Franglais ETF (2nd NZ Nats, 2016)

Apparently, the shell of this deck is simply entitled ‘French ETF’, on account of various prominent French players tinkering with the deckbuilding decisions (please identify thyselves in the comments, in order that I might acknowledge thee). Hence, ‘Franglais,’ as the list is a non-French person’s take on an existing French work. Also because my French is terrible.

The list is nigh-on identical to the original list, except I cut 2 Restructures and 1 Fast Track for 3 Lateral Growths – this was partially in response to Beth Kilrain-Chang being a stupidly good card (she loves Restructure), but also because Lateral allows me to play a little lower to the ground (letting me rush harder) and gives me especially strong early turns. Initially, I had been testing with a more dedicated fast advance list with 2 SanSan City Grids, Blue Level Clearances, and Corporate Sales Teams instead of GFIs, but I found that, while it decimated certain slower decks, it was less resilient to the majority of the field (Crisium Grid and the reduced agenda density helped a lot).

HB went 3-1 in Swiss, beating Ken, Andy, and Whizzard, losing miserably to DLR MaxX. ID’d last round to all-around degenerate scumbag @miek of CI7 fame (jk, love you, Mike). For what it’s worth, he crushed my HB in our practice game with ‘dyper’/Keyhole Combo/Hyperexpletives Kate.

In double elims, HB redeemed itself by miraculously scraping through a win in the rematch against William’s ferocious DLR MaxX, despite an early ABT whiffing a Hedge Fund, SanSan and another ABT, with 3 other agendas in hand and 1 ice on the board - turns out Chronos Project for 70% of MaxX’s deck, including 3 DLR, 2 Siphon, and backup breakers, allows one to recover from even the most losing of situations. In the rematch against @miek, my super-strong early draws (3 agendas, Hedge Fund, SanSan City Grid, stopping ice, thus allowing for rapid scoring) transitioned into a god-like ABT of Turing (placed on R&D) and Vanilla (placed on HQ).

The moral of the story? Always/maybe fire Accelerated Beta Test. Except/especially when it loses/wins you the game.