On this episode: Liza rides her cool motorbike all over your servers, SPORTSMETAL dunks on stuff and Val’s journalistic juggernaut steamrolls onward.

RUNNER

Let’s start with Criminal, cause Liza has shown up in a big way. There was some debate about whether it was better to pack Citadel Sanctuary and Thunder Art Gallery and avoid tags, or whether to lean into her ability and get tagged to the moon. And it looks like the leaners had the right idea! We saw Liza win the Derby Regional and take second at NYC along with a number of other strong placings. It’s the return of run based, aggro, tag me Crim that everyone’s been asking for. Check out the 3x Diversion of Funds and Emergency Shutdowns in those decks…doesn’t that just make the old school Crim in you smile? The NYC list uses Counter Surveillance as a finisher, while the Derby list uses Apocalypse as a reset button while just pressuring relentlessly with Aumakua, Bankroll and Sneakdoor Beta. Both of them are, from all reports, complete murder machines. Of course, these decks do have a rather glaring problem in that you die basically 100% of the time to High-Profile Target decks…so might want to scope out your local meta before committing to this one.

Geist, who is kind of like the Crim faction’s weird uncle, has also unsurprisingly been doing well. Right now people seem to be on the pirate plan rather than the Off Campus Apartment plan. Nexus 419 also took down the SoCal regional. And I’d be remiss not to mention Apocalypse 419, which does what it says on the tin.

Anarch is…well, you kinda know what they’re doing. You’re probably Val, and you’re probably playing Indexing, and there’s a few flex slots with how many breakers, Vengeances and D4V1ds you have. One legend realised that Reg Val is so goddamn good that you can just fill your spare influence with Apocalypse and do really well, so that’s what they did. You can also play something with a basically identical gameplan in MaxX, or MaxX but with more Fisking, or Gnat (this deck is actually fairly different, and has Laamb which is really cool), or Freedom. No-Zer0 Aggro Maxx is cool too, thanks to Patchwork. According to Know the Meta, Anarch represents 58% of reported well-placing tournament decks over the last 3 packs with Val representing about two-thirds of that. That’s…pretty insane.

Shaper’s actually in a pretty interesting place. They don’t appear to have anything as insane as Val’s relatively straightforward gameplan or the tagme Liza steamroller, but there are a variety of builds around and performing well. On the “Hayley bullshit” side, we have Circus Hayley and Pirates performing well. Ayla also brought some quality Shaper weirdness with this Egret-based list designed to smash through Surveyor remotes and represent Team Birb. Also, TheBigBoy’s latest list is Comet Ayla? Neat. Classic Opus big rig has also reared its head from its swamp, blinking confusedly in the light, to perform quite well at the Toronto Regional. This Kit list spends all 10 of her influence on Logic Bombs to double down on aggression, with 3 Kyuban to keep you making bank. We also saw Jesminder appear (twice!) for basically the first time ever in this snapshot to exploit Hot Pursuit. Smoke is also kicking around, now packing Switchblade to deal with Surveyors. Side note: does Poland have a disproportionate number of Smoke players? A lot of well-placing Smokes seem to come out of there.

Sunny got Office Supplies, and some people played it to do well at some Regionals.

CORP

Although reportedly down-trodden to the point of near extinction (depending who you listen to) there’s a lot more variety on the Corp side in what decks can win. Every faction has something represented. Sure you can lose to Clan Vengeance Val…but it’s not as bad as some say.

Jinteki is arguably the best positioned Corp right now. There’s two parts to this. One is that Potential Unleashed is kind of a counter to Zer0, and typically runs 2 Ark Lockdown and 3 Preemptive Action. Film Critic is much less common so the Obokata lockout is more likely. Plus, Drudge Work was printed and it really helps to facilitate PU’s grinder style. The other part is that Mti Mwekundu is a very powerful ID that lends itself to a variety of builds. The standard is Surveyor glacier, recently boosted by Thimblerig. There’s a good amount of wiggle room in this shell – check out this very cool Amani Senai/Viral Weaponization take on it. There’s also a Mushin version floating around. Mti Moons appears to be less popular but extremely strong. Palana Glacier is also solid – Surveyor and money are good is the takeaway here.

HB has some interesting developments in the R&R identity SPORTSMETAL. Specifically, that Fast Break and Game Changer can be kind of busted together. The new hotness is a lightning fast Moons combo that just feeds the Runner agendas until they can draw their whole deck and score out in one turn by pulling off an infinite combo with Breaker Bay Grid, Calibration Testing and Arella Salvatore to score and continue to chain agendas out of hand, 2+ Team Sponsorships to bring back the Calibration Testings, and drawing through to more agendas with SPORTSMETAL. This deck looks busted because you can combo out on turn 3 or 4 but keep in mind that Shadow Net hard counters it into the dirt, as does Leela. It’s also taking advantage of the lack of Clot locking Shapers in the meta – current lists tend to have about 1 CVS and as low as ZERO ice. The other main SPORTSMETAL lists around are fairly straightforward rush/glacier lists. This Asa list takes a similar tack while aiming to tax the runner on clicks as much as credits with Ikawah Project and Strongbox.

Cerebral Imaging, everyone’s favorite wombo combo ID, continues to pull wins out of the air. The latest incarnation is a Reconstruction Contract/Dedication Ceremony combo along with Moon and Shipment from Mirrormorph. It’s been doing fairly well but can struggle with the obvious issues of Employee Strike and Clan Vengeance. Surat City Grid/Batty Gold decks also pop up around the place. I’ve also seen people going for the Arella/Sponsorship/Cali Testing combo out of CI on Jnet, but unfortunately don’t see any lists published.

Weyland is in a good spot. The High-Profile Target builds are essentially a hard counter to Tagme Liza, so if that deck starts getting out of hand a solution is around. They also have decent game against Val lists due to solidly taxing ice and the possibility of the Econ Warfare – Econ Warfare – Hard-Hitting News god hand. Argus and The Outfit are both playing essentially the same strategy of rushing hard behind gearcheck ice with a kill threat – try both and see what you like! Kenny Deakins’ NYC Regional winning deck is interesting in that it cuts Rashida and NGO Front, the defining Corp cards of the Kitara cycle. Too Big to Fail has been a real boost for this archetype, giving you the ability to surprise the Runner with Hard-Hitting News when they don’t think you can stick it. This more asset heavy version has been around a bit too.

Skorpios continues to do Skorpios things and send your breakers to the dark side of the moon. As a result, Anarchs are tending much more towards 3 of every breaker, sometimes bolstered by Aumakua and D4V1d, to counter this strategy. Skorp has risen in popularity and success over the last few packs, but this change in deckbuilding strategy could start forcing them out of the meta. Titan appears to be out of the picture (but not entirely!) as Clan Vengeance is about the hardest counter imaginable to an Atlas counter, not to mention the popularity of Strike and Turntable. Gagarin could also be back on the menu thanks to Drudge Work SIU’s powerful combo with Zealous Judge. Check that agenda count out – 6 agendas in 54 cards! And the phrase “because I love Museum”.

NBN is looking somewhat less than amazing. The current CTM builds are rushier than we’ve seen before and rely heavily on a strong opener with Rashida, Bankers and AR Enhanced Security. The lighter ice suite means they can fold in a longer game. It’s also a deck that benefits from a highly skilled pilot. Azmari builds typically involve Surveyor (shocker, I know) in some fashion and either go for 6 agendas with 3 SSL and 3 Degree Mill (sometimes with Jinja City Grid instead of Ash), or an 8 agenda suite with Project Beale, Global Food Initiative and Corporate Sales Team.

Interestingly, someone did manage to win a Regional with Acme Consulting! And it has 3 copies of High-Profile Target with no restricted card! Very cool and something I’d love to try. SYNC, an ID that fell out of favor after CTM was released, also took down a Regional with a similar strategy.

Thanks for reading! Keep an eye out for the Reign and Reverie Awards, and hopefully a post-MWL Meta Snapshot? FFG plz.