhNo's Loup

Round 3 - Corp win vs. Nick's Sable

Round 4 - Runner win vs. Haway's Precision Deisign Sadly PD was pretty miserably flooded this game, 6 early points off HQ pressure and Finality earned its inclusion by closing out the game before PD could start jamming in the remote.

Round 5 - Runner win vs. MattOhNo's R+ Really tough game, as R+ always is. Luck was on my side: turn 1 Yusuf and Liberated set me up with virus counters for trashing and a bank that would survive the first Cryptocrash. Turn 2 draw into Solidarity badge had me basically set up. I also didn't get Oppo'd turn 1 or 2 which always helps, despite aggressively trashing Marilyn and Amani (and possibly a Rashida? I forget).

Round 6 - Corped vs. Phil's Arissana - win

Cut game 1 - Corp win vs. Pauly's Hoshiko

Cut game 2 - Corp loss vs. sauc3's Hoshiko