This Asa can kill you - undefeated As Continentals Winner

syd7 801

https://imgur.com/12WKGQx

This is the Asa deck that carried me to first place in the Americas continentals tournament. I’ve written a pretty detailed write up for it before, so I’ll leave most of the card choice explanations there. The main changes between old lists and the current one is: going to 3x Marilyns to ensure you never run out of cash, +1 Jeeves to assist with scoring and tempo, and +1 preemptive action to recur crucial cards. Feel free to ask about specific match-ups/card choices if you like, they’re all super interesting and I love talking them over, but they’re not worth listing exhaustively here.

The central plan of the deck is to build a remote defended by Helheim servers, which you can boost with your 9-card cybernetics court hand. To prevent this, the runner must aggressively steal agendas and trash assets early, which leaves them open to a surprise punitive kill. I think I benefited greatly from the rise of the Lakshmi Asa decks from the Europe-Africa tournament the week before, since it looks similar, up until Mr. Punitive shows up to ask about those Vacherons you stole last turn.

Even in the cut, with known decklists, the punitive threat remains relevant. Despite not getting any punitive kills on the second day, forcing runners to respect it means they have to slow down while you play Fully Operationals and Violet Level Clearances.

This was the first time I’d made it into the top cut of a large tournament, and I’d really like to say thanks to the NISEI organizers who had to explain to me how double elimination works and what an ID was. Thanks to Akira andmanveruppd and pspacekitten and Vesper and anyone else behind the scenes that I was too dense to recognize.

As I said on stream, I wouldn’t have gotten this far without the advice and testing done with the local Vancouver players, including Alpha/RunningParallel, Adumbbrick, Thike, Solomir, and most-importantly Aruzan, who had to wake me up on Saturday when I almost overslept the check-in. They basically spent the last 3 years teaching me the game, and I'm incredibly thankful.

9 comments
3 Aug 2020 Anzekay

You beautiful, beautiful man. Putting my big purple son in an HB list with my favourite card- Punitive- and then winning NA champs? I'm so happy, what a wonderful day.

3 Aug 2020 NtscapeNavigator

You're very welcome. And amazing taking down a big event with such a left field deck. I wish I could favorite this list twice.

3 Aug 2020 Baa Ram Wu

Whilst Watching the final - I’ve never Been so sure About the outcome of a match early on and so incredibly wrong about the final result!

An awesome deck and a masterclass watching you play it!

3 Aug 2020 Sindarin

Congratulations, friend. You practised and practised and it really showed. Well done!

4 Aug 2020 syd7

@AnzekayIts a beautiful card. Pro tip: works best at 13+ strength.

4 Aug 2020 Diogene

The final was amazing! So many exchanges. Breathtaking. It was really fun to watch. Congratulation. Also, shoutout to the commentators, which made your awesome match even more exciting. Well played.

4 Aug 2020 thepooterlooter

How's the apoc matchup? I think the traditional wisdom would be that apoc would be favored. Is the matchup uncommon due to the meta? Is there something less than obvious that shores up the matchup? Is it just not a bad matchup to begin with?

4 Aug 2020 syd7

@thepooterlooterright now, I'm not totally sure. Before the DDOS ban, I actually didn't have any trouble with it. Previously, an apoc anarch actually has to spend a lot of clicks on liberated accounts, drawing, and waiting for daily casts and earthrise hotels to expire, and they can't really challenge your assets during that time. When left alone, you get to draw SO much faster, and find the set up to resist apoc. Crisium + Helheim + 2 Ice on archives denies apoc super hard, even through DDOS.

4 Aug 2020 syd7

Also, if you didn't see it, I did come back from getting apoc'd in the final :)