Metagame Week 3

The threats you need to prepare for.

[Preamble: No AI, not an effortpost, just a minor meta-perception update.]

We’ve had a handful of tournaments now, and the threatscape is rapidly coming into focus. Let’s start with the runner side.

1. Deep Dive Sable

   If Sokka and The King show up to a tournament and mop the floor with everyone, that’s just business as usual- that is, it’s hard to disentangle if player skill or deck choice was fundamental to the result. However, I’m going to argue that in this case it was clearly BOTH, as the decklist writeup explains very clearly what challenges the card Deep Dive presents to Corporations at this junction. Besides the missing hard counters (AgInfusion, Border Control, etc.) many Corporations are still playing 2 or 3 non-defensive 5/3 agendas, meaning that a Deep Dive can end the game on the spot from 2 points. Before we jump straight to banning Deep Dive¹ though, we might want to wait a second to see if the meta can adapt. Yes, we can all start playing Anemone and try to lucksack through net damage, but there are other options, including changing our agenda suites. The DD sable deck runs a bit on the credit-poor side- Crims are usually super flush with cash if they can stack a run-econ console with some imported drip (Fermenter, Happy Tree Friends (read: Maemi or Poemu), Knickknack) but DD Sable cannot do that since her influence spend is tied mostly on the wincon. The deck gets around this by relying on bypass/Boomerang in the mid-to-late game (and yes, there are a LOT of these effects in the card pool right now, Maintenance Access being the only new one that synergizes with Sable). Is that enough of a weakness to find an angle of attack? It remains to be seen.

2. Regular Esâ, regular Hoshiko.

   While the loss of Moshing is not nothing, Esa and Hoshiko builds from yesteryear are still quite strong. The latter has been substantially weakened by the loss of Turbine but Esâ has lost practically nothing and can continue to use the tournament-crushing tactics of yesteryear.

3. MuslihaT. Usually a pretty reg crim that leans on the ID ability’s Lat/Hoshiko-like card advantage value guarantee. They will be rich fast, they will be able to pressure all your servers, and wealth will be transferred. Boring? Maybe. Effective? Definitely.

4. Shaper sucks. You can still win because, hey, runner meta, but most of the viable corps are doing things shaper really hates and without the ability to Clot-lock, you’re VERY dead to people on Biotic Labor Nanomanagement. I wouldn’t touch a shaper deck right now, not even allegedly busto control decks because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze in a world of Nebula decks.

Which brings us to Corps.

1. Nebula. You build a boring-ass deck with 3/x agendas, money operations, super taxing ice, and Nanomanagement. You do not have to build a remote, which means your centrals are very taxing. You will win a lot until someone finds the perfect solution to N-Pot, and then your deck is trash. “Deep Dive is an abomination”. No, Nebula is. If we had Clot or Magnum Opus or The Source or Rezeki maybe this wouldn’t even be a thing, but we don’t and here we are!

2. Au Co. Spiky lateral deck that will flatline me for the next 10 years. Can’t wait. Glad we decided we had to have this. We were offered cake or death and chose death.

3. Weyland Stuff. You can win with Ob, Zwicky, or BANGUN (check out the list Diogene posted in the comments from last week- it’s solid!).

4. HB is not doing well. Here’s an interesting LEO list that I haven’t tested but could be OK. My PD shell gets wins, but I wouldn’t take it to a tournament over Nebula or any of the three Weyland decks I mentioned.

Let’s all put our thinking caps on and figure out the best way to reliably punish N-Pot Nebula so that we can shift the metagame away from this. And let’s keep playing Deep Dive so Au Co. stays suppressed.

Until next week.

1. Readers who have been paying attention know I love me some Deep Dive. Even though it is one of my favorite cards ever printed, if the tools to keep it in check really don’t exist, then so be it.