Atlanta Regional 2016 - 1st Place Runner

As evidenced by the title, this is the deck with which I proved successful in winning the 2016 Regional Championship in Atlanta, GA. The deck can be seen in match play twice, in quarterfinals and grand finals, during the videos produced by Peachhack on his YouTube channel found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dodgepong.

I entered the Atlanta Regional expecting a fair amount of NBN decks, most notably Near-Earth Hub. Given Andromeda’s positive matchup against NEH FA and my preference for her, I felt it a comfortable choice to sleeve her up for the tournament.

I would estimate the deck to be fairly unremarkable. The deck may be best evaluated by the absence of certain cards. There is no decoder that can break remote code gates. There are no supplemental economy programs such as Datasucker, Cloak, or Parasite. There is only a single Legwork. And there is not a secondary killer beyond the transient Faeries. These are all exploitable shortcomings. As such, you see perhaps atypical choices in Sneakdoor Beta, Quality Time, Medium, Faust, and Emergency Shutdown.

Sneakdoor Beta permits you to place extended pressure against all of the central servers. It often demands heavier defenses to be committed to Archives beyond a simple taxing of Security Testing. This provides you with easier access to other centrals which benefit both Account Siphon and a follow up Medium once you decide to abandon Sneakdoor. Emergency Shutdown complements Sneakdoor, though it remains a somewhat awkward card. Emergency Shutdown is included as support to Medium, to maintain HQ pressure through a rig that includes Sneakdoor, and to aid in running past code gates found on a remote.

Medium compresses R&D multi-access to a single card and capitalizes on the pleasant synergy between itself and Security Testing. Medium also best rewards you for openings obtained through Account Siphon.

Quality Time is included due to the noticeable absence of card draw in the Criminal faction – that it helps to fund Faust is a strong option as well. The interaction between card draw and Faust is well-established. However, this deck benefits from this synergy further in allowing it to convert to a Faust plan late when the strength in economy may begin to wane. As such, this lessens the need for Datasucker and other supplemental options.

The breaker suite has several issues. But ICE is frequently seen in low numbers or offers alternative ways to pass it through clicks or traces. And Criminal offers additional options through Account Siphon, Emergency Shutdown, Inside Job, and Sneakdoor Beta.

If you have further questions, I will try my utmost to answer them.