A Cambridge PE 2017 version (1st place SC, Tampere, Finland)

This is Cambridge PE -type deck that I ran in a small Store Champ (16 players). I basically thought it might be good against any Hate Bear decks (which I faced none), and I wanted to try out some new cards. I wasn't completely happy with how this deck performed. I felt most of my victories were more because of mistakes made by my opponents rather than my good play, but I guess that's also a part of playing trap Jinteki. I decided to make this write up anyway, because I wanted to share some experiences of the new cards in PE.

This Deck went 4-2. My Runner deck was 99% Hate Bear, which went 5-1.

Games:

1 (won) vs Sunny that had Nexus, Citadel and DLR. I thought I'd die to DLR, so I tried to keep him from using it. Preemptive Actions and Jacksons helped. Eventually he made a mistake and I got a kill. Could have lost this.

2 (lost) vs Hayley that had Reaver and Aesop for draw and econ. He played with the mindset of "run everything advanced", which worked as I drew very little traps.

3 (won) vs Whizzard that had Wyldside+pancakes, Keyhole+Eater, Fear the Masses and Slums. I survived the mills with Preemptive Actions. He eventually made a mistake and I won. Wylside is naturally very strong against damage, but he didn't have I've Had Worse in the deck. Likely would have lost if he had.

4 (won) vs I forgot what ID. He ran on the 2nd or 3rd turn to an advanced Cerebral Overwriter, and I won. He said he didn't have much experience playing against PE. same tactic as game #2, but this time I drew traps.

5 (won), Top cut #1, same Whizzard as before. He ran an Overwriter, and I managed to close with ronin and Neural EMP.

6 (loss), 1st game of Final, Geist with spy cams, tech traders and on the lam. I figured my only chance was try to do something early before he got his rig up. Didn't work. After that, my only chance was to wait for him to mill himself while slowing down the game with Preemptive Action, but we ran out of time at the venue so I forfeited. The next game was Hate Bear vs a janky CtM, and I won that.

Some notes on specific new cards:

Show of Force: I originally planned on playing 3x of these, 3x HoK, 3x Fetal and 3x Gila, but I copped out and put in 2x GFI. SoF is good on paper, but more stuff that needs advancing means higher chance that an advanced card on the table is not Overwriter. Would probably not play again.

Preemptive Action: Very good card, but can lead to lengthy games which aren't very good in tournaments. If you're not playing vs a must-R&D-dig-deck or a mill-deck, it won't give you any points, but will take away your opponents. Would play again.

Mind Games: Good, though I only got to fire it once. The 0-rez cost can be misleading, as you still need money for the psi games, and this deck is slow to make money. Will play again.

Bottom line

PE trap decks are still a huge meta call. They will just outright lose to some decks, while the decks they are good against keep getting fewer.