Judge by Day, Butcher by Night (3rd Swiss and Cut Aldershot)

bruno 39

This NEH Butchershop list came 3rd in both the cut and the swiss in the 2017 Aldershot Store Championship. It took 2 loses in the cut, one to Dumblefork and one to DLR Andromeda, both by fairly thin margins. It always felt within a click or two of landing the kill.

Shoutout to my testing group and in particular RotomAppliance for devising this deck. I made a few last minute changes and ended up with this list. This was made the night before the tournament and is nowhere near a polished product, in my opinion.

It's a classic Butchershop game plan, with more emphasis on the kill side than the scoring side. Shore up your centrals with ICE, get as many money assets going as possible (ideally with one protected by Pop-up Window), try to ruse your opponent to steal an Explode-a-palooza, land a Midseason Replacements, and kill. You can also try to play the rush game and convert to kill later. I came off the 24/7 News Cycle and Breaking News game plan thanks to Aaron Marron.

The subtlety comes in when you have to kill when they're on 6 points. This is where you need to pull some HHN --> Zealous Judge shenanigans. Worst comes to worst, you try to Psychographics-out the win on points.

After playing it in a tournament setting, I'd consider cutting 2x Zealous Judge and a Pop-up Window for another Commercial Bankers Group, another Mumbad City Hall, and a Mumba Temple. This would really up the potency of Mumbad City Hall, which I included just because I had a spare influence. It could also use some tools to deal with direct hate cards, such as Plascrete Carapace, Film Critic, Aaron Marron, and Citadel Sanctuary.

Oh, and you can use the Pop-up Window trigger to move credits onto NASX. This can change Pop-up Window from Account Siphon-enabling to denying. Thanks to Shmeguy for that insight.

1 comments
6 Feb 2017 shanodin

Aw it makes me sad that you want to take the Judge out of this deck. I want ZJ to be good. However I am happy to see a Butchershop list doing good.