Hold the Waffles - 2nd at US Continentals/Cascadia 5-2

How it started

How it's going

The Toolbox Arissana thread in the Snarebear chat is two weeks old and 618 messages deep at time of list lock-in. We've got a bunch of diehard shaper players, as well as a few pragmatists who helped tune the deck a ton. Shout outs again to Jonas, Chris, Dan, Grey, and Eric for talking theory, helping grind games, and letting me steal liberally from them. This deck also wouldn't be this good without some cross pollination with the Vancouver meta who influenced this build quite a bit.

We tried a ton of different variations, using Saci, Prognostic Q-Loop, Aesop's Pawnshop, Aeneas Informant, and almost every green card got mentioned at some point. I don't think this is the optimal Arissana list (as you can see it get run over by Ian's NEH) - but this list is super powerful. My stream games were all disasters, but those were the only two losses it took all day, and my other matches rarely felt like the corp had a window to win (CTZ's Asa got very close as well).

Core of the Deck

The core of this deck is the engine of Urban Art Vernissage, and LilyPAD. Between the two you're drawing a card every turn during a run, and making 2 credits for the privilege. Environmental Testing ends up being a fantastic payoff for this engine because it charges so cheaply and quickly, though a lot of the other Bears disagree with me on this one. Gachapon though is the tech that came down from the other testing groups (and also saw a bit of play at APAC) that I think takes the deck (and Env Testing) to even higher highs. It feels way better than it does in Anarch to me because of how it thins out your redundant engine pieces, installs a card you care about, and usually also draws a card off LilyPAD on the Corp's turn.

My thoughts on this list is the core engine is incredibly powerful, and this can be the most powerful runner in the format right now, as long as you adjust your influence, breakers, and econ appropriately for the event you're expecting. You don't have an inevitable endgame where you have infinite credits, but instead you usually reach a boardstate where the corp cannot keep you out of R&D for multiple turns where you're taking 6+ click turns.

So customize away. Deep Dive, Docklands Pass, Aeneas Informant, Hannah "Wheels" Pilintra, and just about everything under the sun can be put in this deck to season to taste and I'm glad to see shaper be back on the menu.

Some list specific thoughts

In my opinion you need Ika so that you can install a trojan with allowing the corp to trash their ice to turn it off (though with Simulchip you're often fine - I simulchip'd for a Kyuban in almost every game I played).

If you expect a heavier asset meta, I think Solomir's (Joe) list is a really good baseline. That list also uses more regular economy cards (like Sure Gamble and K2CP Turbine) along with Aeneas Informant. But this list feels a lot more like old Geist to me in that you often only need 1 real breaker, and make a stupid amount of money with skateboard tricks. The "win condition" of the deck is to at some point start running R&D for free with Kyuban and Pichação to give you some absolutely ludicrous turns. But you also have an absolutely bonkers ability to bust essentially any remote, with Hush interacting with almost every corp strategy in the meta right now.

I'm a diehard Prognostic Q-Loop apologist in this list, and am probably the only person still running it. I usually get 3-4 installs off it, which usually means 3-4 extra card draws, and knowing what I'm going to draw allows for a lot of sequencing improvements. And being able to pop SMC/Gacha to reset a dead top of the deck is also really nice. That said I only found it once on the day before the game was "over".

In the event I played against 2 R+ Pigeon fighters who I took down handily, 1 FA BtL where I disrupted their first score and then locked R&D, lost to Asa on stream who went for an incredibly bold turn 1 with a naked Rashida and Luminal on the table. Then beat a Stegedon Thule by Conduiting through 4 ice for 0 credits and 0 clicks for 3-4 turns. In the cut I beat CTZ's Asa when it started flooded, and lost to Ian's NEH on stream because I mulliganed from 1 bad hand to another.

Once again thanks to all my opponents, thanks to Sam and Eric for organizing the event, thanks to the SnareBears for helping me refine this list, and thanks to everyone in the top cut. It was an amazing atmosphere, and felt like some of the best netrunner I've ever played and had played against me.