To the MaxX!... Again!

Smokestack 463

Wausau Johnny Cee Cards store champs. 1st place. 6-2 on the day.

Fairly straightforward deck with card choices to provide consistency to back my reckless play style, haha. Mill 2, draw 3. It gives so much consistency. Deja back whatever you need, levy, do your whole deck a second time, levy again, do your whole deck a 3rd time. If you run out of cards and havn't won or lost yet you've done something horribly wrong.

Faust breaks whatever you want when you have 8 cards, mimic for swordsman, corroder for wraparound, yog for turing on centrals, d4v1d for turing on remotes. Parasite because most times you'd rather kill a small ice than run through it more than once, especially komainu. Extra SoT beyond the first usually translate into recurring legworks and maker's, they really end up being all the multi access you need, you just have to time them right. Turntable gives you play against he astro counters and nesei counters. The econ in this most games is absolutely amazing. I'd seen a lot of talk about running data foldings or katis but I've never felt them necessary. I ran a queens gambit in the original list, its probably the only other piece of econ I'd run since it lets you bounce back from 0 credits to liberated range.

The cards I really feel are flex slots in this deck are the cutlery and possibly the 3rd faust. I like a 3rd faust because I'd rather deja vu back the breaker relevant for my matchup (corroder/mimic) and not my main breaker, but you can get away with 2. I think the only change I might make as far as the cutlery go is I would run 2 forked instead of the 1 spooned. However these cards can be whatever you need. Suggestions I'd make for those 2 slots would be scrubbers, queens gambits, forked, even plascrete if you feel like being safer in your scorch matchups, possibly retrieval run, it would be more cost effective than deja vu. Also you could run any 2nd or 3rd copy of a card already in the deck you felt like you needed, i.e. a second turntable, 3rd d4v1d.

As far as match ups go, I feel like when the deck does lose, its most often to NEH variants. That's not to say its a bad match up, I feel like I would describe it as more of a very even match up. The deck can definitely go toe to toe with most contenders though. RP, Hub, and foodcoats are all winnable match ups. Sometimes you just have to fly by the seat of your pants.

Tournament report.

Rd 1 vs Hub Scorch

Got an exceptionally lucky start that kept me in control most of the game. he opens with a remote, econ and hq ice. I open with a game and a maker's eye seeing 2 astros off the top. From there the match got grindy. Making runs, dodging tags. he scores out 4 points as well, I manage to snake an explode out of HQ, but also over the course take -1 from news teams. He lands a tag and goes for the kill, burns both scorches but I've had worse keeps me in the game, but my greed made me lose all my SoT and levys in the process. I snake a second explode off him. Saving grace, I have the Corroder on board and a data sucker, He manages a traffic as I try to keep myself to 1 tag at most, hits all by my last card, which is yog. I clear out tags, drop yog and start poking where I can. I go yolo and start running through data ravens to find the last agenda and sneak out the last explode from HQ for game.

Rd 2 vs HB Foodcoats

I start off a little slow but still get set up with an early faust, corroder and wyldside/pancakes. He is playing next ice complimented with ichi, vikram, markus and turing, fairly stand HB stuff. I get a decent amount of parisite recursion throughout the game to melt off silvers, but the sentries are prove taxing. He bare bluffs an ABT turn 3 or so and scores, not firing it. I snag an ABT from R&D as thats where I'm pushing this game mostly. melting most of his ice there aside from a Markus which I push through with corroder. I pull a vitruvius out of hand as well, he scores an ABT in his remote that I decide not to challenge. His scoring remote ends up as Eli, silver, bronze plus an ash. With 15 credits in his pool and 8 in mine, he goes to push game, installs a GFI and advances twice, leaving him at 13 credits. I draw up to 8 cards and do some math. I have gamble, career fair and liberated, my options are to gamble credit credit, putting me at 14 and then making the run, or fair the liberated, going to 13 and making the run. I only really need the 13 in my pool to make him broke enough to stop the score, and 6 cards to push the server. So I pop the liberated with fair, take 8 and run, dumping 6 cards to get in. He rezzes ash and keeps me out, going to 2 credits and I trash the ash. He makes 2 remotes and gains a credit to try and push the food next turn. I draw my 3, first click run the remote, click through eli, pay 2 credits to break silver as he has only 2 next rezzed, and pitch one card to bronze stealing the food. With my last click I check one of the two remotes, and its an ABT for game.

Rd 3 vs Neh Scorch

His turn 1 is ice, card behind it, and credit. I gamble, check the remote and get kicked by a quandry. Parasite in hand so I melt the quandry and go back for an astro. His second turn he makes 2 servers and sweeps. I check one and find a second astro, then make some credits and drop faust. A few turns later, he installs behind an ice again. I check the ice and get kicked by a wrap, drop corroder and go back for an explode, so I build up a few credits too. He scores out a bare breaking news that he installed second turn, and then traffic accidents me, hitting an I've had worse. Worth noting here that he could have trashed my same old thing and cut me off from levying, but he was more concerned about turning off wyldside or hitting me with some burn. I SoT immediately next turn and then legwork for an explode for the win.

Rd 4 vs Neh FA

This was maxx's one loss in swiss. He managed to outrace me out agendas and I never had a large credit pool to challenge his grids in play. I killed one grid early, but he scored and agenda and rezzed a team sponsorship to bring back the grid. One game where I really missed scrubber, they are actually a good econ supplement when you do end up low on econ. I got up to 4 points, as he went low on credits to score the first astro and he rezzed a special offer, which I broke until he finally bounced back on credits anyway. Once he got his econ back up he was able to push through agendas before I could race him.

Rd 5 vs Blue Sun.

I had already lost my corp game, so I played a little recklessly at the start. However I paid off. The blue suns goal was to mushin things into an off the grid server with crisium on hq and 4 ice deep. I just pushed R&D as hard as I could and challenged the first OTG play he made to force him to spend money on ice. I scored an early Vanity project off a makers eye and kept poking R&D for single accesses. He pushed out an atlas with 3 counters, rezzing Hive, 2 Meru Matis and a Wendigo on HQ, which was enough to keep me out. My pokes on R&D netted me a global food, with turntable out, I decided to swap it for his Atlas which still had 1 counter left as I didnt want him to pull more agends to HQ or set up more combo pieces. He pushed out a second GFI on OTG which I couldnt contest. putting us both at 6 points. I drew a maker's and decided to make my push on R&D for game. Guessing at agenda density, I figured he had at least 2 atlases, a GFI and at least one other agenda left, and his deck was pretty thin, maybe 10-15 cards left. He Jacksoned in 3 non agendas, but I still hit a GFI for game.

Top 4

Rd 1 VS Neh Scorch

Same deck I played against round 1. I was low on econ most of the game. Wraparounds kept me out a lot of the game until I was finally able to deja back my corroder. I didn't really get a chance to take many notes on top cut as I was going, and as such I don't remember a lot of this match in particular. I was at 6 points, pushing for game, and we both to an extent made play errors. Low on credits, I installed a parasite on an Information Overload on R&D, his ice there was 2 wraparounds with an IO in the middle. I had wyldside out but no chronotype, so I was on a 3 click turn. with only one credit I pushed the server, took one tag from the IO and melted it and went in for access, seeing nothing. But at this point I didn't have credits to clear the tag, without the click I lost to wyldside, but the other mistake was that both of us actually forgot to acknowledge that I had taken a tag from IO. I did have an I've had worse in hand, and he had double scorch, it wouldn't have been a gaurenteed kill, but it was certainly possible. But from there I levyed, and made a push for game. This match was streamed as well.

Rd 2 vs Neh FA

I just pushed as early and as fast as I could to steal agendas and he pushed fast and early as well. Double popups on R&D so I dropped a Yog. I pushed to 4 points but he managed to score out before I could. One of the big tempo hits I took, especially being low on credits all game, was when he dropped little engine in front of R&D. I couldve d4v1ded through it gaining 5 credits putting me into gamble range and allowing me to recover on econ, but I missed then play. I also got wrecked by an Ichi, which he installed as his 4th ice on R&D, when I ran into it 4th click. I had to allow a program to get trashed in order to save the Levy in my hand. He was able to win shortly after that happened.

Games 3 & 4 I played Corp

Final Rd vs Neh FA from Rd 2

I managed to pull this one out. I got good econ early and was able to trash 2 of his grids. Pulled an early astro, and he scored an early astro. I check HQ where he rezzed an archangel. I only had a daily casts and a D4v1d installed, he bounced the daily as I'd only gotten 1 tick off it so far. I then used his archangel to bounce my D4v1d to hand, allowing me to reset it. He chained out a second astro, but I got turntable down and managed to score a beale, stealing his astro counter. He fast tracks out a breaking news and scores it on a grid, putting him at 5 points, but I snag a explode putting me at 6. He gets his ichi out on R&D, but I'm run it first click so I am able to click through it. He starts madly digging for the game winning agenda. One turn he jacksons on second click and then hedges. I assume at this point hes found a 3/2 to score on his grid. At one credit, I click for a credit and then same old thing a Legwork, blowing through the archangel, I see the beale on the 3rd card and pull off the win.

2 comments
22 Feb 2016 podoboyz99

Congratulations on the win! Always nice to see Devils Food Cake decks running around, especially Punk Bach variants. In my version I actually think NEH is one of my best matchups, and I find that 2 Scrubber really helps instead of the suckers. It seems like you cut some economy for the suckers, do those really help that much?

26 Feb 2016 Smokestack

I play 3 suckers mainly so I can see one as quickly as possible. The 2 slots that I would have dedicated to scrubber are the forked/spooned. I'll probably make it 2 forked though. I do find the suckers usually do work.