draw, draw, install, install. (9th @ UK Nats 25)

seb is so fun!! I love this deck and how it forces you to plan the entire game and rewards you so heavily for it, while also allowing for magnificent opportunistic bullshit. I strongly recommend that you try it, without changing a single card - they are all in here for good reasons, and you will see all of them in every game, more or less.

it must be noted that I didn't face any kill nebula this tournament and that I lost both of my vs - AU games, one in swiss and one in cut. I think the deck is fully capable of and even good at keeping up with AU Co, but in the absence of a stable testing group I've not gotten the sort of high quality practice in vs it to really lock in vs all the slight variants that win slightly differently, and I misplayed and lost versus some very good players. I hope to change this for Conts!

strategy guide to be written, but it's seb so you all know the general gist. stop them having what they need to win forever, eventually get to the point where you might as well run hq to steal agendas and win.

CARD CHOICES

amanuensis - tag punishment is not real. there's worse shit on the local news! you get to draw two cards pretty much every turn for doing stuff you were already going to be doing. this powers everything in the deck.

toof - the mere presence of this in your list slows every corp opening down by at least a turn because they categorically have to respect this. as such, don't mulligan for this! they'll ice HQ t1! you can steal back another turn at any point in the game by landing this. sometimes you are happy to allow the corp to duck this to gain information on their assets and have them be at zero!

2x charm - the Jnet mines showed a lot of weyland being popular - weyland has a lot of high strength crap that you need to get rid of now to simplify the gamestate. Nuvem in particular out-econs your toofs and has both the money and ice to tempo score you out and it's very hard to contest - this is an important tool to make it possible. incidental value for making hb ice irrelevant.

1x leech - it continues to be valuable to have leech out so that once you start winning you keep winning. it's a bit too lockout-sensitive to go up to 2 leech 1 charm, and you can't afford the slots for two of each.

back to 3 lago - au co lmao

2x fermenter - I experimented briefly with gambles, but it doesn't provide the necessary long-term econ to facilitate ashen endgames and was really awkward on the low credit totals that au co tends to force you onto. the fast econ role is mostly successfully occupied by friend of a friend and toof.

ashen, buffer drive - do not under any circumstances cut ashen, even if in 4 games out of 5 you don't fire it. this deck functions on the principle of having roughly infinite gas in the endgame, which allows you to play a very control-based gameplan where you (in overly general terms - centrals are useful resource generators for you before your lock emerges) simply stop the corp from winning the game forever and then swing at HQ once it becomes full of agendas and trivial to hit. its presence forces proactivity from the corp player, which 9 times out of 10 is a mistake on their part, and when they sensibly aren't proactive it allows you to break glacier walls and start generating resources again.

NOTABLE ABSENCES

eru - seb already has a multiaccess spouse, it's Manuel, and we can't afford another slot for this. eru's main strength is that her presence in the deck forces respect from the corp, and we are already forcing archives ice extremely hard with privileged access. we do not win by stealing agendas out of centrals, we win by grinding the game to a halt.

bling - fucking lmao. half the card draw in this deck is specifically for fueling Audrey and bankhar, which bling cannot do, and you don't even install things for zero that often. it's flashy but amanuensis is miles more efficient considering you are already taking and clearing tags all the time.

stoneship, NFL - your slots are so tight and toofs/ashen/buffer so essential that this is unjustifiable, as cute as it is for dodging kill. into kill matchups you just gotta be mindful of gamestate and use your disruption tools to stay safe.

eye for an eye - I'd love to be running this but the slots are so hard. gourmand is just more consistently useful and higher-tempo.

raindrops - again, slots, and also it's not massively necessary with our turbodraw.

katorga breakout - this only helps us out in matchups where we've not been locked out - ashen helps us even if we've been locked out. in the brutal race to cut slots this got cut. tends to hang around in grip too which tends to be awkward. i do want to do a joke version of this deck running 3x this that's all-in on toof because it would be funny.

GAME REPORTS

R2 knightfromchess Plutus combo RH. delightful. grindfest where no points are scored other than a regenesis steal early and nobody is even trying to score. they eventually get the combo up to 4, I run archives and steal the last two fujis for game right as time is about to be called.

R4 Scarlett nanomanagenent nebula. i am shitting it the first ~4 turns scared of touchups eotl, making my centrals runs with botulus and opportunism. steal a superconducting hub early, at some point later find a nanomanagenent on R&D with gourmand and feel a weight lift off of me. from there it's a game of very strong econ vs cheating through piranhas repeatedly and a small amount of toofing, i eventually patrol the centrals long enough that I find the points.

R5 cablecarnage au co. I see multiple hanseis early and joke with him about thank fuck it's not the kill version. it was the kill version. i don't die to random EOTL thankfully despite not playing around it, but in a midgame push I finally find my econ on the turn I'm to contest a cohort, end up on two tags and 4 cards from my activities, reaper mindscaping mindscaping for the kill. extremely funny. I think if I played more conservatively that turn and tagged in Lago rather than crew I probably can attempt to trash the board the next turn and stabilise.

r9 thorn thunderbolt. he presents a very reasonable first few turns for someone with severe agenda flood. unfortunately I happen to have the sort of hand that makes me force my way into hq with toof, Manuel, see two agendas, run back next turn, see two more for game.

CUT

game 1 - thorn thunderbolt on stream. i am raring to go on this one - I was looking forward to a "real" match against this after the r9 match was so flooded. a tyr is rezzed on the remote turn 2 or 3! I know that I have to deny all econ possible, and do so - I click through several tyr subroutines this game trashing regos etc. botulus helps me out, he scores a bit but I have good centrals control with seb given the remote is so porous and am 5-3 (iirc?) up by the time time is about to be called, I run hq a final time and find a 5/3. we have been bantering about the weirdness of the matchup and the shit we are doing the entire time, this match was great.

game 3 - wowarlok au co. he's on a weird one with humanoids and anoetics and scatter fields. I get thrown off by this because it's different enough from what I've practiced into that I'm valuing plays incorrectly, undervaluing his au co counters, panicking and running centrals etc - I think the game was primarily lost on an early last click scatter field facecheck that gave him a dirt cheap regenesis, but there were a lot of efficiency things I could have probably done differently to present a stronger threat to his ability to FA out the last points. very fun game and was good to talk it through afterwards.

thank you everybody for an extremely good nationals.