La Cosa Nostra (5-1, 10th @ US Nationals)

This deck performed well for me at US Nationals this year. I have been playing it for the last 2-3 months. Basically it's a fast Palana deck. When La Costa Grid came out, my first thought was that never-advancing Nisei MK II would be amazing -- after trying that out for a bit, I found that it was a bit niche and that La Costa is less of a SanSan and more of a sick drip econ card. La Costa building up Bio Vault, NGO, and Trick of Light counters accelerates you a lot and is an annoying card for runners to trash. It enables a lot of bluffing opportunities as well. Single-advancing Obokata or SSL is nice. Scoring a 3/2 and jamming another is also great. If you squint very hard, an over-advanced Project Yagi-Uda is kind of like a crappy Nisei counter for your remote.

The deck is able to go fast with cheap ice and gear checks of each type. (Cortex Lock is a pseudo-gear check especially when trying to score Obokata) In addition Scarcity of Resources is ridiculous when there are only 5 non-Obokata agendas in the deck.

It is not hard to get to 5 points with this deck, and from there you have multiple ways to close the game even if the runner gets set up. Half of the agendas are fast advance-able. You also have 3x Border 3x Bio Vault that can help you score the last agenda -- in addition these help protect you against Diversion of Funds and Apocalypse.

I had a lot of fun at this event. Thanks to everyone for making it a great weekend.