Canonically Correct-er Argus - 3rd place UK Nationals

This is the Argus list I played to 3rd place at UK Nats 2019. The deck is nearly the same as the Same Old Argus list I brought worlds, which itself was based on the 'canonically correct' Argus list that's been mostly unchanged for a long time.

After enjoying and placing well with Argus and Compilation Hayley at Worlds I decided to bring the same decks to UK Nats. In order to do some last-minute testing I brought both these decks to the President of Servers team event on the Friday. After facing exclusively Crims on Aumakua and Anarchs with Aumakua/Pelangi, and a lengthy discussion in the Cambridge group, I made the following changes:

-1 Excalibur +1 Archer

Going into Worlds the UK Argus players suggested dropping the 2nd Archer for an Excalibur, giving you an additional out in the late game with Excalibur + Border Control shenanigans as well as being useful against Apocalypse decks. While having the extra line of play can be comforting, I found it underwhelming in the PoS team tournament due to the prevalence of Aumakua, and the expectation that nearly every deck would have access to an answer - Aumakua, Pelangi, Engolo, or Eater. I therefore brought back the 2nd copy of Archer. I (incorrectly) expected Freedom to be popular at the event after placing 1st and 2nd at Worlds, and Archer is extremely powerful in that matchup, while being a face-check threat that all runners have to respect.

-1 Hortum +1 Afshar

If I could include 6 Mausolus in this deck, I would. Sadly NISEI has neglected to errata Mausolus to be consumer-grade thusfar. Hortum has always felt bad to me, as every time I have drawn/installed/ressed it I have wished it were Mausolus instead. One of my takeaways from Worlds was the power of Afshar on HQ - especially against Black Orchestra and Hippo. I therefore wanted to more reliably draw it early. Afshar also fills the role of Hortum as a gearcheck on the remote in certain situations - although it is significantly weaker against Aumakua. As your plan usually involves a mix of 1-2 Data Ravens and 1-2 Border Controls on the remote, I decided that this trade-off was worth the consistency of drawing Afshar.

As I did not have much time to prepare I was completely unaware of the new Dummy Box Liza deck until the day before the event. At this point it was too late to switch away from Argus, so the choice was whether to make space for Self-Growth Program. After discussing this with the Cambridge group we decided that slotting it would weaken the other match-ups too much, and while I expected the deck to be played I did not expect it to be massively popular. This turned out to be completely wrong, as 17 out of 65 players were on Liza, but I managed to dodge the matchup the entire Swiss and Top cut until the loser's final - better lucky than good!

In the end this deck went 5-3, losing to RotomAppliance's 419 twice and Chris Dyer on Liza once, and my runner deck went 7-1. As always the event was very well run and incredibly fun. A big thanks to everyone that helped to run the event and the entire UK community for being awesome!