[4th@EA Regional] Mill With Confidence

This is my Corp deck from Cambridge Regionals, which went 2-2: winning against Russ (Mercury) and Kamikami (Pawnshop Lat) and losing against allieflx (Mercury) and the eventual winner ChonkySeal (Persephone Hosh). Fortunately, girls was undefeated so I ended up in 4th place!

After the surprising success of the previous iteration of this deck, the little conspiracy between Ish, AceEmpress and I set back to work trying to improve the list. The big change is the introduction of Public Trail, which serves three purposes: quick early kills, trashing of key resources like Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga and Aesop’s Pawnshop, and economic denial.

The rest of the changes are smaller, but I'll list them for completeness:

• Enigma became Hortum because we were worried about Arruaceiras Crew.
• Logjam became Pharos. Pharos is more consistently high strength than Logjam (although significantly weaker to Boomerang), and is an ideal Tree Line target.
• A tweaked agenda suite. Hostile Takeover went out because bad publicity is very bad, and this gave us a slot for the lategame economy option Regolith Mining License. Oaktown Renovation became Offworld Office as a nice rush option without being a massive neon sign saying "hi Lat player please Overclock this remote".
• The Holo Man went in as a 1-of to help score The Basalt Spire. Combined with Slash and Burn Agriculture, you have a lot of options for scoring Basalt either credit cheaply (expending Slash and Burn gets you a Nuvem trigger) or click cheaply.

The deck still needs some work. I think one more ice would be incredible if we can find the slots - I lost against allieflx because I couldn't find ice quickly enough to defend against Mercury, and lost in part to ChonkySeal because of not setting up enough ice. The slot I was thinking of changing was Angelique Garza Correa, but every time I get close to cutting her she ends up winning a game - I won against Russ because he accessed an installed Angelique which took him down to few enough cards in hand for Public Trail + End of the Line.

I want to briefly comment on the Pawnshop Lat matchup, which I played in Round 5 and actively chose not to play against in Round 1 of the cut. Pawnshop Lat is an absolute nightmare for any deck relying on economic tax and ice, which this deck does both of. Ish and I actively identified this matchup as one to practice after watching it wreck face during the Nottingham cut and decided that the only way to win is to delete Aesop’s Pawnshop while the Runner is still poor or to rush like hell. This is exactly what happened in Round 5: I mandatory drew into Above the Law on turn 1, jammed it, and scored it on the next turn after Aesop's was installed.

I'm convinced that this deck is difficult to play and fairly punishing - even after 100+ practice games I still notice silly mistakes, and even in the cut my co-conspirators noticed minor misplays that could have helped me win the cut game. It's an inherently risky deck: it involves playing fast and loose with agendas and is naturally inconsistent due to the minimum decksize. Nuvem deckbuilding is a massive challenge: you're building for 54 cards, but you also need enough redundancy to feel comfortable using the Nuvem ability frequently. And even if you get all of that right, you can sometimes end up on the bad end of variance and really struggle. (Which is what I think happened to Andrej in his stream - sorry!)

BucketHatBen asked me afterwards how to deal with the whims of Nuvem, particularly when seeing agendas with the ability. I think all I can say is that you should mill with confidence. Throw away agendas: you can shuffle them back later if needed, and if they're stolen then you can punish the Runner with Oppo or Public Trail. Clicks they spend checking Archives are clicks that they don't spend setting up, and why would the Runner check Archives for cards you've confidently thrown in the trash?

In the early game, I am only not milling if I desperately need the ice that I see off the top or if it's a Public Trail or similar that I'd like to play next turn. Things are more complex later in the game, when you're in less desperate need of money: you may trash for the sake of deck thinning or if you see something useless to you, but you can also keep the card there to guarantee a safe R&D access. Of course, this is a rule of thumb that you should take with a massive grain of salt, but it'll hopefully serve as a starting point.

Despite all these comments about difficulty though, I still love this deck and hope that it'll continue to improve after rotation!

The thanks are in my Runner writeup.