Where is the Boat? (1st @ Finnish RAM asynch)

Me during the tournament when my first boat is consistently something like card number 24/45.

This is the list I built and piloted to the first place of Finnish RAM asynch-tournament. Here is my corp deck

Our cardpool was: Honor and Profit, System Gateway, A Study in Static, Business First, Down the White Nile, Earth's Scion, Fear the Masses, Intervention, Kala Ghoda, Mala Tempora, Midnight Sun, Quorum, Station One, The Liberated Mind.

e:sg|hap|ftm|bf|in|dtwn|kg|ms|tlm|qu|eas|so|asis|mt

How did I arrive here?

Well the first thing to note is that Shaper is the only faction with all three of 1. econ, 2. draw and 3. relevant wincons. Influence-free boat also helps. A lot. Criminal I pretty much discarded immediately, because there are no criminal-staples to build a deck on (Bravado, Boomerang, Account Siphon and DooF all missing). That being said, Nacho was able to build a nice central-pressure Sable so I might have been a bit hasty in my conclusions. Alas, my schedule limited what I could explore during the deckbuilding phase.

Other ideas I toyed around with:

• Clan Vengeance Esâ, but there was not enough support to make it happen reliably. Sabotage core things support the combo, but without Zer0 it is not consistent enough.
• Gingerbread Panchatantra Padma, but that relied too much on finding the Gingerbread and Into the Depths is not reliable enough as a lone tutor when runner econ is bad. Bad econ also means paying credits to pump breakers is likely a bad idea. Plus after 3 ICE, you have to start using boat whether you want to or not.

But at the end of the day, consistent deck, with consistent cards and solid gameplan tends to pay off. The deck has no special tricks, but generally good cards that have synergy with each other and the ID:

• Double breakers. No recursion or relevant tutors meant that you need to have backups and a way to find them fast. I only faced one partial rigshoot-deck, but still did not want to get locked out in case someone played full-on shooter. Suite is also somewhat expensive to pump, so Takobi helps in that regard. Leech was another option, but that costs influence.
• Padma synergy. There are several cards that benefit from your ID. You almost always choose boat, but if you don't have it or situation warrants, you can use it also on: Aaron, The Turning Wheel, Takobi and Hyperbaric.

Draw and Econ. Well, I pumped everything I could, but still felt like I was poor and clicking for credits. The lesson here I guess is that most of decks need a reliable core and you rarely slot too much draw or econ:

• VRcation - this card is not good. It is really clunky to play and does not give you the value in a way Diesel would. It is justified here by virtue of no other good draw options plus having 5 Out of the Ashes and double breakers which make it sometimes easier to swallow. And also: if you don't draw your whole deck during the game, you can just pretend that the good card you had to discard would have been at the bottom of your deck.

• Tapwrm. Absolute beast, but you have to understand when you want to play it. If it does not buy you a relevant extra turn or many credits, there might be better things to do.

• Into the Depths. I guess this goes here as it is both tutor (specialized draw) and econ. After my first game I realized this probably should've been Overclock. There were some moments when I was able to leverage this more than overclock, but generally I'd been happier with the latter.

• Boat. This is even more ludicrous in an unestablished meta. It was right to always - always - mull for boat. After you had it, games became a cruise (yes, I went there).

Wincons, toys and silver bullets:

• Out of the Ashes and Deep Dive - This is the way. There were few games IIRC where I was able to turn a losing position into a Hail Mary with 3x into ashes -> 2x Deep dive. Don't be afraid of discarding the first deep dive, if it clutters your hand. With this cardpool everyone knows that is your wincon anyways.

• The Turning Wheel. This helps you to sweep HQ in case deep dive fails you and/or you feel like it. Padma has some nice synergies with this on the DD turn if you are going to wreck your boat getting into centrals anyways.

• Aaron Marrón Tag counter and draw. This is good, but 2x would've costed loads of influence and without good tag-punishments it is not 2x-good, I think. Saved my skin once, helped with the draw rest of the time.

• Pinhole Threading You need something to contest PD remote or defensive upgrades on centrals and I did not want to have Light the Fire!. It costs way more and trashes your Deep dive at a wrong moment.

All in all this went 3-1 with one loss due to piloting errors and not drawing boat soon enough. And ofc good plays on my opponents part: they leveraged PD to a great effect and once I had no econ to contest, Fast Track sealed the deal.

I do think this is tier1 in the cardpool, but that does not mean too much. It is still lacking of money and draw, especially when you need to be fast to contest PD.

-3 into depths +3 overclock and you can call this a deck.

Thanks for Pawndawan for organizing, all the players for the great experience and iceprisma, helmi and team Unband for testing support.