Fyre Frogstival (2nd Mar AMT)

(corp side writeup here)

If I had a nickel for every time I played a Shaper brew to 2nd place at the first online tournament after a set release, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s funny it happened twice.

The shell of this deck is essentially the same as the ones that koga, jan tuno, and sebastiank were playing in the dying weeks of the TAI meta. I made the quite questionable choice of taking out the bullshit Crim run events and spending that influence on fun cards from the new set instead; and when I realized that that was going to leave me with quite a severe slots problem I made the even more questionable choice of taking out all the econ as well. I’m not a good deckbuilder, y’all.

I think the NRDB deckbuilder is trying to tell me something

Realistically speaking, the Muse/Coalescence/Aesop’s Pawnshop/Spec Work engine is likely going to be the default econ package for Ari decks going forward, once the correct slot distribution is figured out. Personally though, in the Wild West of the week 1 meta, I 1) didn’t get enough (read: any) games with the package to feel comfortable with how it played at an event, and 2) wasn’t too enamoured with how many slots the whole thing took up (see above re: literally cutting all my econ).

All that said, let’s talk about the cards!

Cataloguer: This thing is nuts. Ari isn't the best shaper at installing a single copy and making it go the distance, but in general she's the best at trivializing R&D runs to the point where you can run R&D for the access instead of clicking for the direct breach, so your power counters go farther. Just don't whiff on 15 different cards seen on R&D like I did in the final.

Oh, being a Conduit replacement is also really nice for alleviating MU pressure, as well.

Burner: Absolutely cracked, no notes. This card is the initial reason why I moved off Diversion of Funds; you cheese a lot fewer 'free wins' because everyone knows to ice HQ vs shaper nowadays. I think it's going to be an important skill to know when and what to leave at the top of R&D instead of automatically shipping everything to the bottom. 10/10 card.

Privileged Access: Did you know that when you resolve a PrAccess on threat, you get to install the resource from your heap before the program? And that Ari is the best user of the specific econ resource that cares about seeing programs being installed? Ari, obviously, loves having a way to save overinstalled trojans without having to commit a Simulchip (yes, I know Muse is in faction, shush), and this card is like if Lucky Find and Retrieval Run had a big, beautiful baby. 2 may or may not be the correct number to play, but the dopamine rush from resolving one of these is immense. Highly recommend.

Physarum Entangler: I don’t see enough people talking about this card. Many see the virus tag and go ‘ew, you can’t UAV that’, but Ari is the best ID in the game at placing this program exactly where it’s needed. it’s not like you’re poor Mercury blind installing this and running into a Border Control or something, y’know Yes it gets hit by random Mavs, but in general the rest of the deck doesn’t provide a lot of purge value anyway, and losing a full turn to get rid of a single card vs the program recursion faction is completely untenable.

Also, you get really funny situations like this:

Clot: the first weeks of any new meta are the best times for exploration of the new cards and all their fun interactions. This is the best time for rando bullshit FA/Rush decks to show up to ruin everyone else’s fun. In that sense, Clot is an anti-anti-fun card. QED.

Flip Switch: holy basado just ban recoco pls, I feel like an absolute bozo for slotting this card in Shaper and like even more of a bozo for not

Thanks are due to Kror and the rest of the stream team for putting on such a smooth event as usual; the king, nbk, sebk for being such a formidable miniboss squad; the Breakers for the great analysis this scoops season and for the excellent showing today. And to everyone I’ve talked to about netrunner or otherwise these past weeks, no matter how brief, I treasure every interaction. Love y’all.

SHAABR friendos

Jai out