Tax Farm v2 (2017 Euros - 5-1)

Mechanoise 1595

A personal homebrew of a taxing glacier Palana deck with the capacity to bounce back into a lot of credits with Bryan Stinson. I played day 1 of Euros to qualify me into day 2 (IDing the final round after knowing I'd qualified), and in day 2 I dropped out after the second round when I knew I wasn't likely going to qualify for anything else, (plus I really wanted to go see the games Expo!)

While I didn't do my Runner much service, my Palana deck went 5-1 overall, facing against Andromeda, Leela and Whizzard.

The goal of the deck is to build taxing servers. There are a number of ICE pieces that are horrible to break, including Chyiashi, DNA Tracker, and my new personal favourite, Tapestry. Tapestry forces a 7 credit cost with Gordian, otherwise you can plug up a card to the top of R&D and invalidate their run. Originally this was Seidr Adaptive Barrier, but Tapestry costs the Runner far more, and without multi-access or specific run events like Indexing it needs to be broken or it's likely a wasted run.

Scarcity of Resources was there to switch off Rumour Mill, but for some Runners, (Criminals mainly), Scarcity of Resources is a giant pain. Bryan Stinson is this deck's MVP, it fired in all but one game, and brought my credit pool to an average of 50 at this point. The psychological effect of jumping that high up on the credit margin can seriously affect the runner since they can't tax you out with heavy ice rezes. Without Stinson this deck would not be able to function as it should.

Swordsman was there for some Eater hate, which wasn't encountered, and Excalibur is there for the combo with the Nisei MK II token. ICE was chosen mostly for taxation costs or specific meta calls, aside from changing out the Swordsmen I wouldn't change much else. Tapestry on R&D is highly respectable, and an option I'll be going for again. Big thanks to all my oponents, you were fantastic to play against!

Day 1
Round 1 - Scarcity of Resources turn 1 against Andromeda, then was able to rush out behind mid-range ICE and win with Caprice psi games.

Round 2 - Against Leela. Bounced ICE placement very carefully to open up Siphons, at one point Tapestry dropped the credit pool enough for me to Stinson into 2 Restructures and an IPO. Scored out, but the game was close.

Round 3 - Against Whizzard. Whizzard couldn't farm sucker tokens fast enough with Macophage and Tapestrys slowing him down, it was a bad match up for Whizz, and so scored out behind big ICE after Stinson pulled my money up.

Round 4 - Against Whizzard. Aggressive early play by the Runner, Rumour Mill and Hacktivist spamming was an early disruption, so needed to score to switch them off. Runner wasn't able to find Siphon in time before Stinson pulled the money up beyond Siphon impact. Scored out.

Day 2
Round 1 - Lost to Gang Sign Leela. Played against someone from my own meta, who knew my deck inside and out. He won simply because he played it right, not forcing many ICE rezes and locking down the Gang Signs and PolOps early. Mid-game flood stopped me from scoring out and allowed him to Kati Jones and Maw up for the win. Not sure what I could have done differently, my opponent just played like a beast.

Round 2 - Against Equivocation Leela. Due to some tilt from the previous round I tried to be greedy in the opening, forcing an ICE bounce on R&D and an Equivocation run that netted the Runner 6 points. Thanks to double Tapestry and Crisium on R&D the R&DI and Equivocation was nulled, and the servers just got more taxing from there. Stinson pulled my money up for big ICE servers and was able to score out.

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