SABLES! 👑 King of Swiss @ Vancouver Megacity, UNDEFEATED

This deck went undefeated at Vancouver Megacity, with wins against AU Co, Ob, and Nebula in Swiss, and two very different Obs in the cut.

Sable was not hugely on my radar to play leading into this event, as I’m a die-hard Anarch, but all of my testing beforehand with Hoshiko and even a little Phoenix felt inconsistent and underwhelming into the current corp meta.

There was a Sable thread in Snare Bears that I’d dip into once in a while, and it looked fun with new cards like Clean Getaway, Transfer of Wealth, and Open Market, so I tried a few games with it, really enjoyed it, made some tweaks of my own, and then played about 25 games with it with much higher success than I’d been having with Anarch.

Most of my losses were due to careless choices and not having learned to play around Measured Response well enough yet (my main goal—beside winning this tournament—was to not die once to Measured. Wow, do I hate that, especially when you’re steamrolling a game, but don’t happen to have 16 credits and four cards in hand).

The thing I like most about this deck is how it gushes amazing, tempo-forward cards, getting you runs, accesses, money, and draw (often all at the same time), and drip, in what feels like a really smooth package. You have four ways to charge Twinning between Cezve, Mystic, Fencer, and now, Open Market. Installing Class Act and Info Bounty for free off your little Career Fair machine feels great, and even more Open Markets since it’s a Job subtype too. Having three drip at the same time feels like good old Daily Casts days, but the card is even more versatile.

Two of each breaker type alleviates a lot of anxiety playing against the variety of Weyland decks these days, especially Ob, and there was sure a lot of Weyland at this tournament (39% of the field), and 60% of my games with this were against Ob, so that was a good call. With two Boomerangs and a Mutual Favor, you’re bound to find what you need to get in in good time.

In the tournament’s first game against Aruzan’s scary 54-card AU Co, he took me from 5 to 0 cards in hand with a Reaper Function into Fuji Asset score (and some other piece), which was probably the deck’s spookiest moment, but a Nuka on the table helped me draw back up and get in the game again quickly. The wildest moment was against Man in the Moon’s Ob in the cut on stream, when my only out to win at time was to steal a 1-of Basalt Spire, so I ran R&D with about 18 cards in it, prayed, and couldn’t believe my opening eyes when he was holding up that card. See the stream starting at the 2:48:00 mark, for hams and ctz's otherworldly, metaphysical commentary on this outcome.

Going 5-0 as runner was a new, amazing tournament feeling for me, as it’s usually my corp that excels and runner that’s more middling. Thanks to the Criminal faction for inverting this stat on me for once.

Thanks to my Snare Bears teammates for all piling on variations of this deck over the past month. While we’ve all landed on slightly different cards and influence spends based on preferences to our individual playstyles, it’s been a real team effort. Extra special thanks to RotomAppliance for being the original poster and major Sable enthusiast in our group, and to other huge contributors to the deck’s building: analyzechris, cableCarnage, thebigunit3000, rongydoge, and Janktivist, and to all Snare Bears for their mutual appreciation for Tim Robinson. It's just a great place to be, with these folks, arguing about how many copies of Bravado to include, or not, in this list (my thesis is clear).

I want to thank Sindarin for running an amazing tournament this weekend with unreal prize support, the judges, streamers, volunteers, my opponents, and friends for a hilariously fun weekend.

My corp deck from the weekend is here.