Red Spombo - 6th & 18th NtscapeNavigator SC

aka Snombo!

INTRODUCTION

Myself and Baa Ram Wu came about this deck mainly by trying to guess how Havvy’s Spombo Lite deck might change to test our runner decks. It was at this point that I realised I couldn’t bring myself to play another day of Red Planet Couriers and decided to play another list before it got banned! Baa Ram Wu switched over at the very, very last minute with some even spicier changes. On the day, the deck proved to be a Swiss killer going 9-0, but lost both games in the cut once the jig was up. Embarrassingly, the one cut game on stream involved some horrific misplays from me although I was lucky that I had a chance at all that game.

BUILD NOTES

We expect many new versions to include News Teams and some form of tag punishment, either Boom! from Limes’ worlds list or Exchange of Information, which has a nicer influence spread. However, we found that people played around the card and never took the negative agenda points so we looked for something better. It was while trying to sure up the infinite Imp matchups, like Hivemind MaxX, we realised that the Hangeki and Snare combo covered a lot of bases as a way to get agendas in the Runner score area and kill a MaxX that wants to Imp every agenda.

Baa Ram Wu’s version went even more extreme, removing the 2 Stock Buy-Backs for another Snare and 2 Mwanza City Grid. The latter is only for HQ when you know it is safe; you can’t Imp them all, but was too last minute for me!

MATCHUPS

The majority of matchup are the same initially, try keep the Vacherons safe while occasionally scoring one point agendas from the table to put the pressure on. It’s an interesting puzzle trying to work out when you can go for your big scoring turn (something that I got disastrously wrong after a long day of Netrunner!) and I can see why it appeals to many people’s brains.

The main anti-Spombo tech was Imp with Knobkierie or Friday Chip and the aim was to kill MaxX with Snares, although we didn’t anticipate the Hoshiko versions of the idea. You have to time the Hangeki on turns with no Imp counters, perhaps by installing Cyberdex Virus Suite then using both Hangeki on the same turn. That turns your Game Changers into Biotic Labor at the very least. Best Defense was added as Artist Colony counter-tech.

CONCLUSIONS

After 3 Spin Doctors, Spombo has 12 influence free for any nonsense you like.