Bin to Win! (9th, APAC, 15/6/2024)

Thanks to Jan Tuno and Paillu for their excellent Esa list! I made a few small tweaks and took it to APAC, where it was an absolute blast to play and went 5-1 in the Swiss and cut.

In the lead up to this year's Continentals, I had been tinkering with an ice destruction version of Esa, which ran a combination of Devil Charm, Arruaceiras Crew, Leech, Aumakua and Hippo. It got in some good games in testing, but overall felt too sluggish against some of the better Corp lists out there. Then came the ACC and Jan Tuno's / Paillu's list which, in comparison, just sang.

My changes were few: +2 Stoneship Chart Room, -1 Simulchip and -2 The Price. The Stoneships went in as tech for some of the kill matchups, although I didn't end up facing any on the day (and it's possible those could be played around with just Marrow, Steelskins, and more sparing use of the other core damage cards). The Price went out mainly because I wanted to trim a couple of cards and it hadn't impressed me in testing, given how event heavy this deck is.

The deck's results across the tournament were:

Round 2 - Win vs Asa.
Round 3 - Win vs PD.
Round 5 - Win vs Jemison.
Round 8 - Win vs Asa.
Cut Round 1 - Loss vs Asa.
Cut Round 2 - Win vs Asa.

Going forward, there are a few potential changes that I'm keen to try out:

• Firstly, Netrunner games these days are fast. I didn't play Ashen Epilogue once, and even the Labor Rights felt low impact, so I think that some amount of recursion could be cut. The extra influence and deck slots open up some interesting options (one of which is just trimming the deck down!).

• The Fermenters were good and occasionally played nicely with Bahia Bands, although I do wonder if Sure Gamble might just be better. It's immediate money, it only takes one click, it benefits from Ghosttongue, and it isn't vulnerable to Mavirus. All of that said, however, this deck does often run low on creds, so the buy-in for Sure Gamble might not be trivial!

• Given the prevalence of Asa and PD at APAC, I'd be very tempted to include a Light the Fire! and a Buzzsaw for those matchups. A second Laamb might also be nice, just to improve the consistency of finding it in time for it to matter.