Mr. Hands (17th/22nd @ Worlds 2024)

DEVELOPMENT

This is a list developed by Snare Bears and played by Rongydoge, Whiteblade, and myself at 2024 Worlds in San Francisco. We realized that interacting with your opponent is cringe, as is shaper bullshit in general. All you need to do is install a bunch of drip econ from 2015, slap down a few bypass effects, and make a six-click Deep Dive turn to win. This deck carried me with a 6-1 record in Swiss.

This story begins with rongydoge in a state of extreme denial, refusing to play Shaper at worlds. He finds this list from wowarlok on NRDB that looks vaguely like a combo and starts to iterate...

Meanwhile, I was jamming an unconscionable number of Lat games, banging my head against the wall trying to beat Snare Bears with the most boring playstyle ever. The week before worlds, rongy and whiteblade convince me to make the switch and we start cookin.

We removed everything that did not directly contribute to the combo (cards, cash, bypass) and spent two weeks frantically swapping in strange and terrible blue cards. Here are their stories:

Lucky Charm
No one knows how this card works and it is a silver bullet against cards like Nisei Mk. II, Border Control, and Anoetic Void, you know, the most powerful corp effects in this meta. You need to run HQ already to Dive, so it’s basically always on.

Backstitching
Permanent bypass that is not unique! It’s also kind of an econ card if you can just blank a Bran. Used to be 3x, but you basically only need 1-2 since you only have one mark.

S-Dobrado
The nice thing about six-click turns is you actually have clicks to spare. If you don’t see an Anansi on board, this lets you sail through a two-ice central.

Sneakdoor Beta
We’re going old school here. We have so many clicks that you can even install this the same turn we Deep Dive and still have a click for a second access.

Malandragem
Finally, the card that pulled the deck together, the eponymous Mr. Hands. It’s bypass on a stick early for the likes of Starlit Knight, Tatu Bola, and Saisentan, then it’s bypass for literally anything at Threat 4.

HONORABLE MENTION: Window of Opportunity
Rongydoge wanted to “let the light in” and play this card, but I spent about an hour shitting on it the night before worlds. While he finally made the swap, news of the switch didn’t make it to Whiteblade in time, who ended up running it instead of second S-Dobrado, the only difference in our decks. I think the card is fine, but it’s pretty situational… you’re typically not playing the credit denial game, so the de-rez is rarely equivalent to a bypass, and the install is only situationally useful as well. The ideal targets for this are M.I.C. and Border Control.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: Blueberry Diesel
Whiteblade loves this card and thinks it’s amazing. 👀

PLAY PATTERNS

The deck is kind of straight-forward. You set up the huge dive and steal all the agendas. However in reality you need to be able to convince the corp you can contest the remote, even if doing so would deplete your resources. You’ll see in many of the games I make a conscious decision to attack an obvious push when I could be setting up. In testing I was often too split between the Dive and the remote checking. At the beginning of each turn you need to fully commit to 1. Deep Dive 2. Contest the remote or 3. Money up and set up.

TOURNAMENT REPORT

ROUND 1
Rip1DollarCostcoChurro (NEH)
I had a pretty smooth start to the tournament until I pinholed an Urtica Cipher in the remote. Given that this wasn’t a typical NEH, I had to slow down and play a lot more conservatively. This allowed my opponent to score out a couple Beales and a particularly nasty Cryptocrash. However, these scores did drop his credits low enough that I could aggressively inspect the facedowns. I snagged an early Headline behind a Pop-Up Window, which was surprisingly effective at fueling money for traps. Nevertheless I was able to Dive early. The first Dive saw two two-pointers, so I went for the win and Dove a second time that turn for another shot at a three pointer, but another 4/2 brought me to 6. All of his scoring brought his credit totals too low to threaten me, so I was able to sniff out the win sitting naked in a remote.

ROUND 4
rubenpieters (AgInfusion)
After playing two games as AgInfusion (one on stream against friend and fellow Snare Bear RotomAppliance), I faced rubenpieters on the deck in my only Sable loss in the tournament. He played a remarkable game, aggressively using the ID ability to redirect me to Saisentan maybe five times. The game felt out of reach throughout the mid-game, though I was able to steal an agenda behind a nasty Tree Line remote through some bypass shenanigans. Near the end of the game, I had a legitimate shot at a Dive, after having him burn basically every facedown ice on boops. The Dive came up short, as he had cleverly delayed a BacProg score (IAA with a La Costa) to draw a second BacProg and sneak it into the remote, leaving HQ and the top 6 cards of R&D completely clean. This matchup felt a lot better in testing with rongydoge and whiteblade, who, in one game, took down my Ag in three turns. I probably could have slowed way down and accrued a huge board of credits and bypass to get a healthier Dive.

ROUND 5
meanlady (Ob)
My matchup against meanlady’s Ob was yet another that defied the standard game plan of build board and Dive in the most uninteractive way. Weyland ice is notoriously risky for criminals, so I had to tread lightly, allowing her to score out a couple 3/2s. This immediately freaked me out because I saw her accrue ungodly amounts of creds (25+ at one point), and I could only assume a Big Deal would finish me off. It turns out that was not a possibility and my game plan pivoted to poking centrals and trying to force rezzes. This successfully got me an SDS out of HQ, which was amazing… except I had already exhausted Malandragem on the previous turn. Reviewing the board, I realized the bulk of ice was barriers and code gates, prompting me to lose my Carmen. We had only cut Revolver the night before in an attempt to gain more slots, so we did not have a backup. My only hope was to get enough bypass to cheese out a Dive through Border Controls. The surprise hero of the matchup was actually Sneakdoor, which I installed with almost no credits left to brute force the win out of HQ.

ROUND 8
Harp (SportsMetal)
Harp and I had an excellent game on stream the day before in Crown of Servers, so I was excited to sit across from her again. I had played reg Sable in that event, so I was hoping she wouldn’t catch on too early to the Deep Dive strategy. The early game was somewhat slow for her. We both found early Vitruvius, but she struggled to keep her economy up with only Cohort Guidance program. By the time she found her first Fully Op, I had a couple breakers and bypass set up. I didn’t need a huge Deep Dive because agendas were piling up in HQ. Sports is a pretty favorable matchup for me, but if she were able to get some of that chunky ice rezzed, it would have been a different story.

ROUND 10
TroubleShooter (AgInfusion)
This was a fascinating game. The day was getting long, and I was visibly running out of steam. Having been burned by AgInfusion, I was intent on moneying up and Diving the “right way.” An opener with Earthrise, Daily Casts, and two Career Fair was an incredible boon, and pretty soon I was completely set up. I cold read an agenda in the remote and was rewarded with a Send a Message. He used it to rez an Anasi on R&D, which would end up being a problem. After recovering from contesting the remote, he was able to score a 4/2, which usually is no big deal… but this was a Sisyphus Protocol. Now that single Anansi on R&D represented 10 credits with Carmen, and maybe another 5 if he boops me into it. I have to really go into the tank, trying to figure out the best time to go for the Dive. My goal is to get him to waste a boop to R&D on click 1 on a turn when I actually do have to Dive. It takes a while, and I need to contest his econ a little bit to keep his credit totals low, but when I saw my opening, I was able to DD on a full six-click turn to secure the win.

ROUND 11
Pengguin (R+)
Eleven rounds of SSS is a lot. I was happy to sit across from Pengguin, whose Sable dodged my Ag in a re-pair earlier in the day. I have had a lot of experience playing R+ this season, so I went into the matchup confident that I can open aggressively with bypass (since centrals are generally open), then revert to Diving if things go south. Then I remembered there were rumblings of a Better Citizens Program R+. I knew this was not a typical NBN asset deck when I saw a Warm Reception rezzed. Bladderwort came next and knocked one of my Deep Dives out of hand. I couldn’t rush too fast before I moneyed up in case of Oppo, and yet I needed to start trashing assets. The Warm Reception installs were fast and furious. I saw a B-1001 but could not deal with it in the moment. It kinda just sat there and changed the way I would interact with the board for the rest of the game. I spent several clicks checking board to keep him honest, and in doing so was rewarded with a Better Citizen Program installed naked in a remote. My first Dive wasn’t amazing. I snagged two ARES which put me on four points. On the one turn I gave him breathing room, he was able to sneak a BCP which again changed the texture of the game. All of a sudden, my run events were turned off unless I wanted to feed him tag money and turn on B-1001. The downside to the early BCP score was he had to go to 0-1 credits on multiple turns. That allowed me to exploit the basic action card to pound centrals for accesses, and eventually Dive. Neither of us were on our best game after 11 rounds of Swiss, and I was able to sneak the last agenda out of archives when he over-drew and was forced to randomly discard, before I was able to Deep Dive.

ROUND 13
Booshy (A Teia)
My final Sable match of the tournament was against a familiar face from the East Coast, pillar of the community Dan B.! So you can imagine my surprise when one of the nicest runners in New England rolled in near the top of Swiss with a nasty tempo net damage A Teia! I had heard about the brew earlier in the day, but I had no idea what combination of traps and agendas to expect. This led to me being very cautious in my play, running only early and drawing up at end of turn. I had to do a lot of mind-reading to sniff out both an early NGO and a sneaky single-advanced Fuji. After stealing the Fuji I felt very confident that I could dodge traps and just Dive for the win. A couple of well-placed Anemones foiled that plan, the first sniping a Dive, and the second on HQ threatening to get me killed by putting me at two cards. Jacking out turned out to be correct as Dan showed me the Snare after the game. As has become the pattern in these games, I ended up finding two Bloods in the Water on Deep Dive runs before even firing the last dive.

I was incredibly pleased with how the Sable performed. It was designed to feast upon HB, which I only faced once, but I was able to navigate a bunch of weird threats throughout both days of Swiss.

SHOUT OUTS Shout outs to all the Snare Bears for responding to my annoying pings for practice, especially DeeR, kysra, rongydoge, RotomAppliance, tbu3k, and SUPER shoutout to cablecarnage who always was there to run wild matchups conveniently scheduled during my breaks at work (and very occasionally during class). Shout out to Andrej and ysengrin for pulling double duty as teammates and making 2024 Worlds an incredible experience.

Shout out to shiiuga for again running an excellent Janksgiving which I was proud to attend and 0-2 drop after talking incredible shit about my decks.

Shout out to Andrej and rohit for pulling out an amazing run in CoS and for having amazing taste in board games.

And finally shout out to NSG for keeping the best game and best community alive. See you at Worlds next year!