Iberian Lockdown Ken -- 1st Place

DeeR 1159

I've been tweaking this Ken deck for about a month and a half now, and thought Iberian Lockdown would be a good place to test it out. The central conceit of it is you mulligan for an Oracle May or Hostage and use Special Delivery/Compile/Retrieval Run to maximize your event/non-event ratio. I run about 55 cards in the deck, I do this because (a) the deck goes fast -- you don't wanna have 2 cards left in your stack when the Corp pulls out an Obakata/City Works and (b) I consider the rest of the hardware/programs essential, and wanted to boost Oracle May's effectiveness.

For Iberian Lockdown I removed 3 Falsified Credentials, 3 DoFs, and 1 Kati Jones because they were banned. To compensate I replaced a Retrieval Run with two Deuces Wild (to slightly build economy) and added 2 Leave No Traces and 3 High-Stakes Jobs. The Leave no Traces did me well, the High-Stakes Jobs are nowhere near as effective a fundraiser as a DoF.

A few other considerations:

Swift: I keep Swift because of its synergy with the deck in general. Getting it in this deck, especially early, is sufficiently useful that it's worth the once-per-game whiff, and I would say 30-50% of my cards are drawn through means other than Oracle May.

Express Delivery vs Special Delivery: I've wavered on these two. I think I prefer Special Delivery slightly, because it's so good at really thinning your stack of non-events, but Express Delivery helps with getting Swift specifically.

Networking: I put networking in the deck at first as a meta call for HHN. I kept it for lockdown because I was considering the possibility there'd be SYNC/Haarpsichord with SEA Source. Neither of those happened, but it's still nice to have a few extra events that occasionally make the game.

Other cards: I considered adding Rip Deal in case May gets trashed, but honestly if May gets trashed getting her back is the least of your worries. At some point I want to replace a Bukhgalter with Femme Fatale, but I haven't had the guts.

Counters: Slot Machine and Engram Flush SUCK. Slot Machine has an interesting dynamic where you can use it to see if a Swift is coming up, but there is nothing redeeming about Engram Flush. Fortunately EF was banned this game.

Considerations: if you draw a drive by with Oracle May, give your opponent a chance to Rez.

The deck went 3-1 in the tournament, beating a Mnemonics (2 effective drive bys on snare/Gene Splicer helped there), an Architects (4 of the 7 points were obtained in a single Legwork) and, in the finals, a Project Nisei (a come-from-behind victory -- Nisei scored 3 Corporate Sales teams before Ken could fully get his rig ready. Great game Odol!). Ken lost one game to a Hyoubu -- excellent meta call Cpt_nice!

Thanks to all my opponents, VESPER for organizing, and Madhatter152 for turning me on to the game just as COVID was starting. I haven't learned a language or a musical instrument while working at home, but I've made some fun decks!

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