Sofia Regionals 2nd place (11 players) - Perfect Marketing

Hello everyone, I’m Dydra and maybe most likely you know me for my Replicating Kills deck. Today, I’m happy to share with you a deck, which I’ve been playing for the past month and a bit more. Yesterday, were the Regionals here in Sofia, at which I finished 2nd from 11 players total, with a score of 6-2 (W:L) in 4 rounds of SWIS. Both my corp and runner deck went 3-1, but the corp deck (which I will refer to from now on as “perfect marketing” ) could have easily went 4-0 and bring me the first place – if it wasn’t for a horrid draw ( no ice first 3-4 turns in a 17/49 ICE deck) + big play mistake on my side at match point.

So where to begin …

First, this deck is a modified version of my “Good Guy Replication” deck (should be in “derived from” if everything works correctly), which I made pretty much for RP value + fun + being annoying and WTF my opponent. The basic idea of that deck (GGR) was simple – opponent can’t upkeep with your money flow from assets , you have expensive to bypass ICE which will drain him and make him unable to make runs without MO-ing for 2 complete turns , 7 agendas in 49 cards which will make him come out empty handed really often AND finally a Ruhr Valley+ Caprice combo to really make him want to burn his cards.

The initial results made me come to several conclusions: 1) The agenda spread was wrong. My opponent was digging like crazy for cards, but holly shit, was I as well! Many times I’d lock him out for 3 turns and I wouldn’t have an agenda to play in them! I took out 2xPriority Req for 3x Medical Breakthrough and that worked like a miracle! It gave PERFECT pace for the deck.

2) The combination of 15+ cards which you can possibly install in remotes which you will Diversified Portfolio with is crazy!

3) This deck crushes Account Siphon decks … I had this game against the top player in our group (and who finished #1 in the Regionals yesterday btw) in which he played Reina, with 3x AS, 3x SoT , 3x Vamp , 3x Déjà vu …. And I got AS-ed 8 times and Vamped 1 or 2 times …. Yet I could still win the game … That honestly blew me out of my mind and showed me that this deck is the correct choice for the current meta.

So … All I had to do is modify the deck a bit, to catch some people off-guard . First I was unhappy a bit with my early game ICE, so I took out a Ruhr Valley and got in a Hive + pop-up .Second I threw in a Closed accounts to punish not removing tags Account Siphon-ers and it worked out great. That’s why I threw in a Scorch Earth, that would allow me slap in the face people that are floating tags even harder and eventually decide games. It worked out superb as well, but that meant that I had to take out 1 more Ruhr valley+ Pop-up that I’ve placed earlier. I put a Data-mine on the place of the Pop-up, because I really wanted to keep the ICE count unchanged and I put 2x Eli, that I really found annoying playing against the day before.

The Tournament: ( skip if you aren't interested)

My first game was against a Tenma deck with regular breakers and I saw data suckers+ desperado and indexing being played?? The game was going in wild swings. He started by running in a Komainu in front of HQ on turn 1, discarding AS and other things with his initial hand. That set him back quite a lot. He was at 4 points I believe and then saw a TFP from R*D which would win him the game. Had Inazuma + Komainu in front of HQ , which for his Ninja+ Yogg+ Data sucker was just too expensive. So he just decided to run me in the hand for TFP with 0 cards in hand …. That’s where the 2 shocks came in play. I kept them in hand seing what he would do. Had 2 shocks + TFP + 2 random cards …. On the 4th time he ran in my hand, finally he hit a shock ( the first 3 times he drew TFP and I had to win the Psi-games).

Second game was against a MO Siluethe with Notoriety + Quest completed. He was drawing like a madman at the start of the game, I hit some discards …. He eventually end up with 3 quest completed in the discard pile, 1 trashed (by me) SoT and managed to steal one agenda with a QC. After that I knew my remote was completely safe (with just 2 walls) because of the central-only breakers so I had two things on my mind – WALL UP CENTRALS and HE HAS 3 NOTORIETY left … I was at 4 points and he was at 5 I believe, so I was drawing like a madman for an Agenda to put it on my remote. While he was trying to get money. He had 2 floating tags so I Closed Accounts him at 12-14c or so, which made him MO for 2 more … then I hit the 3 pointer agenda, put it down safely behind the remote and the next turn was crucial. I had a Scorch in hand, which he never saw, but he was at 6 cards in hand … despite of that I hit the Scorch Earth, knowing that he would go down to 2 cards and I had 2 shocks in my archives, which he needs to access for the Notoriety and I knew he would need time to draw somewhere. So I SE, double advance … and with the scorch I hit 2 out of the 3 notoriety left in the game =) which won me the game.

This Is getting long so I will be really short on the next ones. Third game was against Chaos Theory. Mulligan into no ICE for 3 turns, he steals 5 early. I finally setup, score 4 points, start working and then I make the mistake to put a naked Medical Breakthrough in ONE out of my EIGHT remotes, at least half of which are face down. I didn’t put it behind a 2 ICE server, because he would just barely get in … and I bluffed by putting that and one other card before it in naked remotes. He exposed the second one ( rightfully so, because I took like 2-3min thinking if I should put it) , ran and GG. Totally my mistake

Last game was against a Chaos Theory again, he took out early MO and spend the entirety of his first couple of turns wasting clicks trashing my assets (some with Encryption protocol) while I was setting up ICE and getting money. Drew into 2 Shinobi, put one down and behind it Medical Breakthrough. He puts down a Femme, femms it and runs there. With 2 money left, He can’t bypass cuz he needs 3, he can’t break any subroutines and dies. Simply, he didn’t expect me to play Shinobi (which is the point of the card in the deck).

A few last notes that worth reading:

• The Economy of this deck is crazy. Diversified Portfolio is a great card. At first I wanted to DP ( :D ) only for 8+ credits on 9 remotes…. But then I realized that it easily replaces Hedge Fund or Beanstalk in different points of the game (and sometimes even better than them) in this particular deck.

• Reclamation order is great for this deck. Having the option to pick up ALL of your Sundews or MHC after they’ve spent ages trying to trash them is great – OR all of your Diversified Portfolios which you played for 3-4c before setup all of your crazy count remotes. Also works to pick up your Scorch for Game winners.

• Tenma is a brilliant card against single focus decks. Being able to make the most expensive Run for 1 turn in any point of time and not to mention completely countering Escher …. For 1-2 card slots, also in this deck buffing your Diversified Portfolio while doing it – absolutely yes.

• I saw Ruhr Valley only once during the tournament and Akitaro never. However, I kept them in the deck, because I wanted to have more consitency on my Diversified Portfolio.

• Eli didn't do as much work as expected.

Final changes that I will make to this deck:

Take out 1x Ruhr Valley + 1x Elli 1.0 for 2nd Scorch.

Put 2x Cerebral Casting to be able to tag decks that don’t run Account Siphon =)

Why the name??

The name is because what most people would expect from a hard on assets (even encryption protocols) is a traplles or simply taxing Jinteki. Where as we will run our sneaky attacks via Shinobi , Scorches and sometimes even Shocks! A perfect marketing campaign! ;)

As always feel free to leave questions if you have any, while I moderate the text a bit.