Cleared for Take Off (1st Place Nashville SC)

This is the Corp deck I took to an 11-person SC at The Game Cave in Nashville, TN. Overall, it went 4-1 on the day (3-1 in Swiss and 1-0 in the cut) and helped get me the championship win. The deck was actually inspired by the introduction of Violet Level Clearance for the full set of Clearance cards to be used to accelerate NEXT rush. The deck forced me to play fast, and it is very much a back-to-basics deck focused on ice, money, and scoring agendas as quickly as possible.

Round 1 (Win): Redd's Andromeda/Fisk. NEXT failed me right out of the gate with a no-ice hand that I mulliganed for another no-ice hand. While I struggled to find my ice, he played Fisk Investment Seminar, Rebirthed into Fisk to force a draw, and then Information Sifted my hand of 9 cards with 4 agendas. I took my lumps and split the agendas two each into the two piles. I was able to quickly stabilize after that, and hitting a FC 3.0 unprepared set him back. I was able to setup a solid scoring server and cranked out 6 points as quickly as I could. He Siphoned me to slow me down, but I was eventually able to build back up to 7 creds and Biotic for the win.

Round 2 (Loss): Played against Josh M's Pancha Haley. This game was looking up with a 3-ice opening hand, but the match-up was brutal. I was able to get 4 points scored, but he was able to get his Pancha, Gordian, Sharpshooter, and Deux X rig setup a little too quickly and snatched my game-winning GFI. It was all downhill from there. He popped Spy Cameras to snag agendas out of R&D and could easily get into my scoring remote. Kudos to Josh for the win. This was the only time throughout the day where my Corp deck felt helpless.

Round 3 (Win): Played against Connor's Baba Yaga Smoke. After splitting the first two rounds, I knew I needed to get some double wins to have a shot at the Top 4. Fortunately, this was a good match-up since he needed time for setup and I got some solid draws to go fast. He struggled to get his economy going and rig setup, so I was able to churn out the win before he could lock down my servers with the stealth breakers.

Round 4 (Win): Played Craig's Baba Yaga Andy. Craig is a regular at the Nashville tournaments and a great player, so I was a little nervous knowing I needed two wins to ensure Top 4. I had a good start to ice up HQ and R&D. He Temujined Archives, but I was able to ice it down and limit his econ. FC 3.0 came through in spades again on R&D and Archives and set him back even further. While he was getting his econ and rig setup, I was able to churn out the first 6 points. He was finally getting stabilized when I played Biotic for the win.

After 4 rounds of Swiss, I managed to get into second place after a fairly rocky start. The leader after Swiss had to drop out, so I ended up as the 1st seed in the cut. I ran twice and won, so I only had to play Corp once in the Finals.

Top 2 Finals First Round: Played against Josh S's Para-SIFR Whizzard. I built my Corp deck with the hope that it could perform well against the popular Anarch builds by scoring out before they were able to get everything setup, and this was the first chance to test that theory out. I had a good start and used NEXT to put ice on R&D and my scoring remote, and I had a handful of economy events. I BLC's first two clicks and was excited to use the Lateral Growth to install an agenda or ice that I drew... but I didn't. I had 6 economy events and nothing to install. I knew I needed to get to my agendas fast, so I played all my Clearance cards and drew while playing my events to build my credit pool. Once again, FC 3.0 was a life-saver as he ran R&D on click two with just Faust and not enough cards in hand to get through, marking the third time on the day that FC 3.0 set runners back to buy me time. I started drawing into my agendas and had a great double Turing scoring server. He got his SIFR and Medium out to start blowing up R&D, but it was too late. I was able to draw into the winning agenda and immediately put it into the scoring server. He drew up to make a go with Faust, but Faust couldn't pass the Turing test, and he didn't have enough credits to summon his Black Orchestra from the heap to break.

Overall, I am super proud of how this deck performed on the day. Previous iterations played around with Midseasons/BOOM and Aggressive Sec, but I opted to go with more ice and econ to build around the deck's core strength. The Cortex Lock was meant to be a surprise that showed some promise online, but I rarely drew it early enough on the day. Influence might be better spent elsewhere. VLC is also borderline. I did play it a few times when it was really helpful, but I also think it got trashed from R&D as much as it got played. FC 3.0 was the jewel for the day protecting centrals and buying me extra time along with Biotic Labor that netted me two wins that could have easily been losses without the FA option.

Shout out to The Game Cave for a chill space to play and to Redd for putting together another great tournament and the effort he consistently puts in to keep out little meta going. I appreciate that we have a very diverse meta where you never know what kinds of decks you are going to face.