Westworld (24th @ Cleveland Regionals)

The name comes from this Postmodern Jukebox vid because I'm sure Adam would "Rather Be" running than setting up without ABR.

Basically the same list from a few months ago, this was my runner at the Cleveland Regionals on 7/29/17. He went 2-3 on the day. I made a few errors in unpracticed match-ups; otherwise I was still pretty happy with Adam. I think he's firmly a Tier 1.5 deck.

Strategy

Your goal is to get Brain Chip and score an agenda as soon as possible. All the draw is to help you do that. You'll need an Overmind (probably with only 3 counters) or an ABR to get your first agenda. If you can do that in your first several turns, you can snowball to a victory by simply having more draw and money than your opponent.

If you don't get an early agenda, you'll have to camp the remote. Make sure they think you can get in. Usually isn't too hard if you can get enough money. Then you can make a big mid-game HQ dash and snag 2 agendas in the same turn.

Recent Changes

Dropped the two Multithreaders for two Dean Listers. It's nice to just dump Dean when you see him instead of hold onto a Multi until after you score.

I was previously on an Aaron/Hostage set up, but NACH is inf-free and lets you get a DDM. Also tried a Freedom to use with both Find the Truth and DDM, but it felt cumbersome.

Card Choices

• Deep Data Mining is your closer. If all goes well, you should have more points than the 1 Overmind on the table, so with Brain Chip you'll see all 5 cards.
• Salsette Slums is for the match up. There's no way to install all the cards you need to trigger the Safety First draw and challenge Moon's board. But if you have slums you can kill Jeeves, DBS, and Suffrage Movement for good. It's also good against Foodcoats so they can't Friends back Breaker Bay Grid + Campaigns. If you run into a wild CtM, it's obviously great there too.
• Film Critic is for any or Skorpios. Every runner should have 1-2 Critics right now because Obokata is unreal.
• NACH is for any match up. You're pretty allergic to tags, so this turns off HHN as well as 24/7.
• Interdiction is mostly just to clear currents. Obviously ELP is a pain, but one of Adam's worst match-ups is Sol because Scarcity straight-up cuts your legs off. You need 2 if you expect to see Sol at all in your meta.

Games

Round 1: Greg (Moons)

Should have mulliganed, but had an ABR in hand and thought I could snipe early points in a lightly-guarded HQ. Challenged his assets instead of setting up, meaning I lost much-needed tempo in the form of Safety First draw. Got his combo pieces together and scored out. [LOSS]

Round 2: Stephen (Moons)

Trying to learn from my mistakes, I let him have all of his assets except for Moons. I would try to make him pop Moon and then immediately run his hand and swipe points. Stephen had some bad luck getting his combo pieces together, which gave me enough time to get econ and draw engines going. When we were both on game point, I saw an agenda on R&D click 1, so I ran it click 2. He rezzed a face-down Jackson to get a shuffle, but the shuffle put another agenda on top for me to steal. [WIN]

Round 3: Justin (Fiery Info)

Set up some econ while he scored out a BN on turn 2 and again on turn 3. Damn. Got some points after that. He drew up a lot on his penultimate turn digging for Boom and 24/7. Not thinking, I just continued to engine-build on my next turn instead of drawing up to my max hand size of 8. Got combo-killed. [LOSS]

Round 4: Chris (Killer Penguins)

Eff yo MoGo! Started with ABR instead of Find the Truth, so despite his Mother Goddess on HQ I could just spend 3 clicks every turn accessing 2 cards from his hand. I drilled through a Paper Wall on R&D and stole 3 agendas over 2 turns. I was at 6 points when he Archived Memories'd a Violet Level and draws down to maybe 4 cards in his deck. I should have known he was set to combo out when I saw how much he had dug, and therefore should have broken his Excalibur-MoGo HQ ice for multiple accesses. Instead I ABR'd the MoGo and only saw 2 cards out of 25. Got combo-killed next turn. [LOSS]

Round 5: Dave (Foodcoats)

His bad mulligan gave me a turn 1 score. After icing up centrals he drew a lot, so I blind Mad-Dashed through a Fairchild 3 to steal a "3-pt" ABT. Saw the winning agenda on R&D, but Tollbooth kept me out. Eventually I had an 8-counter Overmind and DDM'd for the last agenda. [WIN]

The field in Cleveland was very competitive with a few Net Celebs (Ben Blum, Kenny Deakins, Dien Tran, Josh Wilson, Max Williams, and Austin Mills, to name a few), the coordinated outfits of the Pittsburgh Meta, some impressive beards, and a Princess Space Kitten appearance. Thanks to all my opponents for great games!