Sneaky Surveillance -- 3rd, 5th, 11th Place Accelerated Meta

This is our Zahya. There are many ones like it, but this one is ours.

We didn't have a huge amount to add to the meta by bringing this, besides the (in our opinion) 2 flex slots that CSZ affords you. We decided to skip Pinhole or Tapwrm for:

Slot 1: a second Amina

While playtesting, we decided one of its biggest weakness was a Code Gate lockout/slowdown with the help of Retribution. How many times have you been sizing up The Outfit thought "If that's Mausolus, and I don't install Amina, I might lose it. But if I DO install Amina, and it's Trebuchet, I might lose it"? Worry no more! I'm not actually sure if it made much a difference in any of my games, but the peace of mind it provided is nice. Additionally, it has the benefit of upping the deck's speed against HB decks, where getting a Decoder early is necessary to keep up the pressure. Speaking of pressure:

Slot 2: 1x Sneakdoor Beta

Boy, am I glad to have had this. The early game can be a little awkward for our favorite smuggler. Your breakers aren't cheap, and you need to slow down the corp so they can't enter midgame for a couple more turns. Sneakdoor does for Zahya what Turtle does for 419, or what Mark synergy does for Sable: it forces the corp to ice Archives. It has the added benefit of providing a new win condition in the late game, should you be unfortunate enough to have not reached 7 points yet, and is such crazy value once you get your Obelus and Docklands down.

Thoughts on Zahya in the meta

Thankfully, it appears that Hoshiko is still the reigning threat, which lets little old Zahya smuggle herself into the top tables. She's too techable to be the dominant meta force, so always has to play second fiddle. Market Forces Azmari can be a problem for it, as can Loki Ag. We had decided Azmari was probably too niche to worry about (still, props to Wentagon for playing it, that deck is sick and you piloted it well!) and we totally assumed Loki Ag wouldn't be around. Well, 1 of 2 predictions isn't too bad. Zahya is still the most fun runner in standard, and it happens to be good. Why not play it?

Thanks so much to fellow Muntal Bosts! This was our first time really prepping for a tournament, and I think our results show that. Congrats to Wentagon and BinkBonkle for playing well, and many thanks to Radiant and the others (whose names I didn't get permission to share :P). They didn't enter but grinded games with us anyways! Much love.