The Crescentus Clutch (v1.5)

Yes, I’m the douche who took a Reina Headlock deck to a regional. My rationale was to see if this deck could perform as well in a field of top notch players as it has been performing online. I think my second RP opponent summed up the general feeling on the day after using two Nisei tokens just to stop the Lamprey-lock: “don’t apologise man! It’s a really good deck. I just hate playing against it.”

This deck went 6-0 in the Swiss at the London Regional (57 players I believe), against the following matchups: Gargarin Deep Space (with Sea Scorch), EtF (Troll Heinlein Grid), EtF (click tax), Jinteki RP x2, and NEARPAD. It lost due to time against the same Gargarin deck in the losers’ bracket of the top 8 cut (my opponent and I both agreed the game could have gone either way, despite him being up 6-2 when time was called!) Very happy with the performance overall, although time was a serious factor in all games. I definitely need to look at a faster corp deck if I take this to future tournaments!

Card Choices

I’m sure you all know the basics of the Lamprey/Crescentus Headlock deck so I’ll just comment on some of the key changes I’ve made.

Symmetrical Visage x2 - a god send for this deck with the amount of drawing you do, and how economy reliant it is. Probably MVC of the deck.

Singularity x1 – I hate having no remote pressure (Knight doesn’t count because everyone double ices their remotes!) This card is fantastic against anyone who is setting up a mega-remote server, and bypasses Ash – who is everywhere at the minute.

Scrubber x2 – One of these was not nearly enough for me given how hard asset economy shuts this deck down. It’s one of the easiest ways to win the economy war and given my matchups, I was ecstatic to draw these fellas every time

Vamp x3 – nothing was worse in testing than having money, Eater, Keyhole, Crescentus and Clone Chips, but no Vamp to actually start the damn lock. I upped the count to 3 to protect against that scenario.

The Almost-Includes

Clot – this deck has a good matchup against Fast Advance because of the swingy nature of their economy and their lack of answers to the lock once it starts. Clot was not doing much in testing and with no way to tutor Visage was a much more attractive include.

Queen’s Gambit – I wasn’t lacking for economy in any of my games, not sure this was needed. I’m also terrible at hitting naked Beales with it, so it’s gone.

Knifed – Wonderful card against Eli, Wraparound and Ice Wall, but played so little in testing that I felt there were better options. It’s possible that Knifed could saved me in my final game against Gargarin where the Ice Walls were doing serious work, but Parasite is also a good answer to Ice Wall so I’m unsure.

Thoughts on the day

Asset economy is king in the current meta, outside of Blue Sun. I think volumes that even against such a meta, this deck holds up extremely well. It’s super-important to kill asset economy if you want the lock to stick, but with that said, sometimes the best way to achieve it is to go overboard on cash and wait until after the Vamp to kill the PADs and the Eves, especially if they are defending them with ice. The standard rule of “every ice protecting a PAD campaign is one less ice on centrals” is less significant against Headlock where you only have 6 chances to derez each piece of ice.

More problematic are cards like Capital Investors and Melange Mining Corp, which do need to be killed on sight if you are to win the economy war. Mostly running and derezzing the ice is enough to get through and trash it, but Knight and Singularity will do in a pinch.

I discovered over the course of the day that the Vamp end-game play is sometimes not necessary. If your opponent is on less than 10 credits, just running R&D or HQ and derezzing the ice with Crescentus is usually enough to get them down to 0. It’s a good way of working around the Nisei tokens in an RP deck (leading to the above scenario of the Nisei tokens being used to stop the Lamprey-lock as opposed to the Vamp.)

This deck does serious work against anyone relying on Caprice to protect them (and she was present in 4 of the corp decks that I played against). Reason being is that it’s almost always in your best interests to bet 0 (barring match point). Them betting 1 or 2 is akin to them self-Lampreying and (assuming you’ve derezzed the ice on the way in to the server) on the next run they pretty much have to bet 0.

Finally, for anyone wondering, yes Clot was prevalent. At least 3 of my opponents discarded it against my Foundry deck (which went 3-3 in the Swiss and 0-1 in the cut). However, there was no Fast Advance that I could see, so I imagine those Clots might get cut from many players decklists. We live in interesting times…

Huge thank you again to all of my opponents, and apologies for subjecting you to this (especially Alex, my second round opponent who had to face two Reina Headlock decks in a row!) And of course congrats to Zach on the win =)