Don't Think We Don't Care [3-1 @ Stirling CO]

Punitive Counterstrike is a really centralising card in that it forces the Runner to keep it in mind at all times - no surprise it was on NSG's watchlist for a ban in 24.09. If there's a chance the Corp has Punitive in hand, any blind run on centrals becomes a risk. That makes it great in Azmari, of course.

What makes it not so great is being out-of-faction in a deck that already struggles for influence. But you don't actually need it in your hand for the Runner to have to play around it. So as long as decklists are private, what if we just didn't?

Cutting Punitive frees up influence for more Red Level Clearance, which CobraBubbles correctly identified as absolute gas in his Regionals-winning deck. This card does so much: it cycles your deck faster if you happen to draw it early, it tops up your credits if you draw your combo pieces before Azmari and YDL have built up your funds, it lets you set up your scoring server quickly, and it can even boost your effective maximum hand size on the combo turn to get around Stoneship or Lat. It was by far the card I was happiest to see, and the most likely to be Spin Doctored back.

Most of the other tech is pretty standard fare. The ice suite hasn't really changed significantly since the original EAzmari. I went with one Neurospike and one Djupstad to hedge my bets; Neurospike protects against the risk of Pinhole, or of a lucky trash from centrals, and is more reliable against Lat, but is more of a faff to score since it usually needs Reeducation to be pre-advanced. On the day I scored one kill with Djupstad and two with Neurospike; I lost the fourth corp game against eventual winner eden_online's Lat, but that would have needed to be a Neurospike game too. I would definitely consider shifting completely to Neurospike if the Lat meta continues.

I used up the last two influence with a Snare, as is Scottish tradition, but really that should probably have been a single Punitive, just in case people caught on.

Multiple people told me after our games that they were playing carefully around Punitive, so I think the plan worked very well! Though I doubt it will work again now the secret's out. Either way I think I'm done with Azmari - I've been playing it for six months now and am starting to get bored.

Many thanks to the TOs for a great event, and to RoseKolodny, Zylus and Gaelan for invaluable testing help!