Black Knight Gagarin - 1st place London Regionals - MWL 3.3

When they ban Museum

When they restrict SIU and Judge

This is obviously not that heavily changed from Tolaasin's most recently posted list aside from the 2 bio ethics becoming a rather luxurious Malia and a slightly confused News Now Hour but I think it's notable to point out that despite an MWL rather pointedly aimed at the head of Gagarin with SIU/Judge restrictions to break up the combo (both SIU/Judge and Ethics/Judge) it still appears to have kept rolling as probably the best deck. In London 3 of us were on it and through the whole event it dropped one game (to me on Apoc Alice in the cut with a very money heavy start).

Forcibly getting rid of SIU was almost certainly the correct move as in a world without funding there is absolutely no way runners could keep up and stay ahead of SIU money long term aside from maybe triple rezeki shaper but those same runners sans funding and employee strike also struggle badly to stay on top of renewal + contract killer threats without sinking to economic warfare + hhn + judge.

In practice that combination was enough to beat a fairly wide ranging field (including apoc Val that I didn't know was apoc until it got played for the first time, reg Lat with paricia and imp, nexus 419, reg Val and Sunny). Given the performance from this and the fact that IG seems to be floating to the top in US regionals the takeaway from this weekend should definitely be that anyone who thought they could cut their asset tech in this MWL was somewhat mistaken.

Thanks to all my opponents and everyone else at the event for being great people and especially to @twisty_b for running a smooth, fun event despite how busy the shop was, you're all extremely great and make getting on a train to London hungover entirely worth it every time