Loup42 (1st at Deventer H2 CO)

After a somewhat middling performance at worlds (4-4), I spent probably too much time trying to find out whether Loup is good or not and tweaking this list. Taking this to Dutch Nats was me giving it one last shot before shelving it, and it performed better than I expected (had I not made simple but game losing mistakes).

Why play Loup?

Playing Loup means finding and maintaining Imp counters as early and often as you can. If you cannot do that, your tempo suffers immensely and you'd be better off playing Hoshiko. But what are you rewarded with if you do? In a sense, your ID gives you a DreamNet trigger when you access a card, and getting Solidarity Badge down also gives you the corresponding Hoshiko trigger (plus a credit), or free tag removal, which is even more valuable. All the while, we do what I feel currently hurts corp the most, which is trash cards for free, especially nasty defensive agendas and tag punishment. As such, our main priority here is to get Knobkerie and an Imp on the table as soon as you can.

For breaking ice, since we are already trashing cards we are accessing, Audrey v2 is a natural fit and our ice-breaking strategy revolves mostly around that. Ice Carver helps with a lot of relevant strength break points, particularly does bring those currently popular 1-strength barriers down to 0 strength, so we don't need to expend cards. Otherwise, we use Boomerang and Botulus to break high-strength stuff cheaply, and Flip Switch lets us run with impunity while we are not yet set up.

One thing to note is the lack of Sure Gamble; what I noticed both at World and in subsequent testing is that when you're able to play the Gamble, you are usually too slow for the tempo at which this deck wants to operate. Cutting it in favor of Raindrops Cut Stone gives us the opportunity to contest ice early while helping us set up by giving us money and possibly drawing cards.

One last card of note is Buffer Drive. The real reason it is in here is that you do tend to burn through you deck quite fast, so at some point fueling Audrey might become problematic. Including Buffer Drive makes sure we don't run out of cards in the late game while allowing us to keep our deck size on the lower side, so we're still likely to draw into an Imp early.

Matchups:

HB (PD or Asa): Contest the remote early and hard, try and force rezzes. If uncontested, these HB decks can generate unbeatable amounts of tempo, so keeping them low on credits makes sure that they have to spend time clicking up. It is vitally more important to kill any Rashida you can possibly get to than it is to contest agendas, and those are well worth a Pinhole.

Prana PE: Entirely untested.

RH: This is a hard matchup. Your breaker suite does not deal with high-strength Jinteki ice well, so finding and using your Hippos is of utmost importance. Botulus any remote that they try to set up, so it is hard for them to never-advance a Regenesis. If you manage to get into a position to run HQ reliably, you should be able to win from there by Imping any card you find, including agendas so they can't Punitive you. Be minful of Snare!.

Asset NBN: This is an easy MU, but a very slow one. Since asset NBN usually does not want to score until they put you into a financial hole, which they will have trouble with as you are Imping all their stuff, including agendas, they usually just opt to trying to fake you out with Behold! and Chekists. Against NEH, this means you usually win by decking them out while controlling the board, and against Asset/Ares R+ this works similarly with the exception that you want to run HQ more to find [SGP](/en/card/21016] and Retribution.

Bird Brawler R+: This one feels like a coinflip and really depends on either players draw. For you, it's most important to find a Boomerang here and be ready to contest the remote when they try to push an agenda. In the meantime, you should also try to find an Imp so you can trash all Bellonas and thus try to dodge Threat 3. If you can do that, this is a cake walk, and if not, you'll lose the game very quickly.

Glacier BtL: Extremely slow, but should be winnable. Lock the remote using Botulus and run any advance card in the root. Otherwise, try to make the best out of the early game where you can still feasibly run centrals, as they will lock those up soon.

Any Ob variant: Mostly untested.

Thanks again for @Lyon, @B@st10n, @Cpt_Nice, @Wausser and @Cluster Fox for playing, and to @Menghini for organizing the whole event!