Radical Optimism (2-1, 1st @ Atlanta District)

After Atlanta's March CO where I flatlined one too many times to a PE deck, I set out to find a kill-resistant, disruptive runner. Muntal Bost's Aniccam Freedom list caught my eye, and I was inspired by coldlava's Mulch Freedom list to import Hermes.

Starting with a significantly different (read: worse) brew, I jammed games on jnet and made edit after edit, eventually converging on this list which bears much resemblance to the original aforementioned lists. Successful deckbuilders are successful for a reason.

As a deeply competitive person, I agonized over whether or not to take this list or the tried-and-true Crew Hosh list to the biggest in-person event I'd be attending this year. After a decent streak on jnet, and after continuously poring over the stats and monitoring Freedom's performance at other events, I was optimistic enough to give The Crypto-Anarchist one last hurrah.

Gameplay Overview

Pressure early until centrals are iced, then Bankhar/Crew + Charm your way back in. Corps can't afford to rez 3 ETR ice on HQ, R&D, and the scoring remote, so generally we'll focus on one of the centrals and use Hermes to open up windows on the other. Turns which allow us to make multiple runs on an undefended/lightly-defended central can be devastating to the corp.

This deck, like other Freedom decks, is pretty low to the ground econ-wise. The Price into Daily Casts is pretty essential to find drip, Strike Fund and Raindrops help smooth things out as well. Fermenter on even a meager 3-4 counters can be enough to close out a game.

Card highlights

• 2x Hermes - Slows down fast corps enough for us to build a board, and generally makes scoring lines way more awkward. We want to find it early against fast corps especially, so it's worth the inf at 2x.
• 1x The Twinning - Better multiaccess than the too-expensive, too-slow, MU-intensive Stargate. It's fine coming down early, but at 1x we'll find it eventually.
• 2x Pinhole - What's better than trashing one Rashida for free? Trashing two Rashidas! 2x also helps bring Leech back online once Mavirus hits Archives.

Cards I tried

• Lago - I tried it for a while, but it's expensive compared to Solidarity Badge, can't be paid for by Poemu, and I got tired of losing important 1-ofs even with Buffer Drive installed.
• Moshing - Perhaps I'm piloting incorrectly, but I couldn't make this feel not awkward to play.
• Yusuf - A nice idea, but 2 MU is asking a lot in a list without Keiko. Cleaver + Leech gets the job done.
• Maemi - Also a nice idea, but we're not on enough events to appease our axolotl friend.

Games

Some tournament stats for your viewing pleasure

Round 1 vs SHTR PE (loss)

My lack of patience gets the best of me here. Somewhere in the midgame I get antsy and click 3 run an uniced HQ to hit a 1 in 3 Snare to go down to no cards in hand. At 1 credit, I can't clear the tag so I make a desperation rerun to hopefully trash the EotL I saw in hand earlier. We hit a Blood in the Water and flatline.

Round 3 vs Asset spam Asa (win)

We draw a great opening hand of Bankhar and Hermes and nab an early Ikawah. Having learned my lesson on patience, I spend more time building my board and less time running the board. Eventually I feel like they've drawn enough cards to warrant a good run, and we send into HQ with a couple Twinning counters. If my memory serves me properly I hit two 2-pointers to close.

Round 6 vs Rush Ob (win)

I need to win to secure a top 2 finish, so this is a crucial match. We trade early points before Hermes comes down. With it, I'm able to bounce an agenda out of the remote twice, which buys me enough time to pressure R&D with Twinning and touch enough points to close. Notably, I end the game having run the remote a total of zero times, but Bankhar + Crew/Charm was enough aura to make them triple ice the remote anyway.

Some overall thoughts on the day:

• Freedom ID text was relevant pretty often.

• I never once played Ashen.

• I never once used Audrey to break.

• I didn't need Hoshiko. I just needed to believe.

My corp was Kikai's statistically anomalous CBI EAzmari which went 4-0, 3-0 in Swiss and 1-0 in the two-person cut. I still stand by the fact that Reeducation should have been banned.

Acknowledgements

Huge shoutout to the entire Atlanta meta, ggs and thanks for coming out to a great event! Special shoutout to my opponents and to @Choux for organizing (and nobly taking a 0-point bye).

Thanks to MoM (especially @Dufresne) for providing feedback on this list and encouraging me to try something new.

Many thanks to @maninthemoon and @coldlava for providing deckbuilding inspiration I didn't know I needed.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uyn73ApJmuIA5DDjC1yGQU2esbY9ul4lso