Consume, Tag, Freedom (6th @ Cascadia)

(thank you crowphie for the image)

Behold! Tremble, fall, and praise the Old Gods, nearly forgotten, nearly lost to the approaching Dawn. Daddy's got an eldritch pact, a hot fursuit, and a destructive attitude! (And Seb's boyfriend is here too!)

God of War?? God of War!! As far as I can tell, for the 7 years this card has been in the game, it has never been more than bad to mid, but here in the Twilight, it can finally glimmer as a foundational piece in a very potent engine.

But how did we get here?

It began with someone in QtM asking after Countersurveillance decks in the meta, thinking the card was cool but having never had an opportunity to play with it in the heyday of Tagme Zahya. I said there were none, but maybe there could be. As I thought on it a bit, it really got to be appealing. After all, what truly is the worst anyone could do to me? I began my experiments in Hoshiko, as is tradition, to see if there was anything here. My thinking being that anarch had the disruption and recursion in faction to either clear or mitigate relevant tag punishment, and that the Price, Steelskin, Strike Fund, Moshing, Labor Rights package was still the best consistency and econ engine in the format outside of a World Tree Ari that has gotten set up (I think some other shaper packages are on par now, but anyway). There was some movement in QtM at the same time, independently, to revitalize some sort of Tagme Zahya, but that didn't resonate with me, I found the decks more brittle than I wanted, with no in-faction recursion or ways to really stop them from playing tag punishment they might have.

The early Hoshiko experiments played a single God of War as an extra tag generator and potential backup breaker, and Maw as disruption to the corp. This proved promising, it was pretty cleanly winning games, but the playstyle the deck I had built was pulling me towards was somewhat at odds with how I wanted to get Hoshiko value, and I really wanted to set up with Maw as often as possible, which was occasionally difficult. So, what if the disruption was directly on the ID? Tagme Freedom was always a cute idea and I'm already on a lot of viruses, it should be easy to port over, I just need some Solidarity Badges to fill out the engine.

Freedom started with a more traditional looking rig, swapping the cleaver that Hoshiko was using for Yusuf and upping the Leech count to 2x. It became immediately apparent (1-2) games, that God of War was incredibly good in Freedom, bumped the count to 2x. We were also able to consolidate some slots by bringing Consume into the mix. Continuing development, the only real problem for the deck was very large sentries. We were just running Mimic and some Leech at that point, which I was mostly fine playing around, but what if we brought in a light ice destruction package? A Devil Charm will also synergize with God of War, and ice destruction will also get us our Badge and Consume triggers. It started as just a few pieces at first, and at this point in the development I really have to thank Styx and a mysterious circuit breaker especially for continuing to test and provide feedback on the list while I dealt more with life stuff coming up. I appreciate them so, so much. With testing, the traditional breakers were dropped for the 3rd GoW and the ice destruction package was expanded. The list had been floating on and off of Maw, which was more of a late-game closer in Freedom than a necessity, but at this point had swapped completely to Patchwork in an attempt to smooth out the economy in the stage of the game before we are just sitting on 30+ credits, and let me tell you, landing a Patchworked Fursuit feels so good.

About the time of US ECN, there was some questioning of whether the deck really needed a console at all, as the deck could do a lot with just 4 MU. Some flexibility up to 5 is good though, but after ECN, I largely agreed, and the patchworks were replaced with a single Hermes, which acts as yet another disruption piece that synergizes very well with the rest of our strategy. We are very happy to see it, as it supports everything we are doing, and we are not really hurting for it in the games where it doesn't come up, while at the same time, if a game ends up going quite long the option to go up to 5 MU is very good as well. And that is about where we are here!

Note that the US ECN list got a technically higher placement but is less developed and polished as a deck, the list can be found here

Jeff hears The Message

Strategy:

In terms of gameplay, the list looks quite funky but in practice it really just rewards good fundamentals; tight click management, timely installs, knowing which servers to pressure and when, and understanding the relative value of corp cards at a given moment and making smart trash decisions. You want to delete and erode remote servers as much as possible, hit HQ for value, and if Freedom control game and finally, if needed, win of of RD with tag-fueled multiaccess. Don't shy away from using a Devil Charm to go through once with God of War on very high value runs. Terrorize the remotes, strut into HQ in your Hottest Fursuit, trash everything, and win.

Some important notes on God of War:

• It is not unique

• It is 1mu, not 2

• The beginning of turn ability is optional.

"Doesn't this just lose to ____?"

Ah, my favorite question from both weekends of tournaments. Listen, maybe, it's possible. But is there anyone actually here bold enough to show up with the tools to punish me for my hubris?? No. Didn't think so. Honestly though, the deck is surprisingly robust. A manual purge can slow us down a little bit, but does alarmingly little when you easily tick back to 4-6 virus counters at the start of turn. A mavirus purge might keep us out of a server for a turn, if you suspect one though, you can crewcharm to avoid eating nasty subroutines, and ideally we're hitting the corp economy hard enough that those mavirus purges are really tough while also holding up strong enough remotes to stay in the game. My losses over the two weekends were few, and were primarily due to critical misreads of board state across the table that could have been potentially avoided with a little more intentional practice ahead of the events, rather than highlighting flaws with the deck or poor matchups.

Almost certainly, you could craft some corp that hates this out of the game, but I'm far less convinced that that would still have game against all of the shapers, Esa, and I don't know, I guess Sable exists?

(thanks Lazy, for being a fan of the work!)

Future Direction:

The Chisel was mainly an include to keep gachapon target density up, but I think it is an easy cut from here for a 3rd crew. All of the text on crew is relevant and it synergizes with Leech, whereas Chisel only works with Devil Charm. There are also too many situations that arise where the optimal line is to use the strength reduction on Crew to soften ice for God of War, and then use other strength reduction to blow up a different piece of ice (perhaps even on a separate run!). The synergy and versatility are well worth the cost of hard installing it every time. Gachapon itself is a little contentious for the list, as we can't very well go tag me and play virtual resources, so we have been hovering at just about the acceptable threshold of targets. There's a case for getting rid of it completely, but at the same time it is nice to have the extra consistency pieces, even if it is the worst one we have.

Ironically, the necessity of Counter Surveillance is in question somewhat. There's a real argument for something less all-in like Finality, which stacks with Manuel, whereas CS does not. Damn it's fun to resolve though.

And now a special broadcast from the villainous organization known as QtM:

Sokka!! You may have defied odds, dismantled schemes, and bested me on the East Coast and in the majestic bioregion of Cascadia, but don't think this means you've won! For far too long now the Netrunner community has basked in the comfortable assurance of your great skill, incredible luck, and overall reputation as the nicest person imaginable will carry you to the top, well no longer! This is a formal declaration of archvillainy and there will be a reckoning in San Francisco! As we speak, gears are turning, plots are formulating, skills are being honed to dethrone you! In the unthinkable event that my brilliant and elaborate plans fail, I have a league of comrades, colleagues, and henchlings to rise against you. Live in fear of that day, the message will be queered! (I had a lot of fun playing against you both weekends, I hope to again).