Jinja Azmari (2nd at Regionals Bochum & Kassel)

This is the deck that I piloted to second place at the Bochum Regional (both in Swiss and Cut). The next day, my friend Josh (montecard) played the deck at the Kassel Regional and also took second place in Swiss and Cut with it. I went 5-2 with it (3-1 in Swiss, 2-1 in the Cut), Josh 5-1 (3-1 in Swiss, 2-0 in the Cut), for a combined record of 10-3 over the two events.

The deck has a relatively simple gameplan: Ice your Centrals enough that the Runner doesn't win there, build a big Remote and score your Agendas with the combined power of Jinja City Grid and Surveyor, using Echo Chamber to get to 7 points (although you can definitely also win with 3 Agendas). This deck doesn't play any defensive Upgrades, but the Remote is normally extremely taxing, so it doesn't matter too much if the Runner can get through to steal an Agenda if you can slam down the next one the turn after.

Round 1 - Ramy - Sunny - Win: I had a perfect opening, with Jinja for the Remote and a Scarcity of Resources. The Scarcity slowed him down so much, that he couldn't contest my ever-growing Remote and I quickly rushed to seven points before the Sunny Train got rolling.

Round 2 - Alex (Anthistenes) - Valencia - Win: This game was a real nailbiter. I can't remember many details, but it was a fantastic game and really tense, that came down to him being one Credit short of stealing the winning agenda (winning for both of us).

Round 3 - Alice - Philipp (Putzlappen) - Win: This was a very good matchup for me. I had a Crisium Grid in hand to shut off his ability and when you play Spoilers and Gang Sign, you are not happy to play against a deck that only needs to score one Agenda before winning the game. He got a little lucky on his spoilers (milling two cards, one of them an Agenda), but that evened out when his six Bhagat triggers didn't hit anything. In the end he stole the one Agenda he spoilered, but my central servers and the remote were just too expensive for a deck without D4v1d and Ice Carver, so I could score out.

Round 4 - Felix (JackMade) - Valencia - Loss: This was a really close game. I managed to bait a Stimhack on an NGO, which was great, he Zer0'd another Stimhack, which was also great, but I couldn't contain his Aumakua well enough. In the end, I had the winning Agenda advanced in my remote, but my deck was running dangerously low. Since he couldn't contest the remote, he went for R&D, which had the last Agenda in 3 cards and he hit it to win the game. But to be fair, he had a lot of R&D accesses in the previous turns, so it would have been pretty lucky to win this game.

Round 5 - Brian (ryanbantwins) - Valencia - ID: Before the last round I was leading the standings with 19 points. Brian offered me an ID, which I accepted after some consideration. I definitely wanted to make the top half of the Cut, which was pretty much secure if we ID'd. Also, my main (ethical) criticism of IDs, that they take spots away from players that may have made it if someone gets swept, was also moot, since I was 100% in the Cut and Brian also 98%, even if he got swept. I also thought about the monstrous Corp decks he plays and decided, that I'd rather have the break.

Cut Round 1 - Oguz (lostgeek) - Steve Cambridge - Win: Before the game, I had the choice of playing against Steve or CtM. If he made the Cut, I figured, his Steve was probably Apocalypse and that's a pretty good matchup most of the time, so I chose to play against Steve. I set up three Ice on HQ quickly. On Turn 3 or 4 he ran R&D and trashed my Crisium Grid. Luckily, I already had Archived Memories in hand to get it back and install it in HQ. That was basically the nail in the coffin, since he couldn't break through all the taxing Ice I had there. He made a nice attempt of Feint into HQ (hoping that I'd rez the Crisium so he would be able to trash it), but since I was safe from Apoc that turn, I just let the Feint go through. After that, he tried to get some Turtle counter, but I also closed off that avenue with enough Ice on all centrals. Then I calmly proceeded to build up my Remote and scored my points. Just a bad matchup for Oguz.

Cut Round 2 - Brian (ryanbantwins) - Valencia - Loss: When I saw Brian's list, I was glad to see that he played neither D4v1d nor Mad Dash and thought it would be an easy game. But that list still had a really good pilot. He put a lot of pressure on me and manged to steal two early Agendas (one from R&D, one from the Remote). I then made the grave mistake of Installing an SSL Endorsement and bluffing it as the third NGO (because in Swiss, noone expects this deck to only play 2 of them). When I passed the turn, I remembered that we exchanged deck lists before the game, realised my mistake and hoped that Brian didn't notice. But being a good player, he absolutely did, Stimhacked in and won the game. Very well played.

Cut Round 4 - Gereon (SpaceHonk) - Valencia - Win: Another game against Apocalypse. I started by heavily icing HQ, to stop the first Apoc rush. Unfortunately for me, Gereon drew his Rebirth relatively quickly, but fortunately I could more or less seal off Archives with a Tollbooth and put a Jinja there, which I bluffed as a Crisium Grid. That held him off his apocalyptic plans and quickly piled lots of Ice on Archives. When I had Archives Iced four or five deep, I proceded to build up a scoring Remote and score out. When a deck only plays conspiracy breakers, Surveyors and News Hounds get really expensive, so he couldn't do much about it, besides poking R&D (which didn't even contain enough points for him to win, at that point, but was likely still the best of many bad options for him, I think).

The deck went really well for both me and Josh, and we agreed that there were no sensible changes to the list. Yes, there are a couple of cards that would be very good (mostly Ash 2X3ZB9CY and the third NGO Front), but slots are extremely tight (and the Archived Memories is always valuable). We just couldn't find anything we would cut. The only change that you can easily make is adjust the ratio of Endless EULA and Tollbooth, depending on the number of Ice Carvers and (more importantly) D4v1ds you are expecting.