On this episode: neutral econ is best econ, Weyland enjoys an unprecedented streak of meta relevance and could Crim be seeing a revival? (probably not)

We’re in a bit of a lull for tournaments at the moment, but the latest pack did bring us some really interesting options that have spawned a few new things. So the idea here is to have a look at the decks that have performed well and/or seem good, then highlight some other interesting new things that have popped up.

RUNNER

You might remember last Snapshot I said to keep an eye on the Cold Ones-style combos out of Wu. Well, guess what won NZ Nationals? It’s a glass cannon but it’s a mighty fast one. Other than that, Pirate Hayley continues to be strong and you could also play Lock Wu, probably.

Reg Val is still the best deck in the game, but you knew that. If you’re a cool person that plays MaxX, and you don’t want to play Reg MaxX, why not access 20 cards at once with Counter Surveillance? It’s not a new archetype but it uses Rogue Trading so I’ll take it. Apocalypse MaxX has showed up again – it doesn’t have new cards, but it is real good. If you like playing cool guy Kim but you hate actually making runs, try out Friday Chip stuff!

Geist is also still the best representative of Crim, despite his honorary minifaction status. Alternatively, you could be Pirate Geist! It’s like Geist with a hook and a bird in it. 419 has shown some promise as the ID is inherently pretty decent, but the Crim card pool doesn’t seem to quite be there yet. Wait on Diversion of Funds.

Adam builds haven’t really changed but are quite decent. This Sunny is pretty interesting and goes to some lengths to avoid normal Sunny problems, which I appreciate. Also, I’ve seen a surprising amount (ie more than 1 player) of Pirate Apex on Jinteki! I’m not sure it’s good but it certainly is neat. Haven’t been able to find a list on NRDB so here’s an example I made.

CORP

Man Rashida Jaheem is a good card. And fun! She’s a VLC, she’s a Sensie, she’s whatever you need babyyyy. Corps sorely needed a pressure card and this lets you start accelerating towards your gameplan much faster. She’s not even any influence – what more could you ask for?

We’re going to talk about Weyland first again! It’s nice to see them have some time in the sun. SSO Industries is making a way bigger splash than expected because apparently everyone (including me) misread it as “faceup agendas”, not “points on faceup agendas”. So the strategy of just windmill slamming a 3-pointer behind an ICE turn 1 is turning out to be pretty potent. You can’t really facecheck it, because Mausolus or Hortum will blow you out of the game. This King of Subways example shows off the Biotic/Red Planet Couriers plan but you could build it a few ways. The nice thing about this strat is there are a lot of checks around. It has to run actual 1 pointers to close out the game, for one. For another, DDoS is already an insane card and cheating out Femme Fatales is a reasonably common thing. If you want to go all 2013, you could even play Inside Job! So it’s strong but unlikely to get super degenerate.

Other Weylands include Argus being an extremely reasonable choice, Skorp doing Skorp things and Titan doing Titan things. It’s a good time to be a fan of green cards with grumpy executives on them is what I’m saying.

Lots of grumpy executives in those buildings, trust me.

Palana Glacier (or Aginfusion) has a good claim to being the best Corp in the game at the moment in my opinion. It can handle both a fast or a long game, has a ton of good cards and makes money off its ID. The deck linked doesn’t include Bio Vault as it was published before the pack but it seems a natural fit into the archetype, particularly in the Aginfusion variants. If you’re a grinder-type person, PU is still really gross.

NBN is in a pretty decent position, largely due to the flexibility of Azmari Edtech. I’ll highlight a couple of builds that make strong use of the coolest card in this pack (Rashida forever). As suspected, it’s really nice for CTM as a more balanced Sensie Actors Union that incentivises the Runner not to just sit back. TheBigBoy put out a very cool Azmari list that focuses on gearchecking and making small economic exchanges to put you ahead in tempo. It uses the new barrier Endless EULA, which is a really great card for this kind of rushy deck in that it forces the Runner to spend money they’re not comfortable spending. The 6 agenda Azmari got a really nice new build with some spicy tech cards and the current/News Hound package, and this could easily be tweaked to fit in some of the new cards.

Finally, HB hasn’t been around much but Rashida’s strong resemblance to Violet Level Clearance has led to some reappearance of Moons CI. Rashida’s not exactly VLC but there’s a ton of synergy there and it’s a fun build. I’m also going to shamelessly plug my Asa which is not at all tier 1 but is extremely fun and can abuse Bio Vault in interesting ways.

Right now the meta’s in a good spot. Runners are definitely stronger but every Corp faction has really solid decks. The main issue is there’s a huge gaps between tiers 1 and 2, but we’ll see how Kitara and Reign & Reverie shake out.