The Solution™ - 1st @ Swiss Nats 2024

Are you tired of Shapers and their multi-access tools stealing all of your agendas?
Are you fed up with Esâ putting agendas in your archive, while you slowly run out of ways to shuffle them back.
Have you had enough of building faster and faster corps just to keep up with the modern runners?

I'm proud to present The Solution™!

Disclaimer:
By playing The Solution™ you relinquish your right to complain about variance.
Keep The Solution™ away from slow players, DSS tournaments and Maw infested meta.
The Solution™ isn't liable for unfavorable game results vs Sokka-level players.

What is The Solution™?

This is the latest iteration of Venti Ob that took me all the way to first place at Swiss Nationals this year.
Jokes aside this deck is very well equipped to deal with the recent rise of Shapers and in my opinion holds a positive matchup against every deck in the meta except one: reg Hoshiko. But with Lat slowly proving himself as the best reg Id and the die-hard anarch players moving away from the untold protagonist and towards more ecologially involved runners, the popularity of Maw, the worst counter to Venti, has reached an all time low.

I've only rarely had the chance to play against Venti, but I find the deck very fun to pilot. So, in the hope to increace its popularity, here's a guide to help you understand this unintuitive pile of 74 cards.

How to Win

The main goal of the deck is to assemble a hand of Mutually Assured Destruction and 2 End of the Line, while slowly building a remote with 6+ defensive upgrades in order to flood the runner with more tag that they can deal with before shooting them down.
Finding all the pieces can be challenging. Pivot acts as any copy of our combo pieces, and should be used proactively to make sure it doesn't get trashed, but the star of the show is the one copy of Gaslight: during most of the game you'll slowly progress down the Ob chain to get to 0 in order to fetch that single gaslight and find the operation you're missing, with the possibility of shuffling it back and tutoring it again for a second operation if needs be.
The key to playing this deck is to always be mindful of your Ob triggers and to use them proactively to progress the chain down, so the next section is dedicated to what to do when triggering Ob.

What to tutor for

5 costers
Envelopment is our only 5 coster, so we'll never tutor for it. On the other hand it has a built in trash that'll help getting the chain started.

4 costers
How to get them: you'll tutor for them when Envelopment fires or when you extract it.
What to get: since all 4 costers are ice, what to find depends on the board state and the runner's breakers.

• Anvil is great at griding down the opponent, but it's also usually the best way to accelerate your chain by trashing other ice or upgrades. You should consider using the when encountered effect even if the opponent can't break the ice.
• Border Control is your main answear to all the disruptive run events you could face, it'll usually protect HQ, since your agenda density is so low that any taxing ice is enough to defend R&D.
• Stavka is more of a surprise ice that also doubles as an emergency Ob trigger, you should probably not tutor for it often.

3 costers
How to get them: firing a border control require less set up, but saving them for later is usually important; using Anvil to trash a different 4 cost ice that you're not using (usually a piece of ice defending a remote that doesn't need defeding anymore) needs more set up, but feels less expensive.
What to get:

• When tutoring with Border Control you'll likely tutor for a piece of ice, here both Sandstone and Afshar are valid options, depending on the board state.
• Mavirus is the next self-trashing chain link. If you don't need anything in particular, this is the best way to advance your gameplan.
• Crisium Grid is your second line of defense against disruption, while additionally slowing down Deep Dives. Since most of the 4 cost trashed will happen during a run, Crisium will always be in the right server, making it a very precious tool.

2 costers
How to get them: Most of the time you'll tutor for a 2 coster by using a Mavirus, since that requires no set up. When in need of a 2 coster to advance the chain or to shuffle agendas back in R&D, extracting a piece of ice is a valid option, but the lack of 2 cost ice means that doing so will inevitably lower the amout of ice protecting your servers.
What to get:

• Regolith Mining License and Drudge Work are your self-trashing options. The former is easier to empty and will make enough money to last the entire game, the latter can be exhausted with less clicks and offers the invaluable service of protecting your agendas, but needs a much more specific set up to dissolve completely.
• Warroid Tracker is our prime defensive upgrade, especially when stacked on top of itself. You should tutor for it with Mavirus as the runner is approaching the server. It's key to defend the remote, but it doesn't help in finding our combo.
• Yakov Erikovich Avdakov should always be a late game tutor. You really want one in the remote as you MAD away everything that's inside and make enough cash to fuel the kill, but before that it serves a much more marginal role, making just a few credits here and there.

1 costers
How to get them: Sometimes you'll extract something you don't need, but more often than not drudge work and regolith will be your gateway into 1 costers.
What to get:

• Urban Renewal is our only self trashing 1 coster. Unfortunately this has the downside of attracting the runner's attention a lot more than anything else, sometimes baiting them into running a server they have no business messing with. This is a really good tutor if your remote is safe enough, but offers a big window for your opponent to deal with it and slow down your chain.
• Overseer Matrix is a great defensive upgrade that makes it impossible for the runner to trash all the cards in the remote without getting covered in tags. Unlike the very proactive yet risky option above, this is a much safer target, but it won't progress the chain by itself or put on additional pressure.
• Tithe and Sandstone are both meant as targets only when trashing cards with MAD, unless you badly need ice these shouldn't be tutored for.
• Tranquility Home Grid is the newest addition to the deck and fills a very important role. Compare to the other two 1 coster that fit in a server this will help you progressing your plan forward by drawing a card every turn, sometimes more, and it's expensive enough that the runner's not likely to contest it right away. This is going to be the first 1 coster you'll tutor for most of the times.

0 costers
How to get them: this one is the trickies one. Sometimes you'll get a Urban Renewal to fire, but most often than not you'll get to tutor for a 0 coster by extracting something or by trashing an unnecessary upgrade or piece of ice with Anvil.
What to get:

• You made it! You can finally tutor for Gaslight! You should do that almost every time, provided the runner isn't going to trash it before it fires without risking the game in the process.
• Angelique Garza Correa is a distant second in terms of frequency of tutors. She's a great emergency tutor when you're trying to stop a deep dive by pinging the event out of the runner's hand.
• You should keep Spin Doctor in consideration when dealing with agenda floods or when Gaslight is in the bin and you need it back in the deck to find more operations. Drudge work is easier to tutor for and can shuffle more agendas, so you're unlikely to tutor for Spin most of the time.
• Forced Connection can catch runners off guard, especially when there are multiple in the same server. This is usually achived by installing it after an Anvil trash, outside of that this is a safe tutor that's unlikely to get trashed if you need more bodies for MAD, but you're still better off tutoring other cards.
• Rashida Jaheem is surprisingly an unlikely Ob target. You want to very intentional with every card draw and the money is not our top necessity, additionally she'll probably have to sit in the remote for a turn and by the point that's a safe enough place for that to happen you'd rather have a gaslight or a spin to get back the gaslight.

So is that it?

More or less, yeah. You want to be mindful of what kind of disruption your opponent might have and plan how to deal with ahead of time. Cupellation and Burner can take away your combo pieces, so you should protect them with Border Control and Crisium; Stoneship Chart Room and The Class Act can help the runner survive, but in most cases you can find the third End of the Line before going for MAD or wait untill you can give the runner 11+ tags so that you have a turn to deal with resources.
The Basalt Spire deserves a shout out: you don't want the runner to steal ony of your agendas, but recurring one card is such a powerful effect that sometimes it's worth letting our opponent get 3 points to massively accelerate our plan.
It's worth noting that this deck is on the slow side and will probably never win on time. I've brough World Tree Arissana at every tournament since ACC earlier this year and I wanted to play this deck for almost as long, but many of the event I played in were in DSS format and I wasn't sure I could finish both games in time.

The Tournament

The whole event was such a blast! Shoutout to Lukenukem, Vectorz and the rest of the Swiss community for running it so well. Here in Italy we've always organized tournaments as an excuse to meet at the dinner table and it feels like cooking food directly at the venue during the event is the obvious level up that we hadn't thought of.

On a more personal note, this result means the world to me. Since I started playing competitively back in 2017, this is the first tournament where I get to claim the first spot all for myself. I'll cherish this feeling for a long time.