World Class Adam (72nd at Worlds 2015)

Worlds 2015 was a blast, and my personal goal was to see how high I could climb with what I had generally heard was a 'not even tier 2' deck. The TL:DR; of it is screw the meta, screw the haters, and play what makes you feel like a boss.

Match breakdown from what I can remember is as follows:

round 1 : Haarp (24/7 iirc) - kept the corp poor by poking every central server, made him score out both breaking news quickly to avoid getting them stolen by Neutralize All Threats multiaccess in HQ. Got the Brain Chip after getting 1-2 points and dropping a public sympathy to increase hand size out of single scorch range, and by that time I had enough money to avoid a midseasons that I saw in hand. Was able to close the game by sniping single agendas off RnD and a small scoring remote and keeping my hand constantly above 8. After he admitted he only had the 1 scorch so as long as I was careful it was going to be hard to kill me.

round 2: NEH FA - Tried a similar strategy by poking centrals early and dirty laundry in archives to get money, found out he was the turtlebacks variety ( though i believe with Mental Health clinic splashes?) and started trying to snipe points from HQ. Got to 4 before he started using SanSan city grid, and my SMC'd clot was food for CVS. He played it well and won by installing NAPD in the SanSan and double advancing before using the astro token. If I had seen my clone chip beforehand it might have been different, but the high trash cost of SanSan and asset spam in general is a bad matchup for Adam without cutting clot for 2 Scrubber.

round 3: blue sun (tempo/glacier? didn't see any damage) - tried getting through a lot of very high cost high STR ice with Always Be Running, couldn't punish his first oversight of a curtain wall on a remote, but used the opportunity to do a The Maker's Eye run on RnD, getting 4 points. Dropped brain chip and started building the big rig, getting Faust with 11 cards in hand is a threat that not even a curtain wall can actually stop. He dropped an ice in front of an oversight AI'd Curtain wall and i poked at it with ABR, only for him to flip a second curtain wall. Thankfully we have Stimhack and Corroder, so I blew through the first one with stimhack money and the 2nd with 5 cards from faust (note, did not give a F***), and got another couple points from RnD. Found the last points of the game in the scoring remote after killing an Ash, re-running, dropping to 0 cards to break w/ faust and ABRing through the ETR subroutine of a datapike and having exactly enough money thanks to 2 Multithreader to get back in.

round 4: HB glacier (foodcoats I think?)- Killed Ash and Caprice early off of a makers' eye run, didn't hit an architect before I found the mimic needed to answer it. sniped points out of RnD and HQ before they got into the scoring remote, built up big rig and again a butt ton of cards w/ Faust. 4 ice deep RnD and I need to glory run it, so I disable the always be running with the trusty Dr. Lovegood, use my last credit to play Independent Thinking, smashing safety first and the rest of my econ cards and Drug Dealer to draw the remaining 9 cards in my deck, click 3-4 to SoT out a makers eye only for him to rez a Heimdall 1.0. Take 6 cards, throw into garbage. Next. probably another heimdall or something but no rez (and I didn't ask after, sadly). break the remaining architect and eli by going down to 3 cards in hand, top of RnD is a Global Food Initiative for the game.

round 5: HB glacier (probably also foodcoats but w/ some notable includes, piloted by Polish National (champion?) Thomas (can't spell his last name from memory)) - This was the opposite of my last round, probably kept a bad opening hand by not using the mulligan for SMC/Mimic. Got his caprice early but hit an architect and clicked through the first subroutine fearing an ash or ABT score if I let the first sub fire. After that I poked HQ while trying to build a rig and couldn't get caprice out of the damn remote. Lost shortly thereafter.

round 6: Blue sun (off the grid / scorch) - poked at a few servers before realizing his ice suite was probably starting at 5 to rez, with the cheapest thing I saw being a hive on HQ. dude literally played government contracts behind a wormhole with the rezzed hive and protected it like it was a 3 pointer. after that I slowed down a bit and built my rig while he just gained credits repeatedly. He had 70 when I stopped counting because I could finally repeatedly get through hive with Youtube money from Daily Casts and a Multithreader alongside my Corroder. He puts an upgrade on HQ, and fearing a Crisium to drain my money before I hit an NAPD or something, I disable Neutralize All Threats with the Doc. Run it, its a crisium, so I access 1 card from hand. GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER. After almost crapping my pants, quickly drop brain chip and draw frantically up to 8 thanks to drug dealer, ask if he has double punitive. I almost collapsed when he just shook his head and iced HQ. Got some more money and makers'd into RnD for the win. I think i'll still have nightmares about this one.

round 7: HB glacier (didn't see food but probably was there) piloted by Lawson Lim (canadian nationals 2nd place iirc?) - same thing as previous HB matchup, hit an architect which got him much needed assets back after I spent money killing them, he was able to score out quickly while I was looking for pieces. 2 hard pieces of ETR ice or an Ichi 1.0 on centrals and an Architect in front of a wall of static remote make me a sad Adam before i get my full rig.

round 8: HB FA - Was able to get a couple of points before the bioriods started rolling in, and then he had the money to start with the SanSan city grid. Got my clot out to buy me an extra turn but every agenda I hit (2 in RnD, one in hand) was NAPD and I had 2-3 credits. he was able to pump out vitruvius, chronos project, and an ABT (not fired, thankfully) relatively quickly while I kept poking HQ trying to find them.

Overall had a blast, and lukas gave me special click trackers in red with all the runner factions (and a neutral one to round out the set) after calling my name on the loudspeaker. There was another Adam player there, and we compared lists afterward (he had a career fair build that looked pretty decent, I might give it a pondering and see what I can do with it).

People shook my hand and congratulated me, because lets face it, did you really think if I told you an ADAM list got to the top 30% of players AT WORLDS, from some guy that has never won even a store championship (I got 11th at the regionals in omaha though, that was nice) that you would believe me?