Palanium (2nd Standish Regional)

This deck went entirely undefeated (5-0 with a bye) in a 12-person regional, carrying my inability to play competently against Gagarin (Board Man) to get me 2nd place. My runner was Bendy SpoonY because bendy MaxX is my favorite archetype, I expected almost no Gagarin in our meta (I was right, to no avail) and I had hoped Hacktivist+Maw would give me decent game against Gaga (and maybe it would have if I had been more aggressive).

It's the same grindy glacier Scarcity Palana you've seen before, but with a few cute tricks.

I basically moved my old MTI build into Palana, with the idea of supplementing the usual strong grind them out and win with ETR effects+[you just took too much net damage getting in to be able to steal that Obo] with a positively adorable shot at blowing people out/creating huge windows by trashing programs with Marcus. There are matchups where that won't work because of recursion or redundancy, but I expected crim and anarch decks that relied on turtle, engolo, or corroder with limited resilience. It turns out I guessed right and faced 3 crims and a Val against whom it would be super relevant, but I literally never drew Tithonium or rezzed Rototurret the entire tournament (I did score out behind a Thimblerig vs. a Passport after my opponent lost his Abagnale stealing an Obo, though).

The tech that did turn out to be relevant was Distract the Masses. Is it a great card? No. But it was the best solve I could come up with to the problem of flooding. I could score smoothly enough that as long as I got agendas at the mathematically average speed, I didn't need a way to get rid of them. But if I got flooded (as I did in my first Corp game of the cut, in which I mulled into 8 points and kept drawing more agendas), I was in big trouble. I'd noticed playing MTI at Worlds and elsewhere that, with a few exceptions, the only games I lost were when I flooded super badly. The deck does what it wants to do very well without that card slot helping, so I decided to use it to shore up my weaknesses, and boy am I glad I did. In that game in the cut, I drew it just in time to save me and let me claw my way barely back in (but it was a timed win my opponent could have won if he got lucky-- the score was 3-0, he had 6 tw counters, and I had 2 NM2 in hand, but I had a border control on HQ and he had no barrier breaker or turtle (see what I mean about these fragile breaker suites?) so he could get past it once with Nexus. Then, if he used 4+ counters, I ETR with BC, and if he uses only 2 then I take the 8.25% (right?) chance that the 2 cards he hits of the 5 are the agendas, then ETR the 2nd run (the math worked out that he would have had to take creds to win the nexus trace and only had 2 clicks left for runs).

Interestingly, the reason I was even able to score 3 points that game was because my opponent went down very low on cards and would have had to either eat or Nexus an Anansi to reach the Obo, so I saw a window and took it. The Obos give it a nice edge on scoring that MTI didn't have (either when restricted or when I used GFI instead). Kakugo is good for that too...and really nice for keeping someone from spamming centrals if they can break it. I cut down to 2 because it's a bit pricy for a 1 str ICE and it's vulnerable to TTW because it doesn't hurt on facecheck, but I'm not sure if that's correct. I never got in a situation where I could have scored if only I had another Kakugo on the remote, at least.

Aiki and Cortex Lock both did work, and I'm glad I went 1x Eli instead of the 3rd IP Block because of 419.

I cut DNA Tracker for Tithonium because I expected a lot of Engolo and Amina (both make Tracker a much worse deal and are great trash targets), which I barely saw. Doing it again, I'd probably ditch the cute program trashing plan and just put the Tracker back and use the inf on more Elis.

DO NOT CUT THE TFP. In the car on the way to the tourney, I almost subbed in an SSL (figuring I'd at least want to score it if I drew it early). Winning TFP psi games won me 3 of my 5 games, including both against the eventual champion. (and the 5/3 I scored is almost always an Obo because it protects itself, anyway).

Thanks to Stair for helping me remember my Palana triggers, but cancel out that thanks because he rused Rongeydoge into bringing Gagarin, which were my only losses the entire tourney and killed me 3 times, 2 of them credit perfect (1 in swiss, 1 at start of cut, and 1 in the grand finals). I didn't tech much against Gaga becuase I knew it wouldn't be popular in my meta, figuring maybe I'd see it once. Instead, I played against the same one, with the same pilot, 3 times and never figured out how to not die. Go here to read his report. Both of us went undefeated except against each other's corps.

I'm very happy about the new MWL, by the way. :P