The ol' swap 'n' smash (3rd at Derby SC)

I took this list to Derby store champs and came 3rd. It's not as interesting as the Sports list I made but this is my first real attempt at playing Freedom. Actually, I won the Sheffield GNK a couple of weeks before with an MWL 3.0 version of this list too. So I suppose this is the second attempt.

I've played quite a lot of Val (not with too much success) but I was finding that against the rushier decks I was really getting gear-checked of late. So I was looking for a 45-card anarch to play a Val list in. I thought that Freedom's ability seemed decent for getting rid of the tag / kill pieces in Weyland rush as well as acting as a cheaper way of dealing with any asset-based decks. So this is Freedom, with only good cards, and leaning about as far away from the 'all the viruses' archetype as possible.

The key cards here are really the combo of Hippo, Crowdfunding, Turning Wheel and Datasucker. If all goes well then you can get amazing value from central runs and really rack up the pressure. I like to really pressure whichever central is more weakly defended and try to strip away the ice with Hippo, build up lots of sucker counters and trash accessed cards. You can really cut down on corp options this way. If they get sneaky and won't rez the outer ice (to counter Hippo) then you can just build up Wheel counters and save up for a big dig. Stimhacks (and Datasucker tokens) get you into the remote when you need to.

The deck is fairly swingy. Either things go well and the corp feels under all-out assault, or things don't come together quickly enough and the corp is rich enough to defend in depth. NEXT and Mti are particularly problematic match-ups. Mti, in particular, is where you really miss that sweet bad publicity but I just couldn't make cuts to fit Mining Accidents.

This list performed ok, but not great, at Derby. In round 1 I was just a little too slow against Matt's Acme and couldn't contest against his giant ice. Round 2 I managed to just about survive against Don's Urban Renewal Cybernetics Division, but I put that down more to knowing what he was doing than anything great that this deck did. The win was by deck out. In round 3 I couldn't keep up with Gordon's super-fast NEXT but in round 4 luck was on my side and I beat Simon's BABW by taking 7 points in 3 central accesses. Damn, I'm good.

In the cut, I rode my luck against Aki's bad PE draw and managed to run the right things at the right time but thrashed around hopelessly against Patrick's ludicrously rich Mti. So a 50% record for this deck on the day, and the result was down more to my corping. I'm interested in seeing where I can go with this style of Freedom and welcome your comments and suggestions!