[3rd@EMEA District] girls breaks out of SBT jail

This is the Runner deck I took to the EMEA District. It went 3-0-1: winning against A Teia (AceEmpress, after a very lucky set of accesses), Ob (MrStyx) and Asa (xiaat, after the last-ditch run paid off), and then I got to ask for my first ever ID in round 7 (nervousnightjar). Combined with a Nuvem with a funny backstory which went 3-2, I made third place at the District. I'm still surprised while typing this, even though I've already typed this for the Nuvem writeup...

Unlike the Nuvem deck, girls has very much continued to be a QEH project, with four builders (myself, AceEmpress, Hello and MattOhNo) taking the deck in various different directions. AceEmpress also took a variant of girls (running Beatriz Friere Gonzalez!) to this district and went 2-1 with it.

Needless to say, but girls holds a very special place in my heart as my first big deckbuilding success - so when SBT banned Trick Shot and unceremoniously threw the girls deck into the trash, I wasn't having the best day. But rather than giving up, I resolved to try and keep the deck working.

Enter Jailbreak, my beloved. It kicked the door into my heart or something. (ow)

Jailbreak is no Trick Shot, and the deck is definitely less generically powerful as a result. But its ability to challenge both HQ and R&D is very useful. Corps are quick to protect R&D against this deck due to its existing reputation and the text on Akiko Nisei - this reminds them that other servers exist and can have agendas in them. The draw is nice enough too.

Much of the rest of the deck follows from previous girls decks, but with a few notable changes:

• Replacing Trick Shot with Jailbreak and calling it a job well done kills a lot of the remote pressure that the deck could exert, leading it to be very weak against rushy decks. We slotted Overclock as a way of partially fixing that: it has the interaction with Self-modifying Code common in Lat decks, but also gives us just a few more credits to challenge an early remote. To make slots, we cut Spec Work for the third Aesop’s Pawnshop.
• The console slot has always been a debate. We've seen Aniccam, LilyPAD and Hermes take the slot, but they each had their drawbacks:
  • Aniccam requires a high density of events than I felt able to make slots for, when we also want a high density of targets for Aesop’s Pawnshop. AceEmpress is running Aniccam at the moment.
  • I found LilyPAD to be far too expensive to rely on: it might work as auxiliary draw rather than a main draw engine, but I expect that it would be rarely installed.
  • AceEmpress correctly noted that without Trick Shot, Hermes is weaker: we can no longer guarantee the cheap deep digs that Trick Shot provided in order to bounce cards in or protecting the remote, and bouncing the only R&D ice when the Corp scores is notably less effective when we can't follow up with Trick Shot. Not running Hermes also affords us the influence to play Physarum Entangler again, which is important in a world full of Archer.
  • I elected instead to run Pantograph, which gives us cheap MU and a nice clickless install which can be sold to Aesop's or used to surprise the Corp. Installing Eru Ayase-Pessoa after the Corp scores is very funny. I'll be honest though, I didn't see Pantograph at all during the tournament.
• To clean up the draw a little bit, and to provide a little kill protection, I'm running 2x Stoneship Chart Room (as suggested by krysdreavus along with Pantograph). It's a pleasant Pantograph install, and is an easy install - which is especially useful when you use Dr. Nuka Vrolyck on click 1 with a five card hand and need to deal with the eight cards in your hand with three clicks left.
• 2x Coalescence rather than 3x is a slots issue, and because it's only +2c when you install it. If you're comfortable spending your first Muse on it, then maybe you can go down to 1x.

Anyway, deck's still good! This may be one of the last iterations of girls in Akiko because of the impending rotation, but we'll see what happens. NSG delete Lat and reprint Akiko please

Thank you to QEH for your continuous girls support, all of my opponents from the district and aksu for organising! Also a particular shoutout to xiaat who gave me a hell of a game (even if I tilted a bit at Malia Z0L0K4 blanking Aesop's three different times and thus killing my economy) who was kind even after the game came down to a hail-mary Eru Ayase-Pessoa run on the last turn that got me five points.