Bird! Constellation! Ob! [16th @ Nottingham CO]

I didn't have loads of time to build and test entirely new decks for Nottingham Outlaw CO and the new meta that came with it, so I ported some older decks I'd been working on to the new meta and worked with those. My runner was Padma.

The plan is to score agendas on Tucana (allowing you to get more gearchecks / Ob fuel) and Malapert Data Vault (in order to grab more money / advancement tricks) quickly. We have the usual Border Control early remote shenanigans (trash it to get a 3c code gate, so requires the Runner to have two different types of breaker), as well as Envelopment for a more secure early remote ice and Oaktown Renovation for early game scores. Seamless Launch lets you overadvance Project Atlas, sneakily never advance SDS Drone Deployment and generally be a nuisance.

We also have a few nasty destroyers, since they're actually surprising and taxing in a world without bin breakers. The 1x Mavirus is there to surprise purge Aumakua, and 1x Corporate Troubleshooter to also help the destroyers fire in the late game. We also have 1x Armed Asset Protection as a small late-game economy boost: in Ob it is extremely easy to have an ice, operation, upgrade and asset in the bin, thus making it a 5c profit when needed.

How did it do?

It went 2-2, which is reasonable. Here's a brief summary of the four games it had:

Round 1 vs CobraBubbles on Esa (W): I can't remember all of the details, but I managed to score an unadvanced SDS via Seamless + advance + Audacity to trash a freshly installed Corroder, so I think I win on style points. Also managed to completely surprise him by rezzing a Drafter on R&D, allowing me to grab a Spin Doctor and rescue two agendas that had been sabotaged.

Round 2 vs echo/ on Sable (L): I wasn't fast enough at getting ice on all centrals and once I did, it wasn't taxing enough to keep out the machine of efficiency that is those Sable decks. I wish I had a destroyer backed up by Troubleshooter on R&D - I had an Archer on the remote which meant I was reasonably safe to score, but not enough tax on centrals.

Round 3 vs secondskin on Tao (W): Tao was poor so I managed to rush behind Border Control and then Envelopment.

Round 4 vs Utati on Arissana (L): Mulliganed into four agendas (from two agendas and no ice), so I protected HQ - but this meant I lost a lot of speed and thus didn't have the tempo to close out quickly enough.

Deck changes

I would love a third destroyer and second Troubleshooter, because the rest of my ice isn't taxing enough. Envelopment and Hortum are good as strong ice, but I need more ways of setting the Runner back so that I'm able to score. The Drafter is extremely nice, particularly since it is three strength, but the influence may need to be spent elsewhere. A Ballista could be nice, given that I have enough Magnet to defuse its main weakness (trojans) and can always Extract it down to something else if needed. The other issue is that Stavka isn't really tutorable by Ob or Tucana (since it will be a sad two strength), which means I don't have an easy way to go "oh I need a destroyer!" and go fetch one without forfeiting an agenda to Archer.

Special thanks

A few quick bits of special thanks (this is the same on both of my writeups):

• Thanks to all of my opponents for the fun games, particularly CobraBubbles who I'd met online before (from him testing the Starlit Knight spoiler story) and was as lovely in person as on Discord :)
• Thanks to my metamates in the Birmingham/Warwick crew that travelled up to the tourney with me: Ams, Harper and Fern.
• Thanks to my plush axolotl, Axi, for keeping me from tilting.
• And thanks to MattOhNo and dreadmaw for organising the CO in the first place and liaising with such a lovely venue!

okay I'm done now thanks for reading