Universal Agreement (21-3 @ EMEA 2023)

This is QtM's favorite deck from EMEA. It was apparent to us pretty quickly that Pinhole Threading stonks were low and Runners were too stretched trying to combat rush, tempo and asset decks - they didn't really have the tech or even the resources to deal with something like this. Arissana is too poor, Crim needs to be able to make runs to do anything and can be gearchecked easily, Anarch is okay but often relies on turtle. Also, Brân 1.0 is simply the best piece of ice in the game right now, with no one having a good solution for it. The solution was obvious: a port of The King's deck from some months ago.

The solution wasn't that obvious, actually. We pondered for a while whether to take this or a 59-card version (which is very easy to assemble, you can try it at home) or a 49-card one, and decided to take this. We weren't really confident in our ability to play quickly enough, or to promptly call judges over slow play. This probably ended up being the wrong pick, given that we didn't lose a single game to time over the weekend (krysdreavus actually won a game to time somehow).

Specific build choices notwithstanding, the archetype was an absolutely correct pick and it feels like there was always very little Runners could do to prevent getting locked out and murdered. izzy went undefeated, I went undefeated except for a "technical" game loss (blaming it on Bacterial Programming's UI on jnet being terrible), crowphie went 5-1 and krys went 3-1. Any problems we had during EMEA were due to our runners, this monster absolutely carried us.

There isn't much to say about the deck if you have seen previous iterations of the archetype in action already. Some notes:

• Mindscaping is a card we all underrated for a long while, it was mostly thanks to Paillu gushing about it that we ended up trying it, and it's lovely. The small draw you get is nice, and the deck really needs some help clawing back up from the low credit totals it often gets to.
• Cold Site Server felt like it almost wasn't needed, or like it could be a Manegarm Skunkworks and work just as well for less investment. Anoetic Void does an immense amount of work, in large part thanks to Vampyronassa fueling it every time it fires (and it fires often); combine that with a new cheap gear-check in Tatu-Bola and it really feels like CSS is secondary. We may consider different influence spends in future versions of the list.
• Fujii Asset Retrieval is perfectly fine, it's not our belobokata, but it makes Anemone a lot scarier and forces jack-outs (or kills) a surprising amount of the time.
• Brân 1.0 is an incredible piece of ice and it's worth importing three copies. Clicking through easily makes the run pointless if there's a Void, is impossible if there's a clicked CSS, and the first subroutine is basically always active and gives you a very relevant booper. The influence isn't a big cost, Attitude Adjustment didn't really feel necessary anyway, it gives you similar value to Mindscaping and making R&D denser often becomes a liability.

QtM strong! Thanks to the whole team for helping test this, especially to krysdreavus and crowphie who had to suffer a lot for my sake. Thanks to Keeling for finally giving me a win in a high-profile top cut, literally my first time after quickly dropping from both CBI and APAC <3. And fuck Bacterial Programming.

Replays

• Round 1 against Longi
• Round 2 against Atien
• Round 3 against The king
• Round 4 against Strngove
• Round 5 against J0N4LD
• Round 6 against mjp

• Round 7 against Redino987

• Top cut game against cpt_nice

Replays (from crowphie)

Round 1 against Arissana

Round 2 against Hoshiko

Round 3 against Sable

Round 4 against Hoshiko

Round 5 against Arissana

Round 6 against Hoshiko