419 Hermes and a bunch of Tech (13th at APAC 2023)

profwacko 139

Wasn't so sure what to bring coming into the tournament but I felt like Crims (419) had a pretty good chance this meta when Hermes got spoiled. I loved playing Leela Patel: Trained Pragmatist so big thank you to NSG for giving all Crims access to her busted ability for 2s and a click.

It's pretty much just a reg Crim list, with some of the old Leela favorites:

  • Emergency Shutdown for more econ denial, you can derez and bounce things you really don't want to run into on power turns.
  • A single Forged Activation Orders because I anticipated some Aginfusion. In theory, you want to force a rez so you can actually use your run events like Pinhole Threading properly to trash things like Dr. Vientiane Keeling. I did not face any Aginfusion on the day sadly (or not).
  • Sometimes you just The Maker's Eye and bounce 2 pieces of ice, then you DoF into HQ

The Tech

I decided to just run with 2x Miss Bones for any Asset Spam matchups. There's also an Imp for more key trashes: 5/3s like Bellonas in Prison R+ matchups or SDS Drone Deployment in The Outfit, or FA/Rush tools like Seamless and Audacity. It's much tougher to use the Imp in practice because you kinda just want to run before installing. Both cards also work really well with Pinhole Threading, so there's that.

Simulchip is in for insurance, I wasn't sure if program trashing was going to be popular. It's alright against SDS and you can always throw away a used-up Imp or Aumakua after a purge to pull back a "real" breaker that may have gotten trashed through net damage or Retribution.

Big thank yous to all the folks in my testing group -- @Jai, @HaverOfFun and @AugustusCaesar -- I made a lot of tweaks based on our discussions on the possible meta.

I would definitely consider making the deck a lot "leaner" depending on how the meta shapes out.

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