MC Grindah Âu Cơ (1st, 4th and 9th @ Canberra Megacity)

Soundtrack:

For pure hype and thematic reasons, we gotta recommend this namesake Kurupt FM banger cause even tho this is primarily a scoring deck, you will end up flatlining some runners, especially as you get closer to scoring out! Also Vale who won the megacity with this deck has recommended Suffer Me from the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack cause the song is a good one and runner opponents do tend not to enjoy playing against Âu Cơ. Finally, I also have to shoutout this new KNEECAP song for getting me in the right mindset after round 6 and hyping me up to get a win in the final round of swiss to end the event on a high!

Why these 49 cards?

Holo Man is the shit and good cards are cracked af! We loved icecreamcollege's Bamboozled but at the same time xiaat was building an Au Co that had some more substantial ice which was working quite well in testing because a lot of runners struggled to both contest with the Âu Cơ asset abundance while also having to deal with ice protecting centrals and the valuable stuff.

From that tournament we also saw DeeR absolutely tear it up the whole time with a LilyPAD Magdalene deck that Miles and I were incredibly high on for being great in all of the kill matchups that are floating around at the moment. We both decided to bring it but this also made us more excited about playing an Âu Cơ that wasn’t really trying to kill the runner in the ways that a Measured Response version of the deck would have wanted us to.

Because of this, we fused xiaat’s icier build with icecreamcollege’s Holo Man deck to present a stronger scoring out threat. We also took icecreamcollege’s agenda suite because Miles and I are both super high on Hybrid Release which is the absolute goat for scoring out, lets us cash in our accumulating Phật counters from hand AND means that the ID trigger at the start of turn that makes us trash a card is really an install straight to the board. (Also Blood in the Water is a cringe card and you shouldn’t play it - but the art on the mat is still fire).

Like icecreamcollege’s writeup said, you need to be ok with playing while your opponent is on 4-6 points because either by you feeding them Stings or through early centrals accesses those points will end up in their area but you just have to believe that you’ll win, they won’t and you’re chilling! Every game really does feel like a nailbiter. I also got some advice directly from him to make wacky plays to throw off your opponent (a few times I cleared HQ of agendas with Moon Pool to put counters on a Spin behind a Semak, making the runner take 3 net to check it out) and to just let the cards come to you and be open to using the tools you DO draw to threaten the runner.

When the ID was first revealed I got super excited about the possibilities and immediately drew up and ordered an Âu Cơaster vinyl record to provide me with the space to store the hundreds of ID counters I saw myself gaining in the future and in one game I even maxed out the space on it.

Over all this deck went 10-3 in swiss and the top cut beating 3 Sables, 1 MuslihaT, 2 Bazzes and 4 Sebs. The losses were to Magdalene, Phoenix and a Sable. Vale ended up winning the whole event, Miles came 4th after dropping early from the cut and I came 9th being the only one to bubble out of the top cut on SoS in a time-honoured TAI Breaker tradition. Remember that Âu Cơ gave birth to 100 perfect eggs so there are 90 more wins out there for you to pick up with this deck!

Tips on playing the deck:

vs Sebastião:

Do whatever you need and mulligan to find a Semak-samun to put in front of HQ on turn 1 so they can’t Transfer of Wealth you at the start (or really until a bit further in and they can find crew and a leech). If you can get your foot in the door and get bladderwort and Phật going to make sure they have to keep drawing up on their turns rather than getting their board engine going at which point things get harder but Holo and Moon Pool tricks still gove you a lot of space to score. Also don’t forget that Hostile Architecture counts installed ice as ‘installed cards’ so if they trash one with a crew remember to hit them for 2 meat damage!

vs Deep Dive crim:

Anemones on centrals are cracked but generally the fact that the faction’s draw is on the weaker side and depends on running means that a lot of what you do through installing Hostile Architecture, firing Bladderworts and Phậts off agenda scores/steals will go a long way towards keeping them out of the game and away from being able to beat you. It’s not fully a free win though as Vale demonstrated with his win in round 1 of the top cut - if you get a really slow start and aren’t able to put a lot of assets on the board to help accelerate your draw and find ways to win, it gives the criminals a lot of space to draw up, install their breakers and challenge you before you can really get going. Key in that game was also that Vale was able to Maintenance Access to not have to hit the Anemone in front of HQ, so putting Anemone specifically on archives means that a crim going for Deep Dive will be forced to take the 2 net off the rez.

vs Magdalene:

Thankfully we get a lot more game against control shaper than I think the Oppo+EotL or Measured Response decks get because the runner has to do more than just focus on staying alive and occasionally challenging servers. Despite this, I took a loss in round 1 when I flooded with agendas off the mulligan and wasn’t able to recover because my Magdalene opponent chained VRcations early and managed to get the Knickknack engine going before I managed to establish a board to overwhelm them. The biggest thing in this matchup is the fact that Magdalene’s are still advantaged over other runners because they don’t have to be too scared about being flatlined (with the help of LilyPAD) - even though the main gameplan of this deck isn’t to flatline the runner, accidents do happen and the threat of being flatlined means a lot more runners have to play cautiously which Magdalene is a lot freer not to have to do.

vs Hoshiko/Phoenix:

This was the third and final deck that took a win off our Âu Cơ. The Phoenix I played against was able to go through a Semak-samun protecting a Cohort turn 1 hitting Steelskin and Strike Fund, trigger their ID (and mine off the HQ trash lol), landing the trash and still having a Fermenter installed and ticking away. This doesn’t necessarily end the game but when they installed an Aniccam two turns later and found their second and third fermenters to keep the money up, I just fell too far behind and wasn’t able to pressure the runner’s hand enough to open up scoring windows while a different runner might’ve needed to spend time drawing up.

Summary

The deck is very powerful if it can set up Cohorts and Bladderworts early to keep up a steady flow of ID counters and help draw you into the tools you need but if this does not happen or the runner is able to trash them right away (even taking 3 net from a Semak is worth it to trash a Cohort), they have a very good chance of setting up their board and disrupting your setup rather than being forced onto the back foot and having to draw cards for half their turn to avoid being flatlined. For any members of the SBT reading this, this fragility, especially early is something that already gives the deck a pretty clear weakness for runners to exploit (pls don't ban this beauty 😭).

Thanks a bunch to the Australian netrunner community and especially Evan and Tom for running such a killer event and filling the event and pub outings with laughs! Thanks to Scarius for organising our Naarm meta bus trip up and driving the full distance there and back - we couldn't have done it without ya! Icecreamcollege was also a great help in getting some feedback on cards to include and for being generous to send us some replays to give us some guidance on piloting. And ofc shoutout to the TAI Breakers for chatting a bunch about Âu Cơ deck choices and just generally being an endless stream of encouragement and fun!