Landlocked! (10th @ EACC)

wowarlok 725

You can find my runner list here!

When NAC is active

"I had my Boat all charged up and then..."

Results

I piloted this deck at EACC 2022 with a score of 5-3.

Wins against Padma, Adam, Freedom and Lat twice.

Losses against Freedom, Lat and the Hoshipko that won the event.

Gameplan

The main gameplan of this list is similar to the one PD had during the gateway meta:

  • Assemble an impenetrable remote server with cheap and taxing ice mixed with defensive upgrades.
  • Keep up economically by scoring tempo positive agendas.
  • Close the game out before the runner can find the tools they need.

Card Choices

After ACC it was obvious that Lat was the deck to beat and Boat was going to be everywhere. This list is taylored to deal with Boat and keep the fast pace PD is knwon for.

Let's get a little more into details:

NEXT Activation Command

It's hard to overstate the impact this operation has when played. IA followed by NAC is usually how this deck sets up an agenda to score. This is our best tool to deal with Boat, as well as Botulus and Boomerang. NAC makes our remote very expensive and PD can help us recur it for more uses. NAC being trashable means defending HQ is high on our priority list, luckily this hasn't changed much from old PD lists, so I didn't have to adapt my play patterns too much.

Project Vitruvius

After the Cyberdex Sandbox ban, PD has been missing 4 agenda points. We tested with many options, ranging form Architect Deployment Test, that has the chance for very high tempo plays, all the way to CFC Excavation Contract, to get some credits back after scoring. We ended up on Vitruvius for more reasons than one:

  • Vitruvius being a 3/2 is easier to score, you don't have to advance it the turn before you score it if you don't have a Seamless Launch. This meant we could more easily play 3 NAC and go down to 2 seamless.
  • You have many opportunities to overscore it and you have a lot of good targets: trashed NACs, seamless for the quick never advance Global Food Initiative, used Border Control to name a few.
  • Similar to the last one, but the agenda token helps immensly against Stargate, which can be a serious threat as R&D tends to be a little weak.

Regolith Mining License

We had 2 slots dedicated to money assets and several cards fighing for them. Regolith felt the best fit, it's a little slower than NGO Front and doesn't work as well as a bait and it's much more click intensive than Nico Campaign but it was the one that gave the most money, leaving you with enough money to score 1 or more agendas safely. The higher trash cost can help when the runner finds it on R&D and it's easier to play around PAD Tap when you can decide when to take the money. The 2 credit rez cost being the same as the money Tranquility Home Grid gives you is also very pleasant.

Digital Rights Management

As for regolith, we had many candidates for the last influece point. We tested with Mavirus, but we figured criminal wouldn't be very popular; we tried Crisium Grid to help with the apoc matchup, that is by far the worst, in the end DRM's upsided outvalued the few edge cases where crisium would've helped. DRM job is to make sure that we have the right agenda at the right time. It can fetch Luminal Transubstantiation or Offworld Office to propell us forward during the midgame, but most of the time it's there to make sure that we can score a Global Food Initiative as our third agenda.

The rest of the list is fairly standard, Anoetic Void and Border Control are very good cards, taxing boat over and over and making Logic Bomb way less threatening. (Brân 1.0)[/en/card/30039] was a last minute addition over the second Hagen and it won me a game because it has 3 subs, so I have to shout it out!

Huge thanks to NISEI and the organizers for keeping the game alive and outputting awesome events over and over, to the whole italian meta for cheering me on when I was playing at the top tables and to all the folks in SaT for all the testing games, in particular koga, ALFlex and guiot for coming up with most if not all of the tech in my decks.

Always Be Running!

1 comments
5 Sep 2022 ALFlex

Big congratulations for your perfomance and final position. It was so close for the cut!