Makeshift Moisturiser [13th, 2nd Swiss @ APAC Continentals]

At this point, I think it's well established how good PD is at the moment. I wish I could say that bringing this deck was some sort of gigabrain meta call on my part -- but the truth is I wanted to play @Sokka's Boring Lat, which is a phenomenal list but takes a lot of my brainpower to play. As a result, I wanted to play something comfortable and familiar on corp side, and PD fit the bill perfectly.

Card-specific notes

2 Anoetic Void: This to me has to be the best card in the list (sorry, 🅱eamless) and one of the most unfair things PD can do. I'm never sad to see the first copy, and rarely to see the second, either -- Pinhole insurance, trash-from-centrals insurance and Tranq credits are all worthwhile.

2 Border Control: This is the ice I'm happiest to install a first-turn Rashida behind - it's the cheapest rez that ends the run, and provides significant value into the late-game, unlike Gatekeeper. Greasing the Palm Rashida, BC remote, Gatekeeper HQ to stop Diversion and Burner is how I want all of my turn 1s to go.

0 Mavirus: I'm not sure how necessary this actually is. My practice into Criminal especially was quite limited, but I don't think it's unreasonable to manually purge out a high-strength Aumakua after getting one of Brân/M.I.C./Drafter/Ansel on all centrals. Even if you can't, 6-str Brân and Skunk/Void generally stop remote runs anyway. That said, I did manually purge a Fermenter in the tournament, so maybe I'm wrong here.

1 Corporate Hospitality, 1 Sprint, 1 Spin Doctor: This feels like just shy of the card draw/recursion you want to have. I'd love the second Spin but probably not a third. CorpHosp and Sprint are situationally great but I don't think I want a second copy of either.

Replays

Round 2 vs. Drayven on Reg Hosh: Manual Fermenter purge on turn 5 felt like it secured the game after a couple of expensive Drafter runs - OffOff keeps me afloat to close out the game.

Round 3 vs. tvaduva on Spark Kit: Three Greasings in the early stages of the game let me get set up super quickly, even as Spark Kit does the same. The turn-7 BC pop to fire a Rashida feels like the pivotal decision I made, letting me recover financially and induce an expensive Gatekeeper-Brân run. CorpHosp allowing for a neat miniature bluff to close out the game is great.

Round 5 vs. Santa on WT Ari: A first-turn M.I.C. facecheck in front of an un-trashable Tranq proves enough of a stumbling-block for the runner, and I score out on turn 9.

Round 8 vs. Styx on Reg Hosh: This is the toughest corp-side game yet! Relentless central pressure is able to keep my money down in the early-to-mid-game, causing 4/2s to accumulate in hand and be stolen. Fortunately, I'm able to find economy, and a turn-9 M.I.C. pop on a Twinning HQ run keeps the winning Ikawah safe and scored behind SkunkVoid 2 turns later. ADT locking the top of R&D is much appreciated for safety on these last turns.

Cut round 1 vs. Amarum on WT Ari: My only loss with this deck. Amarum gets off to a lightning-fast start with turn-2 hard-install Tree. While I certainly didn't play perfectly (no Gatekeeper rez on turn 6 stands out to me, breaking lock on turn 8 is also at least questionable), losing the game to 6 R&D accesses and a Burner feels rough. Extremely well navigated matchup by Amarum, though!

Thanks to all my opponents, you all played fantastic games! If you'd like me to remove any of the replays, shoot me a Discord DM and I'll do so as soon as I see it.

Wrap-up

This was my first online tournament, and I'm thrilled with my result, and the experience I had. I'm looking forward to participating in more of these sorts of things! I'd like to thank a few people for making this such a great time:

• Sokka, for building an excellent runner deck and explaining & showing it off on-stream.
• All of my opponents and fellow competitors, for being great players and super friendly!
• All my friends from my local Naarm meta (and the wider APAC region), for their words of encouragement and support, as well as helping me get practice in and learn the finer points of the game.
• Kror and everyone else responsible for making this event happen, for running an incredibly smooth and enjoyable event.

Hope to see you all on the nets again!