Tightrope 3.3 - 2nd York Regional

2nd at Aki's birthday / York Regional 2019

2-0-1 in Swiss, and 1-2 in the cut.

Drew against @paulyg on Leela in round 5, in a very close game where I was 1 credit away from landing a SEA Source + Exchange of Information through a No One Home in the final turn.

Wins in the swiss were against 419 and Wu, and in the cut was against a Classy Val with 3 x D4V1d, 3 x Hippo (ofc), and who rebirthed into Edward Kim. This was particularly rude because I had 5 operations in hand and no ICE on HQ (more fool me).

Both losses were to @just_rob on WuZekiSurfer.

When I slotted the Endless EULA I hesitated because of laamb , but then a part of my brain told me not to respect surfer nonsense. This was a mistake. WuZekiSurfer has easy answers to every problem that this list can pose, and is a very good list played by very good players (there were 4 Wu in the cut at York, at least 2 of which were on Surfer).

I did beat Johnny on WuZekiSurfer in the Swiss by rushing out 2 x SSL, but probably only because Johnny then forgot to install hunting grounds and ran a double advanced QPM. In the cut I had one close game against @just_rob on the same list, and then we played again in the final where he crushed me pretty definitively .

Cards

@paulyg's SC winning list, but now with added Surveyor (because the MWL council have smiled upon tag based glacier builds!)

Bio Vault was an untested include, because this list pointed out that you can install and advance it while Daily Quest is ticking, and that seemed good. On the day it was underwhelming.

Recommend swapping Bio Vault for Navi Mumbai City Grid, and Thimblerig for Border Control. This will help with the shaper matchup, but not against criminal.

Other tweaks could be swapping Endless EULA for Tollbooth and Enigma for Vanilla. The All-Seeing I could be Closed Accounts, or possibly even Game Over.

The Game Plan

Find a way to get Daily Quest ticking ASAP, even if it means leaving centrals open. The only agenda that you don’t want the runner to steal in the early game is Quantum Predictive Model. SSL Endorsement and Global Food Initiative being stolen both help your long term game plan.

Leave DQ ticking until you have both an agenda that you want to score (SSL or QPM) and something to put in the remote the turn afterwards (Rashida Jaheem or another DQ). Recommend Double advancing QPM to try and drag the runner through the remote. Scoring GFI is usually a mistake, but scoring SSL is really good.

You are probably going to need to score 1 x 5/3 at some point, the other you use DQ and Azmari money to SEA Source + Exchange of Information. This will not be a surprise to the runner, so once you have a 1 pointer in your score area, you’ll find that they become a lot more cautious.

Always play like you have HHN in hand.

This was a good list when Surveyor was restriced, and (I think) it's even better now that it isn't.

The only thing I would say is that a number of my games went to time. Partly that is my playstyle, but at least partly that is also because of the core of the list: which is a defensive agenda suite, and aggresive drip economy. I'm not sure that anything can be done about it, but it's worth reflecting on.

Thanks to @Blonde Haired Hacker Girl for organising yet another amazing event, full of incredible prize support, and incredible people!