Radiant Sable -- 17th at Worlds

ThatsNoMun 480

Radiant is our resident Crim player and incepted me in the weeks leading up to worlds to put some reps in with this Sable list that he had tuned. It didn't take long before I learned what everybody else already knew: in a glacier-less world, Bankroll is cracked. Our Hoshiko lists were starting to diverge and I didn't know how to play them well, so I made a call to take this to COS and see how it did. It kept winning so I brought it to the main event. It took me to 17th, which I'm thrilled with. There's not a ton to say about the list that other people haven't already said with their Sables, so I'll talk about a couple important flex slots.

  • Legwork: I've seen this as Docklands Pass in higher placing Sables, which totally makes sense if you're able to consistently get HQ accesses. However, I see Legwork as a reset card: If there's a remote you can't crack, Legwork + Hermes buys you another turn (and likely 2 points for your trouble).
  • Dr. Nuka Vrolyck: It provides a lot of draw, which is nice since this kind of list needs to find its 1-ofs. I think in retrospect I'd prefer at least one more Diesel, and I'd be willing to cut a Nuka for it. Single click draw is important in mid/late game.
  • Shibboleth: yeah, it mostly sucks. But just use turtle once Threat is active. The inf you get back from Unity is too important.

Game Reports

  • R1: Asa (W). An early unprotected R&D gave up a lot of points. Classic Asa problem. Was able to suppress econ enough to force a bluffing agenda in the midgame that I could contest and hit 7 points.
  • R2: Ob (L). I couldn't find a way to break a Code Gate in time and Axwill got 3 Atlas counters. I technically took more clicks but felt like I might as well had conceded :P
  • R3: Ob (W). We had very little time left for this game, so we both knew we were playing to time. It was very tight, but an early Bones helped suppress the QtM Ob engine from coming online. I then got super lucky with Azef damage missing my Carmen in hand, letting me steal an SDS Drone Deployment pushed behind Stavka with no 3c card to trash.
  • R4: Ob (W). Sable feels favored in this matchup when you find breakers, and that's what happened. R&D lock, Bankroll for economy seals the deal.
  • R5: R+ (W). They scored a Bellona on their last click, letting me bounce the HQ ice with Hermes. Diversion of Funds for free led to econ hell and a game win shortly thereafter.
  • R6: NEH (W). I can't remember the details of this game, as it was the last in a long day and had a lot of hard decision points. I remember ultimately I won by being credit perfect to install two 1c things from hand and run Archives to steal a Degree Mill which was cool. I feel I got lucky with this game and am glad I didn't have to play the archetype again.
  • R7: R+ (L). Extrac played this game excellently and deserved this win. One interesting turn was when I wanted to Doof but needed Aumakua's virus counters for it to connect. There were two unchecked remotes, and I used Hannah to check a random one. It wasn't Mavirus, so I went for it. The other one was, rip. Should have just checked both. Connecting the Diversion would have been an additional 7c swing that very well could have won that game.
  • R8: Ob (W). See it on stream!
  • R9: ID.

I had a great time playing lots of wonderful people. Thanks opponents and NSG volunteers, was a blast. Thanks Muntal Bost for the support, it was so much fun to prep and play with y'all this season. Can't wait for the next—hopefully my SOS will be a smidge higher!

7 comments
24 Oct 2023 Radiant

❤️

24 Oct 2023 maninthemoon

Well done! ❤

24 Oct 2023 Zoehope

This looks like a really cool deck! I was wondering if and how you use the flip switches here? I don't know if my Sable needs 'em or not?

24 Oct 2023 Radiant

@Zoehope Flip switches are tech for the Stavka+Hafrún combo out of Ob and for clickless tag removal vs. yellow decks. However it's also just generally useful in all matches to have one down in the early and mid game, letting you poke around and pressure corp econ without being forced into a facecheck you don't like.

I think every crim should be playing at the very least 1 of these in the current meta, but as you can see I think 2 or even 3 is better :)

24 Oct 2023 ThatsNoMun

@ZoehopeFlip Switch is really strong in this list given the current meta. I'd say it has 3 primary uses:

  1. Protection from bad subroutines. This is the biggest one. I'm on 1x of each breaker which makes rigshooter pretty scary. This is especially true of the Stavka/Hafrún combo, which a lot of Ob lists are on right now. Without Flip Switch, you have to guess the right unrezzed card with Boomerang, and then there can be up to 2 more Stavkas you can't protect against. Anyways for any bad subs you can't let fire, you can just jack out before encountering the ice.
  2. Tag clearing. While this doesn't protect against the gross NEH deck's SIU line, it lets you preload tag clearing on an earlier turn for a slight credit discount. Since Sable lists end up needing to leverage all of her numerous clicks by design, you sometimes don't have time to manually clear tags on important turns. This has side benefits into B-1001 decks which we had done some testing with prior to worlds.
  3. Tempo swings and proccing Sable. Sable has Bravado and Carpe Diem to make early value runs worth your time, but corps have Gatekeeper, Saisentan, and all of NBN's horrible tagging ice to keep the tempo swing to a minimum. Flip Switch makes rezzing those ice feel worse, as it gives the Runner the opportunity to decide how important those subroutines are. So perhaps they don't rez, and you get more early Sable triggers. Or perhaps they do, and they Vamped themselves and you jack out before anything bad happens. Good thing you played Bravado!

I don't know what your Sable list is up to, but I suggest trying it out a little bit in some casual games—install it and see how it feels. I personally find them to be very powerful.

24 Oct 2023 Zoehope

@Radiant and @ThatsNoMun this is super helpful thank you. Good to know about that Ob combo, I hadn't seen it. I am gonna give it a go. I didn't realise you could fire it after approaching ice, before encounter. That's lovely. thanks :)

25 Oct 2023 FireRL (aka xFWx FIREBIRD)

🔥 well done @ThatsNoMun<3