Sportsmetal Combo

First things first, the deck is derived from this one: https://netrunnerdb.com/en/decklist/51496/iceless-team-sportsmoon It's the same general idea, so you can find the gameplan there.

You might notice that this deck is built for MWL 2.1. Under the new MWL, Estelle Moon is banned. But against a good runner, Estelle is often 2 credits draw 3 gain 6 and make them lose a click. We'll get VLC to replace it which is almost as good, so we have some hope.

I'll first break down the differences between my version and CelestialSpark's version, then go into the changes we might make going into MWL.

First. Cards. I'm using the full 49, while other decks can go all the way down to 45. I can't say which approach is better. The argument for 45 is it's faster, but 49 lets us get more stuff. Though I don't see the merit of having 1 Vitruvius and an empty slot compared to two 1 pointers.

Next. Agendas. CelestialSpark's list should definitely be at the very least -1 Bifrost Array +1 False Lead, because false lead is a pretty important agenda to the deck, bifrost does barely anything. That said, there's an argument to going down vitruvius to make it so the runner has to steal more agendas to get to 7, So the first Vitruvius cut would be to put back the bifrosts, and after that.. you have to put in some pretty crappy 1/3s. Gila Hands Arcology and Chronos Project sometimes aren't completely blank I guess? But it might be worth it anyways just because they aren't worth 2 points.

AAL lets you put in a calib or sponsorship on a scoring turn, or just let's you get 2 more c when sponsoring from HQ. Let's you get a slightly bigger moon sometimes too. At the baseline it's lateral growth, maybe bait the running into wasting a click running it.

Jeeves is a more expensive pad campaign to trash, and sometimes a free click on the combo turn if you are playing it with SFMM.

SFMM is great at putting out sponsorships on your combo turn, and also lets you get a huge moon if you overdraw with sportsmetal while the runner is stealing your agendas. Very nice. Also incidental way to FA an agenda with calib to break out of an e-strike.

And -1 fast break because it does nothing early, you only want 1 to combo, and you can combo without it.

So that's the differences, now looking at converting it to 2.2 Firstly, moons for VLCs. Secondly, restore loses value because you can't hit moons anymore, while archived gains value since it has more ops to hit. If you anticipate clot, you can consider a CVS. The deck doesn't technically need it. You can three-click purge, score, then combo out to a win before the runner even gets a clone chip window. Despite the VLC, this card is still probably jank, but you'll have awkward moments when you VLC with 2 more ops in HQ. SFMM loses value with moon gone, definitely go down to 1, maybe even go down to 0.

There's the question of whether you need all 3 BBG. Really important to the combo turn, but you only need one.

Finally, the question of defense. One philosophy is it just slows the deck down, but there's two super efficient defense options availible. Giordano Memorial Field will either keep them out of the server of your choice (probably R&D) forever, or trade 3c for like 9+c. But arguably that's not good enough.

The other is FC3. We all know it's a super efficient ice, it's coming off MWL, and if they click through it, they aren't jumping all the way from 3 to 7 AP in one turn.

Ofc there's other options like meridan and gatekeeper or any gearcheck really to force them to get down a breaker, but there's also the argument that they can just run an uniced server, and this deck does NOT want to ice all the servers.

For the sake of completeness, I could mention that adding 1 Biotic Labor to this deck isn't completely insane, letting you FA out of an e-strike, but probably not necessary.

And also diversion of funds gonna hurt a lot more since we can't hide money on a moon, and we need to get all the way to 5 to fire off a VLC, but what can you do.

Like it's kinda obvious Boggs wants you to play a fair deck, and this one is a unfair one, so yeah.

So I hope this gives you a bit of insight in the deckbuilding thought process, but for the most part once we get to 2.2, it'll be just like the same old sports metal combo you can see on the left here, mostly same strengths and weaknesses, but it'll be a bit worse.

So that's all I have to say and always be running! Except against this deck. Or you risk losing on turn 3 with 5 agenda points to 7.