FFGC Regional Top 8: "Knights of the Round Turtle"

5-1 in swiss. 2nd seed.

Round 1 (vs Spags): Win vs Leela. Round 2: Win vs Kate. Round 3 (vs Jens): Win vs Andromeda (Stealth IIRC?). Round 4 (vs Joe Schupp): Lose vs Prepaid Kate. Round 5: Win vs Valencia. Round 6: Win vs Whizzard. (Corporate Troubleshooter/net damage kill).

So, the ice in this deck is very punishing. This allows you to drop agendas behind ice then score them out, or if you are rich, wall up a SanSan. Face checking can be quite lethal. Cortex sniped Jens' entire hand turn 1, after a Desperado and a draw. Troubleshooted Lancelot w/two Merlin subs beat Whizz. He checked the server expecting that I was sneaking an Astro through it. I wasn't. Outgrew Mimic's range and killed. Cortex is like extra Grail, and gets re-enabled in the mid game if a Lancelot does work. When people start to be careful, digging for full breaker suites and what not, its time to hit the gas and rush agendas, even if not fast advanced. You can save the grids to sneak out a couple points to seal a game pretty easily.

Standard agenda package. Ideally, you score an Astro behind ice over 2 turns then FA a couple and sneak another through somewhere or Breaking News. Scored a couple bare agendas. Had three Turtlebacks and no money left one game. made 2 servers for 6, drew a card and clicked for 1. Was just making money back right? Nope. Astro.

Oh Turtlebacks. You make such insane money if you stick, and you play 6 (counting Startups, obv). Rez 'em on a turn you make 3 servers. Against Whizzard, I like to ice the first Turtlebacks. Then you can make servers for a card and a credit each turn, if Whizz is checking them. A lot of the servers cost Whizzard an actual credit or two, so you can actually snowball enough assets that he can't commit to trashing them.

Blacklist lock is viable with the grail. I didn't ever go for it though.

The trickle econ is supplementary to the Turtlebacks plan. Marked Accounts are potentially a main econ source vs Whizzard.

Only 1 Business Show because of Tech Startup, Two might be better, but I wasn't really feeling like cutting much. Jacksoning is often more preferable to get more Grail and assets into hand anyways.

Troubleshooter does work. Probably moving up to two in the list, dropping 1 Cortex. Maybe add a random Psychic Field or something. IDK.

Friend of my piloted this at Madison regionals and 6-0'd in swiss, but scrubbed with runner bad enough to miss cut. 5-1 at Fantasy Flight this time, but even then only to a misplay, missing a chance to fast advance for game due to exhaustion. That list plays 1 Biotic and no Cortex or Quandary, with 3 Pop-Up Windows and 1 less trickle econ card. Overall the deck is 16-3 after 3 regionals, after I lost with it in top cut to a turn 1 Siphon to 0 out of Anarch hoping to sneak an Astro through turn 1. I do not regret the attempt.

Don't be afraid to dump excess ice into new servers for money. Clicking for three credit with triple turtles by dumping ice into a new remote is fantastic.

Might try for a Melange as an economic option over trickle vs Whizz. Drop behind ice. +6 credits from digging the first hole in the moon is often enough to start doing work. +13 after digging the second hole in the moon? You should be able to rush out agendas behind Grail at that point no problem, and its way less maintenance than babysitting Marked, and Tech Startup-able.