Jammin' With My Friends (3rd at Realms of Gaming Store Champ

This is the Corp Deck that took me to 3rd at the 13 man Realms of Gaming Store Championships today. The deck went 3-3 on the day over the course of swiss and the cut. I have loved Jammy HB for a long time, and I feel very comfortable playing it. I feel like that style of play has only gotten better with the release of Friends in High Places. This version also borrows many ideas from the various Friends HB decks floating around. It sets up fast but taxes when it needs to tax.

Special mention goes to the one of Macrophage, which was probably the most clutch piece of ice in the deck. With all of the decks running Medium these days, the power of it cannot be overstated. Seriously, if you haven't tried it yet, you should.

Overall, I was really pleased with its performance. This is the first time I have made the cut at a tournament and this deck was definitely a big part of that. Plus it is super fun to play, which is the thing that matters most to me.

Here were the matchups:

R1 vs Sifr Valencia: Early Macrophage on R&D was key to stopping an early medium threat in this game. Friends in High Places did work to recur it after several attempts to get rid of it with Sifr/ Parasite and En Passant. Ultimately it was a battle of attrition that was won with my opponent poor and out of blackmails.

R2 vs Reaver Kate: Tried to rush this one out, but the pieces just didn't quite come fast enough. Kate set up too fast, and combined with a few play errors on my part (losing a GFI in archives that I could totally have saved with Jackson) lead to a loss in this one.

R3 vs Leela: One of the things that I love about this deck is that it sets up fast, but it can slow the pace if it needs to to win. That's exactly what happened here. I glaciered up and picked the right scoring windows. This, combined with the fact that my opponent did not find siphon, lead to a win here. Also, It helps that I was playing my wife, so I knew her Leela deck inside and out ;)

R4 vs Andromeda: Macrophage again did work here, eliminating my opponents datasucker on a security testing run on archives fairly early on. Unfortunately, no amount of Jackson reshuffling could save me from the horrible agenda flood I had, and a timely legwork when I had 4 in hand did me in.

Cut R1 vs Reaver Kate: A rematch from earlier in swiss, this was more favorable for me this time around. I was able to jam agendas at key times for the win. My favorite play of the day was the game winning play. I had a double advanced food in my remote, and my opponent had no choice but to run it. I was able to rez an architect that they could not break, which allowed me to instal an ash from archives that prevented them from stealing the agenda.

Cut R2 vs Sifr Valencia: Another rematch, I was not so fortunate this time around. I got agenda flooded early, allowing my opponent to get to 4 points fast. I tried to salvage the game as best I could, managing 6 points before losing to a blackmail on my remote with rumor mill preventing an Ash rez. This put me in the losers bracket where I played my runner and lost pretty bad to a good friend of mine. Still made for a really fun day.