Hail Gebrselassie (2-2 Ghent Regional)

After the announcement that the Lunar cycle will be rotating with NISEI’s next release, I challenged myself to win a game with Nasir Meidan in a (somewhat) competitive setting. The deck actually surpassed my expectations, going 2-2, and each win felt very satisfying. With the lack of Personal Workshop, this deck functions a bit differently from previous Nasir decks.

The “breaker suite” consists of a single Engolo, empowered by Gebrselassie, my absolute pet card, and the support of Shapers' new toy, Pelangi. You will not be able to repeatedly run a server, but most runs you make should have a high impact. Inti is a support breaker, but didn’t do anything ultimately besides fuelling Spec Work. I would probably replace it with an additional copy of The Artist, which is very valuable to Nasir, often hovering close to 0-1 credits.

Obvious includes for Nasir are of course Order of Sol, Ghost Runner and Cache. Supporting the Caches and Pelangis, Clone Chip makes sense too. Street Peddler further helps with free installs and allows you to do it mid-run, which is really valuable for Nasir to have an extra Cache/Pelangi/Ghost Runner up his sleeve. With all these 1-cost cards, Khusyuk seemed like the clear choice of “multiaccess”. I was also happy to find out that Xanadu made System Core 2019 for that little extra boost. Net Celebrity is a good solution to low cost ICE and shuts down Scarcity of Resources or Death and Taxes.

On the day of the Regional I made the call to cut Levy for Film Critic, DJ Fenris for Stimhack and the single Diesel for "Freedom Through Equality". Stimhack turned out to be the correct choice for a little boost once most ICE is rezzed, and DJ Fenris (for Reina/Geist) is absolutely unnecessary. The other late game support is of course Cyberdelia, setting you up for the next rezzed ice. The Film Critic didn’t do much besides taking a single Obokata, but hey, that feels good, right? In one other game I did find myself thinking that a little more recursion would be nice

Ultimately, the changes I would make is cut Spooned for a Trope (yay, recursion at cost 1) since I want to keep the Critic, and cut Inti for a second copy of The Artist. That being said, I think I cannot really complain about the performance of this deck at the Regional.

And most importantly, this deck is FUN. And just like the runner Haile Gebrselassie said,

“First, do enough training. Then believe in yourself and say: I can do it.”

And that is how you win a game with Nasir Meidan.