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

paulyg 1318

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!

3 comments
25 Feb 2019 ValkyriezGaming

Any thoughts to runnjng the same deck out of Eddie Kim instead Freedom?

25 Feb 2019 paulyg

@ValkyriezGaming I think you can play a somewhat similar idea out of Kim, though I prefer the 'targeting' that you can do with Freedom. For example, if you know they have a HPT in hand that you need to get rid of you can run a few times with Freedom and wait until you hit it to trash but with Kim you might accidentally trash a Hedge Fund first. Freedom lets you avoid the downside where it will hurt you (e.g. against CtM or Hostile Infrastructure). Kim also doesn't give you the 'alternative currency' for trashing assets so I feel like you maybe want more money. On the other hand, Kim can start trashing those big ops (IPO, etc.) straight away and potentially deny the corp a lot of their econ and his ability isn't vulnerable to purge.

For a Kim build I'd probably look at including Imp to give you some more control and allow you to trash ice, and also see if there's a way to squeeze in Mining Accidents (maybe instead of Datasuckers). But at that point you might be better just playing it out of Val...

2 Mar 2019 Blackhaven

I used this list for my first few Standard games after playing Core XP for a while.

I love the deck for how fundamentally sound the deckbuilding is. Nothing too fancy, just Money, Breakers, Card Draw, and Ways to Access Extra Cards. And all while taking advantage of the ID without going too deep into the theme, sticking to only super solid cards such as Datasucker and Aumakua!

Just a very well-built list that simply makes a lot of sense, very nice. Even the 1-of clone chip in case Inject trashes something that isn't MKUltra or Black Orchestra, loved it.