Hostile Black Knight (4th at Aldershot Regional)

When you slot two Hostile Infrastructures

This is a straight copy of @leachrode's Black Knight Gagarin list, with the 4 influence spent on Malia and News Now Hour spent on two Hostile Infrastructures instead.

And let me tell you, that change felt good. Taxing on cards as well as credits is stunningly obnoxious and with the threats of Urban Renewal, Contract Killer and High-Profile Target effectively taxes on clicks as they draw up - and gradually mill out, setting up those kills late game. They straight up won me one game and were very helpful to my other wins.

In swiss it went undefeated, beating Aseop's Hayley, Rezeki Wu and 419 (and then I ID'd twice). The Hostiles won me the game against Wu, by reducing the runner's hand to 0 on a last-click run to clear an Urban Renewal with Contract Killer on the board - they thought they were safe thanks to a Political Operative, but obviously couldn't trash Contract Killer without flatlining themself. Very cheeky.

In the cut, however, it lost twice.

It played against a 419 and, despite finding both Hostiles early, effectively never found any money. Kept poor and with Miss Bones trashing everything, there was nothing I could reasonably do. Even a single Commercial Bankers Group early on would arguably swung the game massively in my favour. Alas.

Smoke was the second loss - there was a couple turn window where Smoke was poor and tagged up, and I just needed to draw High-Profile Target for the win. I top-decked it the turn after Smoke found Misdirection 🙃. After that, they brought the game on lock with my options massively narrowed.

With Shaper becoming more prominent and able to utterly shutdown Gagarin, I think this deck won't be consistent enough moving forwards, but it can still do great stuff and still has a ton of power. Hostile Infrastructure does quite a bit to help with this.