1st, 2nd, 16th at Notts District

9-3

Wins against Lat x 3, Sable x 2, Steve x 2, Ken, Quetzal

Losses to Lat, Esâ, Hoshiko

With thanks and love to harmonbee, Lap, Ish and dreadmaaw for putting on yet another fantastic tournament.

Special thanks to lap and ChonkySeal for showing us around Nottingham, and the usual shout out to 🏅EA sports🏅 for being just a great bunch of people to drink beer and play netrunner with. Although, after staying out until 2am at Billy Bootleggers, I will probably never drink beer again--at least not until Sheffield.

Also thanks to clickonerun, who's delicious home baked almond cookies were the perfect hangover cure.

This is a tuned, and massively improved, version of the Fast Advance Ob list that I took to London Districts. Essentially, it is an upgrade on Calicana Ob from 2023.

It has some rough matchups in the form of Esâ and Mercury, and any runner playing Turbine can be surprisingly tough. However, if you are looking for "the best deck", then I am still reasonably confident that this is it. Contrary to popular opinion, I firmly believe that there are plenty of good Corp decks that you can play, but I also think that fast-advance Ob is (slightly) better than any of them.

In any case, I really enjoy it, and I hope that you do too.

Improvements

Descent

My biggest takeaway from the London district was how difficult the Esâ matchup is for the deck. Descent, being a 2-cost installable that is tutorable with Mavirus, and that puts agendas in archives back into R&D, is the most effective tech card that we can play.

It's still a very challenging matchup, but this change alone makes it much more manageable.

Hortum

Our other most challenging matchup is Mercury. Mercury is not the most popular or successful ID, but it is just popular and succesful enough to be considered a serious threat. The answer, in this case, is to play more ICE. Specifically, more ICE that ends the run.

Hortum suits our purposes perfectly, because as well as being excellent against Criminal, it is also good against Esâ.

Tranquility Home Grid

I know I am late to this party, but it is almost unbelievable how good Tranquility Home Grid is in Ob.

Clearing Regolith to install Tranquility Home Grid sets us up with all the money and/or draw that we could ever want or need.

2nd Ice Wall -> 3rd Sandstone

After much discussion, and at the 11th hour, we decided to swap the 2nd Ice Wall for the 3rd Sandstone.

Sandstone is a more difficult rez in the very early-game, but it holds together in the mid-game and, in some matchups, even the late-game. It's also nice to have another 3-cost piece of ICE, both because it can be summoned with Border Control, and because it can be used to summon Tucana (off of an Azef trash).

It was a good last minute swap that none of us regretted.

Play Patterns

I won't go through every possible Ob line, but if you are taking this deck to a tournament then it does help to familiase yourself with some of the more common ones.

Mavirus into Regolith into Tranquility Home Grid

This is our default economy play, and we should be aiming to open with this in every single game--if not on turn 2, then as soon as is practically possible, and definitely before scoring any agendas.

Azef for Spin Doctor

A Calicana classic: fast advance Azef with Slash and Burn or Audacity, trashing Ice Wall (or Tithe) off the Azef for Spin Doctor.

At the same time, this play replenishes our hand, and protects any agendas that were lost to archives.

Azef for Tucana

Score an Azef, trashing a 3 cost ICE (such as Sandstone) to get Tucana, and then use the Tucana to replace the ICE.

We should aim to score at least one agenda off of Tucana in every game, if not two.

Mavirus for Holo Man

Install mavirus on whichever (ICEd) central server has less agendas in it, then use the mavirus to summon Holo Man in the remote and fast-advance an agenda.

The runner will probably run the remote afterwards and trash the Holo Man, but that's fine. It will cost the runner a bunch of resources to do that, and we have enough other fast-advance tools that we only really need to use the Holo Man once anyway. Or we can Spin the Holo Man back and just Mavirus it out again.

If the runner doesn't trash Holo Man, and we don't have an agenda in hand, then we can think about moving it to R&D to advance Logjam. I'm not saying that we should do this--advancing ICE is cringe--I'm just saying that we can.

Border Control for Calibration Testing

This is a very rare play pattern, but it's one worth being aware of because it will straight up win you games. If the runner runs a Border Control last click, we can trash the Border Control to summon a Calibration Testing, then use the Calibration Testing to fast advance a 3/2.

We can even summon a Tucana off of the Calibration Testing and use it to replace the Border Control.