Team Covenant Regionals 2nd place Tagstorm

Going into the tulsa regionals, I expected a field of anarch. Whizzard, Noise and siphon recursion were what I considered the 3 most relevant runner decks, and I wasn't happy running any corp without a passable matchup against all of those. The problem most decks have with whizzard and noise was that there ice doesn't matter, so I wanted an ice light corp to minimize that, while still having a way to bounce back or profit off being siphoned to 0. The easiest answer to all this was tagstorm with low cost op econ, so I went with that.

3 CVS is both great against clot for a almost strictly FA deck, and amazing in a world full of medium, imp and lamprey,

Agenda suite allows you to win off astros while still being as resilient to R&D dig as possible. No beale bit me in one game (first game of cut), however not having a beale in the deck was relevant twice on the day, as the no-win scenario that can come up through news team, cats and food made it impossible for a couple players to win.

Clearances set a really fast pace to force risky runs early, blue level aggressively, even if you have to discard.

8 Ice was actually too much, you should be on 7, cutting the pop-ups for a snatch and grab (really relevant vs shaper) and a low cost ice of your choice, turnpike, wraparound, enigma and quandary being the frontrunners. Spending next to no money on ice makes your limited burst of money go a lot farther.

Sync makes data raven more taxing and helps in the tagme matchup. The agenda suite it allows also helps a lot in a world of medium digs. If you add the beale and go to 49 consider moving to haarp (easier to race with) or making news (dracos are amazing) with the added 5 cards being beale, midseason, fast track/CA, 1 ice and 1 op econ. Sync at 49 is still an option if you expect tagme.

Round 1: Bye, nice and relaxing, got to talk with the atlanta group and grab a snack.

Round 2: Lucas Li (Whizzard): Well that escalated quickly, I stuck a midseason off an early astro steal but he managed to find another astro and food rather quickly off medium. Psychoing food out of hand, followed by fast track psychoing a second out left my RND as 3 QPM and an astro with both of us at 6 points, he found a cat before the astro. 1-0

Round 3: Ben Torell (Tagme Val): I scored a food early, and then he dropped a keyhole and decided to tag himself for me. I start advancing a QPM, then draw a second food and psycho it out while scoring the cat before he can apoc it off the board. Very quick game 2-0

Round 4: One of the bright brothers, sorry I forgot (Kate): I start out with an agressive midseason hand and go for a first turn astro play, he steals it and a QPM but takes enough tags for me to score anything. I then proceed to never find a non-raven ice or psychographics, which is awkward. he goes up to 5 points but I manage to find a resistor for R&D, he pays through once and hits another food (2-1)

Round 5: Josh from KC (whizzard): At this point I'm the only 7-1 and offer to ID, however his tiebreakers are shaky and he can't so we play it out. I managed to sSneak an early astro (first astro of the day), chain another one out and then stick a bunch of tags on him so that he couldn't reasonably score out of centrals before psychoing a food for the game. (3-1)

Cut + a dinner break and we're in top 8

Winners Quarterfinals: Ross Freitag (Noise): I chicken out on a first turn astro install and go for a news team instead, which he doesn't check, then try it second turn, which he steals. Midseason sticks but I can't get a psychographics or resistor, he gives me 2 points off r&d accesses but manages to find 6 more on single accesses before I can score out. (3-2)

Losers Semifinals and Grandfinals were both recorded, so I'll let TC recap those. It ended 4-3 on the day, but only dropped one game to anarch and felt in control most of the time. I can chock the loses up to player error, as I only got 3 days of testing beforehand and went a bit too aggressive sometimes. It performed extremely well in the matchups I wanted it to while not being out of it in matchups I wasn't expecting, making it a very relevant corp deck right now. If you're tired of losing to dumblefork give it a spin, as not relying on ice is the easiest way to deal with that deck. A few more tweaks and I will consider it a solid tier 1 corp until runners ween off resources.