CtM BayBay (Joint 2nd at London CO)

You know it's all about the

I will stop playing CtM when NSG pry it from me, which is likely happening this year, so I decided to play a bad deck that I like rather than a good deck I don't. Played alongside Whiteblade's Tagme Zahya.

The plan is very much to try and score, with Boom as a backup. Market Forces takes the place of an influence free Boom. A couple of notes:

I didn't draw Lady Liberty all day, but I do think it's good. Backroom I drew once but never played it. There are times when I want it, but either they didn't come up or I didn't have the Backroom when they did. The idea is that between this, 15 Minutes, GFI, and QPM, your opponent just has less chances to win than you do. There's probably better slots. Psychographics should be Shipment from Vladisibirsk. You never want to play it at 1, and if they need 6 or more tags for Psycho to be better. Public Trail came up once, but it misplayed myself to be short a credit so couldn't make it happen. People sometimes float a tag, Trail + Boom does the do.

The deck is missing another Nico Campaign, but cutting Marilyn for it leaves you short of just volume of money assets. Pad and NASX aren't great, Bladder is also bad and still costs influence. I'm not sure the solution exists for this deck to fill this hole. I might go back to CSR Campaign. It always impressed me in the past. I'm not keen on only playing two DBS. It's one if the best assets in the game and if we're struggling for assets that apply pressure we should be playing it.

R1 Vs Will on Reg Crim Zahya and Outfit. Fairly long game in which my opponent tried to keep on top of my economy but I drew a total of 4 Marilyn Campaigns throughout the game. There was a shaky moment when I drew an agenda and my opponent ran R&D twice and stole 4 points, but the Agenda in hand went into my score area alongside a few others shortly after. A timely run on HQ stopped me from landing a Boom, though. The Outfit game ended with Boom -> EotL. I'd seen the EotL and played around double EotL but not the Boom. Could've played better.

R2 Vs Twisty on Tagme Zahya and Outfit. Zahya took some tags, I took some liberties with her windows and used them as doors for missiles. I managed to play a lot of DoF's and things, and just ran centrals a lot in the second game to grab as many Agendas as possible. That seems to work as runner and I highly recommend accessing the agendas.

R3 Vs Motionblur on 419 and Aginfusion I got pretty buried in this game. Key cards didn't stay in the table, the expected kind of game against 419, I think. They have lots of money and also Miss Bones. None of your Assets are really powerful enough to drag you back from the jaws of defeat. I could've drawn better, I could've drawn more. There was a play where they Pinholed a QPM that had been on the table behind Funhouse for quite some time, then ran it with No Free Lunch and paying the 4c to the subroutine. It left them quite short on credits, and if I had played tighter up to that point I may have found a line through to land a Trail -> Market Forces. As it was I was short on credits to deliver a punish, much of which was down to MotionBlur consistently applying pressure. Our second game was much more in my favour. I was afraid of the current Aginfusion Prison deck, but it turned out to be a much more straightforward glacier thing. I made lots of money, and used that to run both centrals over and over again, using DoF and Amina to keep them clicking for credits like they did me in the first game.

R4 Vs Swiftie on Tagme Zahya and Outfit. Made a mistake early where I fired Gaslight and just sort of forgot I could just go and get Boom. They had tags, but played Class Act, and I assumed they had loads of cards in hand but only had 6 apparently. Found Market Forces and later on just drew into the Boom after locking out R&D with EULA. The Outfit game was quite close. I managed to keep them low on credits, but messed up a turn where I just didn't work out my way through Trebuchet. I figured I could pay the trace on it, and for some reason found Amina, which got trashed. Not completely sure what happened. Made a small dig into R&D and telegraphed that I'd seen SDS. I found an Aumakua later on to start creating pressure, but couldn't land convert it into a win. It found its way into the remote for about three turns. I could've got to it, but the earlier misplays left me short on credits, and I would've been giving up either Bukhgalter or Aumakua to grab it.

Overall a fun day out. 2-2 with Zahya, 3-1 with CtM. I was very proud of this finish given that I've played about five games since UK nats, and only one game with this CtM deck and two with the Zahya deck on the Thursday before the tournament. I'm going to keep trucking along with both. I'll see CtM out until the new set drops where we get a functional reprint but it's not a trace it just gives a tag.