Maven Smaven - Norwich Store Championship 2017

I'd been playing a lot of Geist prior to this tournament, and had planned to play my latest build on the day. However, as I expected CI and Skorp to feature heavily at the tournament, I threw this deck together a couple of days before. On the day it won 3 out of 4 games, which I was pretty pleased with, getting me just about high enough on the rankings to get a Smoke deck box.

Game 1 - Builder of Nations This was a grindy game. There was a Hadrian's Wall with something like 8 counters on it protecting R&D, and towards the end I was just clicking for 8 until I had enough money to hit R&D four times in a turn with Equivocation (to minimise BoN meat damage). My opponent conceded as we needed to play the other side, and he said it was just a matter of time as he didn't have a feasible out.

Games 2 & 3 - Skorp Managed to get Sacrificial Constructs installed early to nullify Hunter Seeker. This, matched with finding my breakers early to challenge the early game rushes, meant that both games were pretty quick, with Indexing helping to close both.

Game 4 - Titan This was the only game that this deck lost, but it was a close one. My opponent scored a Project Atlas turn 1 (with Audacity) so I installed Equivocation and ran like hell! Managed to get up to 4 points, 2 of which was an Atlas. Indexing found 4 points, which my opponent shuffled away with the Atlas token when I ran second click. This Atlas token was used to fetch another Atlas into an undefended HQ, which I ran twice but missed it. Once that was scored it was just a matter of time before my opponent was able to put together the cards needed to score an Oaktown Renovation from hand. It was a really close game, and I feel like the loss came down to poor luck rather than the deck.

All told I'm pretty pleased with the deck. 3 Tapwrm might be overkill, but means that you don't have to use up Sacrificial Constructs on them if you've got another in hand. Also means that you can generally save Self-Modifying Codes for breakers, to apply early pressure. I can see the argument to replace one for a Clot, which might have helped in the Titan game.

Maven needs a little more setup than Dai V, but I prefer it due to the savings which can be made against the Mythic / Loki suite, not that it was needed on the day. Can also help when Seidr Adaptive Barrier gets big.

I like Magnum Opus for the late game reliability. Sometimes the burst economy of Peace in Our Time and Sure Gamble isn't enough, and in those cases Magnum Opus is there to save you.