Bost Ob - 1st, 2nd and 3rd - @Canadian Nationals (WCE) 2023

This is the list Team Muntal Bost played at Canada Nationals last Saturday in order to achieved a clean sweep of 1st Yours Truly, 2nd @ThatsNoMun, and 3rd @Radiant. The deck only dropped one game to all players below the top 4, but we had to play each other a lot and the over all record for the day was 11 wins 7 losses and one SSS ID. We also had two other members take 5th @Santa and 6th @FireRL with other corps. Extremely amazing showing and I'm so proud of our team.

The story of the deck: After winning AMT in June, I wanted a different deck I could play in our June 10th Seattle CO. A few of us in our testing group had been playing around with vegan Ob, drawing from bblum and Pinsel’s lists. Everything I was testing felt very promising except I couldn't get the Banktongue matchup above a 35% win rate. The night before our CO I started thinking about how, with the PD agenda suite, a lower agenda density might significantly improve the deck’s reliability. I added the Wall to Walls and Drudge Work as Extract targets to further improve the matchup. I played one game with the list and decided I would take it to our CO. Thankfully I got bubbled in an 8-way tie for 2nd XD and the deck stayed internal. Over the next month we came to accept the deck’s raw power. This list and its matchups have been roughly 75% of our team’s testing time over the past month. We tried a lot of different variations, but the only slot we eventually changed from my original June 10th list was -1 Formicary +1 Winchester; shout out to Radiant for that spark of genius.

So to the good stuff, how does this deck win? You play fair, you just score agendas. . . very very fast!!

Ob gives you a truly amazing ability to score agendas behind ice. I have never won without scoring at least 2 agendas off the table. Ideally they will be GFI (Global Food Initiative) and Oaktown, but as long as at least one of them is GFI or Oaktown you're okay. Your wins will be split into two categories:

If you score a GFI things feel pretty easy. In order to score the GFI, you can NA (never advance) it and score with a minimum of 2 credits if you have Seamless and Audacity (multiple Atlas counters makes this much easier). It's very common for me to use an Atlas counter to pull and install the winning GFI.
The other option is to score 1-2 Oaktowns and then close by Audacity-ing 3/2s. This option is less optimal, but it's likely how you'll need to win close games, as it's one of your only outs once the runner can get into your remote reliably.

Matchups: The deck’s worst matchup is our team’s own BlitzShiko, but this is still winnable. I would put it at about 35-40% for Ob if both players know exactly what's going on.
Banktongue is the second worst matchup we tested, but this is still close to 50/50 when your opponent knows exactly what you're doing.
@thike's Bankhar Adam gave us some trouble on the day, but I would rate it at even or slightly Ob favored.
CS Zahya was basically untested since Eric was likely off Zahya, but that certainly might be a bad matchup.
apoc Hoshiko/Lat Unknown.
This Ob list is favored in every other matchup we know of.
Bigshiko: This deck was built specifically to have a good matchup vs. the Bigshiko variants. The main/only weaknesses we found with Hoshiko was "getting gearchecked" and decks that closed with fast advance…so, everything that this deck does best. You can certainly lose to Bigshiko - they have all the cards in their deck they need to beat you - they just have to be in the right order and in the top 25 cards. This lack of consistency is the reason none of us brought Bigshiko to the tournament.
Both crim and shaper really struggle to get enough money and set up fast enough.

Strategy: The synergy between your ice and Ob's ability is very strong. You can start scoring Oaktown behind Border Control or Envelopment as early as turn one. Oaktown is often the easiest agenda to push since you can score it with only one credit.
You want to be thinking aggressively and proactively about your clicks. Always try to do something more useful with a click than gaining a credit (unless you're recovering from a hard score). Pre-installing ice when you want to score Oaktown is a great example of this. You could install the ice > agenda > advance all in the next turn, but if you have an extra click in the current turn you can agenda > adv > adv next turn and threaten to chain agendas or install Rashida. An installed and double advanced Oaktown can threaten 5 points over the next 2 turns if you score the Oaktown and install GFI the following turn. This is the type of aggressive play that really makes this deck sing.
The Skunkworks/Formicary nonsense is a huge tax and, though not necessarily needed to win, is a very powerful aspect of the deck. You can use your assets as bluffs to bankrupt the runner and then easily capitalize on the resulting scoring windows. The lines are almost endless and playing with Extract has been some of the most fun I've had with netrunner in a while. Most of the Extract lines are obvious, but here is a little one that only occurred to me recently: you can extract any 3 cost card in order to install Formicary on the outermost position of a server to turn off Bankhar or Hippo, even if the Formicary is basically blank ;)
This deck's ability to value purge Fermenter and Aumakua in a tempo-positive manner is huge. The raw value is so much fun to pilot.

How do you beat the deck? Blitzshiko does really well, but in general you need a Mad Dash to connect. You really want Pinhole for Skunkworks/checking for agendas. Hush is critical for BC and Envelopment. Bankhar is also really good against this list, but not necessary if you have really consistent ice passing/breaking abilities.

Please hit me up with any thoughts or questions in the comments and by all means enjoy this wonderful list for the next few weeks until we say goodbye to my good friend GFI.

Huge props to the whole team for helping us refine and master this list. Big thanks to Solomir for a well run tournament, Thike for helping judge, and all the wonderful players who showed up and played on the day. I'm glad this wonderful game lives on <3 NSG