1st at London District Regionals (5-1)

Wins against @countzer0 on Lat, @l0velace on Esâ, @Swiftie on Bankhar Steve, @King Solomon on Zahya and @xccam on Esâ

Loss to @xccam on Esâ (on stream)

With thanks and love to @feathermark, @bowlsley, @cobalt, @theo for putting on the first major event of the season, and @KakuRainbow for running the stream

For the first time at a major tournament since Trick Shot was released--Ob performed exceptionally well at CBI. I went into London District Regionals excited to once again be playing what is, IMHO, the most beautifully designed card in all of netrunner.

Many of the Ob lists at CBI were small variations on Facet Ob. I like Facet Ob, it's a good list with lots of interesting lines, but all of those lines seem to rely on sticking an eminent domain score, which then enables a SDS push. That can go wrong in a couple of different, and uncontrollable, ways, and the emphasis on scoring eminent makes playing the deck feel a little brittle, and for that reason I wasn't completely comfortable taking it to a tournament.

Instead, I wanted to see if we could breathe some new life into NWE's calicana list from Worlds 2023, and maybe amp it up with some cards from Rw/oR.

Card Choices

Armed Asset Protection

Hedge Fund is not a card that we really want to play in the early game--when we want to focus on spending clicks to develop our board and push agendas. It's also awkward to play in the late game--when our credit pool often dips below five credits. Armed Asset Protection is much easier to play in the late game, and nets us 5 credits instead of 4.

Wraparound

Maybe it's just because I've been playing Crew Hosh, but I really like the 1 x Wraparound splash made by both of the top Facet Ob players at CBI. It's an easily tutorable ICE (either with Mavirus or Tucana) that's massively impactful in a number of otherwise difficult Anarch and Criminal matchups.

2 x Magnet

I wanted to be able to reliably tutor a 3-cost code gate off border control that was a hard decoder gear check. In hindsight, this is overkill, and I think these code gate slots, and this influence, could be better spent elsewhere.

Logjam

Logjam is our anchor ICE for the late game (when we can rez it at strength 5). It's meant to go on R&D.

Tournament Afterthoughts

I didn't realise until after the tournament how little equity against Esâ this deck has, and I think that situation demands attention. I would start by swapping a Magnet for a Descent, and see if that does enough to improve things. If it doesn't, then we might need to find a way to play something like Trojan Horse (probably cutting a Tucana).

Cutting a Magnet gives us 1 inf to play with. We can't do much with 1 influence, but if we cut the 2nd Magnet (for a 2nd Afshar), we could then play a Red Level Clearance. We have plenty of upgrades that this can combo with in the mid/late game, and in the early game we can just use it for tempo (if necessary). The cut for RLC would be Svyatogor Excavator, which is also a combo card (but one that combos with upgrades in R&D, rather than in HQ).