Guantanamo Swan Song (1st & Undefeated @ NZ Nats 2023)

This deck is a huge nod to @bking's and @Sokka's unholy creature of Guantanamo Bay Bay, the OG Keeling Ag prison deck, affectionately dubbed 'The Villain'. All it took to become competitively successful was for players to learn some lines against this Corp and start losing faster lmao.

Runners of all factions when they queue into AgInf

I've had a lot of success with this archetype over the summer (let's call it a "fan favorite" among the folks in my local meta). However, I was never confident enough to actually bring the list to an event in fear of losing on time. Recent QtM's sweeping success at Continentals and other events with a 49 card variations made me reconsider my choices. The SBL team was right on the academic's tail as well, and the New Zealand National Championship turned out to be the last event to allow for both Keeling and DreamNet to still be legal. This was the archetype's time to shine.

I didn't need any extensive training since I was familiar with the deck and its ability to create very challenging boardstates, although some practice games still helped to tune a few slots to the current breaker suites. Some of those changes like 3x Bran are a product of QtM evil geniuses, others I can call my own, like removing Magnets which turned out to have no real targets on the day, or adding 1x Mavirus to help with Turtle matchups.

One major point of contention between these decks is a choice of HB upgrade between Cold Site Server and Manegarm Skunkworks, discussed in great detail in @AugustusCaesar's writeup (the man himself turned out to be my first opponent on the day). I tried both options in testing and found it nigh impossible to make a good choice, but decided to approach this dilemma from a different angle. The one thing I really loved about the original Unband list was one of the lowest agenda densities possible in the game. With Mad Dash seeing close to zero play in the current meta, and the agenda suite becoming much less Dash-able with the ban of Obo, it became a much more noticeable argument in favor of a 59 card list. From there the plan was obvious: running the remote lock of Bran - Anoetic - Cold Site while praying not to lose off centrals (and usually pulling through with relative ease).

I went undefeated with the list on the day, feeling very solid in almost all games, cutting Runners' options with Keeling ticking, while guiding them towards unsafe facechecks and accesses.

Replays*:

Swiss R1 vs @AugustusCaesar on Hoshiko
Swiss R2 vs @rip netrunner on Hoshiko
Swiss R3 vs @KyraWNY - ID
Swiss R4 vs @Larrea on Arissana

Top Cut 1/4 vs @Agasha on 419
Winner Semi-Finals vs @rip netrunner on Hoshiko
I ran in both Winner Finals and Grand Finals.

*if you don't like seeing your replay here for any reason, ping me on Discord and I'll remove it

I was pretty nervous about playing a long night of Netrunner: the tournament started at 1:30 AM for me and ended at about 10 AM. I tried to get some shut eye before the event, but you can imagine how it went: instead of falling asleep at 8 PM I spent the next 5 hours turning in my bed, thinking of every possible way I lost in the past and could lose tonight. It turned out OK after all, with me making my first ever top cut and everything that followed.

Huge thanks to @nbkelly for running such a clean event and to @Jai for streaming it. Thanks to all of my opponents for the great matches, and to my testing group partners for being there to bounce Hosh list ideas off of each other or just suffering at the hands of Dr. Vientiane over and over. @emmel @AmarumAcies @Mortivor YOU ARE FREE NOW

Between @KyraWNY's 49 card variation and my list the deck went 8-0 on the day.

My Runner deck was a take on Bridgeman's Simpler Hosh as seen here.