Twelve Angry Men - 2nd, 4th, 17th, 18th at UK Nats

I genuinely don't know where to start with this one.

If choosing a runner for this event was easy, finding a corp was a nightmare. Absolutely nothing felt good in to Lat, which we knew would be both popular and successful. Everything that came out of Worlds had some issues that we were bouncing off a little, or very worrying gaps against some of the other runners that we expected to see. Most of us left for Bristol with at least four corps packed and under consideration.

One of those options was a spiritual successor to last year's Kanehl variant that Cat had played at Worlds. The familiar playstyle, the fact that it was at least somewhat unexpected and a moral obligation to continue the tradition of UK Nats featuring a horrible NBN deck made this a frontrunner, which only solidified during the team tournament when Mike had a bad time with BtL, Seamus and I were worried that AgInfusion was sailing close to or past time every round and was a duck to every Crew based Anarch out there, and Asa was difficult to play without offering a huge advantage for doing so. The only problem was that we couldn't agree how many cards should be in the list or what any of them should be.

What followed was one of the most chaotic, least well-reasoned and increasingly ill-tempered deck building processes that I've ever been a part of. Cat's proposed list was 49 cards, which we desperately wanted to cut down to 44 on the theory that one of the key components of success was scoring an early ARES as consistently possible, but we couldn't agree what those cards should be. In the week before Nats we'd found an interesting and dispiriting line that Lat could take, where they checked everything, trashed nothing, recurred Cupellation to deal with any real problem cards and eventually closed the game with a Deep Dive that you couldn't stop. In response to this we gradually threw in more and more cards that you were forced to trash; first Bladderwort, then Vladisibirsk Grid as a way to threaten a Cryptocrash score without risking an agenda on the table. At various points Seamless Launch, Wage Workers, Cohort Guidance Programme and seemingly every other two influence card we could find were tried in this list, and all the while we couldn't crack the line against Lat and every proposed cut down to 44 cards disrupted the balance of the list.

After the team tournament Cat went to take a midterm exam, leaving the rest of us to try desperately to finalise this deck.

At about midnight, tired of arguing and after accidentally trying a variant with only ten influence, we came up with a theory that you could play MCA Austerity Policy as a way to mitigate Deep Dive, present yet another must trash asset to overload Cupellation, and give you a somewhat viable way to deal with Degree Mills, which up until that point were very difficult to score if the runner could avoid being tagged ended up sitting in HQ. We were too tired at this point to actually test this change so finally settled on 5 very painful cuts to get down to 44, gave up on an attempt to get Regolith in to the list (more on that later) and finally went to bed.

In the cold light of morning an aghast Cat returned from their exam and attempted to provide the voice of reason, but by then it was too late.

The resulting decklist was definitely not optimised but was able to put up results, and was apparently much more worrying to play against than we might have anticipated. Seamus described the deck as 'Absolutely sick' and MikeP said it was 'Not good', so make your own mind up on that one. While many of us jumped on to this, Cat stuck with a slight variation of their original list and finished 8th, while Jonny clung on to a Working Prototype variant that he'd been playing and the success of which was very illustrative to the theory behind this version and came in 6th. Theo, evidently the angriest of all those involved, turned his back on R+ entirely and flipped to Asa while also doubling down on Swift Lat as a way to combat the deck; at least one person deviates from the consensus like this every year and, as is traditional, he was duly punished for his audacity by posting better results than anyone else.

This isn't a particularly easy deck to play, but as a rule you should be aggressively trying to score an ARES as soon as possible. Generally this will involve pushing assets on turn one and then installing the ARES behind gear check ice while the runner is dealing with whatever threats you've managed to present; don't rely on the runner making decisions that you don't want them to. The games you tend to struggle are those where you either don't score ARES or can't find an early Oppo, at which point you'll often find agendas piling up in centrals until the runner picks them off, so bear that in mind when choosing to mulligan. You also have the traditional Cryptocrash in to Amani play as an option, which will usually involve sticking a Grid or MCAAP but can be game winning if timed well. The key skill with this deck is managing the pace of the game; by design you're often operating on low credits, and every turn you'll need to try to evaluate whether you should be trying to score an agenda or add to your board state to keep the runner under pressure; the latter will often be correct but needs to be balanced against the risk of bleeding points from centrals. The astute reader will note the absence of Tomorrow's Headline, which wasn't providing an angle of attack for the corp and was merely mildly inconvenient for the runner, and so was cut for the third Cryptocrash.

If you're looking to iterate on this deck then my first port of call would be trying to find space for two Regoliths; this was discussed at length on Friday night and reiterated by various baffled consulting Snare Bears but ignored because we'd all gone to bed. You could look at cutting Marilyns and adding those and a Seamless Launch, as a starting point.

This is already long enough, so you can find the slightly sentimental but extremely heartfelt 'thanks and appreciation section' in my runner list. Apologies to everyone that had to play against this and get annoyed about Bladderwort, but that's what happens when you give it out as the participation promo at the team event the day before Nationals.