Dancing Cat - 2-2 NZ Nats 2023-09-16

Agressive cat jumping every barrier and putting corp through the dance. Here, you'll get to 5 or 6 core damages in no time. Usually, on an average game, this deck will sabotage around 16 cards, which is a third of the corp deck.

Game plan : Sabotage 16+ cards, run often and pressure the corp.

Mulligan : Ghosttongue or Marrow in hand at the start.

Meta call for NZ national : Dr. Vientiane Keeling will be part of the competition. Was I right?

Because of the meta call, and because assets spam corp are strong at the moment, Miss Bones and Pinhole Threading were required. Because of that, I had to cut Dirty Laundry from the deck.

The event went list this for this deck :

• Lost against MGK (Ob, 9 minutes), with 4 cards in hand, I got skateboard tricked by Biotic Labor + Mutually Assured Destruction + Bass CH1R180G4 + double End of the Line. What a game!
• Lost against NCIGS (Sportsmetal, 16 minutes) in a 241. Miss Bones really did good work there, but I never drew Running Hot, which would have helped me greatly in that matchup. Still collected 6 points, but that is not enough. Intense game!
• Won against Mortivor (Ob, 12 minutes). Hush won me that one, allowing me to disable a Border Control from stopping the winning last run.
• Won against techgin (Weyland Consortium: Built to Last, 24 minutes). Here, my meta call paid off. techgin was using Dr. Vientiane Keeling, which I was able to trash with Pinhole Threading, twice.

Thanks to all my opponents for the fun games. Shoutout to nbkelly for judging and organizing the event, it was excellent.

Compared to most Esa decks, this one does not have Finality. A full board gives us 4 core damages. With Running Hot, you can get to 6 or 7 core! That is an handsize of 1 or 2!

You want to be very agressive here. As long as you do not have program and you are not against Jinteki, you can just facecheck with Bravado and Raindrops Cut Stone. Matryoshka will allow you to get a universal breaker early and with it, the ability to pressure the corp.

Ghosttongue is the best econ card here. If scored on turn 1, we have 23 targets for it. With card trashed from core damage, you should be able to use it 16+ times. Meaning it is a +14 card!

Once Begemot is on the board, it will immediately be almost never used, unless some barrier were rezzed early. This is because there is no corp that will rez ices that cost them between 3 and 6 to be broken for 1.

Zenit Chip JZ-2MJ is especially good in Esa because it draw back a card after installation, on top of the sabotage, making it hurt less.

Hush is super important. This program wins games! Every faction fears it. Jaguarundi and Loki in HB, half the good ice in NBN, Tatu-Bola and Anansi in Jinteki, Hortum and Pharos and other advanceable in Weyland. It cannot be understated how good this is. Especially against Ob Superheavy Logistics: Extract. Export. Excel.. Hafrún + Stavka will wreak your ability to facecheck ices.

If this deck is played in person, it is rather easy to sleeve, with all the 3x in the deck haha!

The style of play of this deck is rather reckless. In a tournament, it makes for shorter game. I hope you enjoy this also! Cheers!