Y'all Just Suck at Nova -aka "Bad Crim"- (8th@SE Regionals)

No, Nova is not the worst runner identity, you're probably just bad at playing Nova.

This is the Nova list I took to an 8th place finish at Aldershot Regionals. [REDACTED SMURF] played a near identical list to a 29% win rate on jnet, although I think they played an Ashen Epilogue like a coward

In terms of playing, it's like 40 cards different from the list Sokka took to a high finish at Worlds last year. It's very good. You just sort of play tempo control with Diversion and Swift, and use your strong tech cards (Miss Bones, Stoneship) to dodge matchups where they try and do weird shit. Tired of losing to your local PD player? beat them to death with Nova.

I've been playing this personally as well and been having good success on it. I played a single game on my main jnet account and went undefeated with it. Good deck good.

(Shoutout rubenpieters for the idea to shamelessly parody Whiteblade's "Yall Just Suck at Crim" writeup after I remarked that my Nova functions like a bad crim deck)

FAQ

Why Nova?

• I "won" a bet 😂 I blame xccam for making Nova look good in a random jnet game of his that I spectated, but in all honesty I just wanted an excuse to play something different

Should I play Nova?

• Only if you're a masochist - it took me a lot of losses to find something that I started to feel close to comfortable with, but it's still rough out there for Nova

But didn't Nova make Top Cut?

• Barely, Nova only won a single game but my Corp (a slight tweak to Council's Empress Aginfusion) went 5-0 and carried HARD

Why did you play [insert card X]?

• I started with Ams' EMEA List but wanted to cram in the Swift + Deep Dive package that Lat/Sable have been using to good effect recently.
• My list is packed with early aggro cards to contest early remotes, then tries to finish the game with the DD haymaker. If that fails and you somehow haven't lost, you can Labor Rights the Deep Dive back in and try again

Why didn't you play [insert card Y]?

• Honestly there's loads of cards you could play in Nova, the level of player expression is kinda unparalleled... but there's a long list of good cards I considered/wish I had slots for, including:
  • Steelskin Scarring, Compile, Build Script, Cezve, Aniccam, Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga, Finality, Legwork, Burner, Bahia Bands, Simulchip, etc. etc.

(maybe I should have been less worried about sticking to minimum deck size... feels overrated 😉)