CV Esâ (4th at PoS UK Nats 2022)

Wait.. CV Esâ?

Back in our noPE write-up one of the listed decks that we tested was "CV Esâ", where Pinsel first wanted to build a Clan Vengeance deck, then realised it was banned and proceeded to build a Counter Surveillance deck instead, but didn't bother renaming the list...

The deck seemed extremely powerful against the Corp decks we were considering at the time. Then people started to find the Drago Ivanov R+ decks and going tag-me suddenly seemed much less enticing. Yet, we were convinced the basic framework of the deck was very solid, so we kept it secret for a later date.

That day never came. Instead the meta shifted back and forth, without this deck ever seeming like a good idea. So as UK Nats was the last big tournament in the Midnight Sun meta that I would visit, I decided to bring the deck and have some fun with it.

The foundation of the deck is the loop of Labor Rights to recur Running Hot, Rogue Trading, and Counter Surveillance (or another copy of Labor Rights). The clicks from Running Hot allow you to empty at least 2/3rds of the Rogue Trading and force the Corp to either spend and 2 to trash it or allow you to get some more money next turn.

With all the money from Rogue Trading, you typically end up with 25+ in the mid-game, allowing you to easily contest the scoring remote. Meanwhile running centrals gives you some incidental Obelus value, especially in conjunction with early Counter Surveillance on HQ for 4-5 accesses.

What happens in the background while you are doing this are typically around 5-7 sabotage triggers from Esâ. This means 10-14 cards from the Corp get trashed without you even noticing it very much. With the general pressure you have, Corps tend to get overwhelmed by this and allow you to finish the game off with a CS dig.

Finally the real spice in the list are 2x Frantic Coding. In the magical Christmas land case, you end up trashing 3 Steelskin Scarring and find a Begemot, giving you a total of 7 draw, sabotage 2 and a pretty good fracter. In the real world (i.e. round 3 of PoS), you play an early Frantic Coding, trashing 3x Labor Rights and 1x HART and making you question your life choices..

In any case, this was very fun to play at PoS. It is now out of my system and I am excited to find out how the Parhelion meta game shakes out. Thanks again to Paulyg for an extremely well run tournament and the entire UK community for being so hospitable and making it a really fun weekend. Hope to see you all again soon!