[Holy Smokes] Very Disco (1st @ Naarm Casual Event)

My recommended soundtrack has gotta be the smoothest of smooth Daft Punk songs (Veridis Quo) to accompany the sweet flow that this deck has!

For those who haven't heard of Holy Shit/Holy Smokes netrunner, here is the rules document we had for the tournament. Essentially it's a format that modifies standard decks with the addition of access to all IDs where most get an improved ability and access to cards that have been banned or rotated from standard. So in addition to being able to choose Cerebral Imaging: Infinite Frontiers as my ID, I was allowed to include any of the 'Clearance' cards in my list.

First off huge thanks to my fav voice of the outer world (Lisan al Jaib) for seeing me splash around a bit with CI brews and offer a guiding path for how to make CI work well! Absolutely every card in this deck paid off hugely on the day and I honestly don't think that I would change a single slot after the tournament yesterday (the 14 inf be damned).

The gameplan is pretty chill where you just fire off one Ultraviolet Clearance/Violet Level Clearance and Corporate Hospitality after another until you have about 13-15 cards in HQ and then just play one or two YDLs to massively balloon your credit total at which point you can easily Big Deal out a Salvo Testing without taking a meaningful hit to your credit total and handsize (my record was reaching 57 credits in my pool in a game). After that score and assuming the runner hasn't facechecked a Jaguarundi you need to score either an Élivágar Bifurcation or use Biotic Labor to score a 3/2 from hand to land your second core damage at which point your remaining Ontological Dependence will be 2/2 that you can fairly easily score from hand.

You don't have to feel forced into sticking to playing fully remoteless, if you find ice and a Rashida Jaheem or an MCA Austerity Policy early then by all means set something up to grab some value and possibly score an early Salvo - also a very handy thing if ur up against a shaper on Clot to force them to actually break your remote repeatedly to grab your agendas.

The deck is a super smooth ride and just all around fun to run yourself out of 5 cred tokens and be holding 12+ cards in hand while rezzing Brâns without batting an eye.

On the day I played against a Ken, a Chaos Theory and a Sable. The Ken had a slow start and got some rougher draws but nevertheless managed to steal some agendas from HQ early before I managed to stack my ice up on the centrals. Then I had some turns where I played one Ultraviolet clearance after the other, capping it off with double YDL, before scoring a Salvo with Big Deal and then getting an Élivágar to put the runner onto a second core damage which then let me score out the remaining 2 Ontologicals I needed from hand.

The Chaos Theory was the scary matchup of the day as the format gave the ID infinite mu and cards like Overmind, Magnum Opus and the breaker cycle including Sage that also got a benefit from unlimited mu. I managed to get an MCAAP going early behind some ice which the runner didn't have enough creds to challenge so I got my Salvo out decently fast. After this however, the runner discarded a clot and found their Simulchip and an Overmind so I tried pushing an Ontological behind an unrezzed Brân and Gatekeeper because the runner was relatively low on credits but they soul read me and put a hush onto the gatekeeper which saved them enough money to steal the Ontological. I then drew my Mavirus and used it to score up to 5 points with a Biotic Luminal, using the extra 3 clicks to play an Ultraviolet which felt incredible! The runner was still on low credits so I was able to put a Hagen in front of the Brân to protect another Ontological that I scored off the table on the following turn for the win.

My game against Sable brought me right back down to earth in the final round cause I didn't find a piece of ice on my first turn after which Sable proceeded to steal 6 points from RnD in 3 consecutive runs on her first turn. Luckily after that I found a bunch of ice quickly and built up a secure defence for my centrals. Given all of my credits the Sable stockpiled credits and also built her board with the breakers saving it all for a Deep Dive run which I managed to knock out of hand just in time from the core damage of one of my agenda scores. To win that game I scored the Salvo using a Big Deal and then scored 2 Ontologicals from hand.

I had a bunch of fun on the day! Thanks heaps to kror for running the whole thing and talking me through what the meta was likely to be. Also thanks a bunch to Jai ofc for brewing up my decks and my opponents and everyone in the Naarm meta for showing up to even the wackiest of formats!