7Penguins Variant (10th at Regional Atlantis, Hamburg)

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This is the deck I played at the Regional Atlantis, in Hamburg. It went 1-2. It is based on JakeHelms' CI list from Euros, including his later modifications and furthermore swapping the Excalibur for the third Turing. This is worse against almost all Runners. But, this "almost all" causes considerably less problems than Siphon Anarch, against which Turing is really good, so it is the right choice, I think.

I have to say, I misplayed big time. The deck went 1-2, but I am absolutely sure I could have won all three games (and would, had I played decently). On to detailed descriptions.

Game 1 - Bye: We were 27 people with two Store Championship Byes, so one person got a random Bye. That was me.

Game 2 - Lock Hayley (Guybrush) - Loss: The first round for me, and I am paired against a good player with two bad matchups. Great start for the day. Anyway, I played the game well during setup (also, he was unlucky with his draws) and even managed to remove the Clot with a Project Vitruvius/Cyberdex Virus Suite-server before my combo turn. But then I made two crucial errors. The first one was rezzing a Turing on R&D. It was his last click of the game, he was on four points and about to see a single card, so there was no way he could win. But without thinking about it, I wanted to deny him the access. And then, overjoyed that I was about to win this bad matchup, I started by using Hasty Relocation. This denied me the credits and cards of the Estelle Moon that was already on the table, since I either would draw the set up combo, or (after the combo) deck myself. I then continued to combo out, was disrupted by a Councilman and in the end was exactly one credit short of winning (5 clicks left with Shipments from SanSan in hand and GFI on the table, but no credit to advance it once). Multiple bad misplays screwed up, what could have been a great start into the Tournament.

Game 3 - Despy Smoke (MarauderPixie) - Win: I quickly locked up HQ with Mother Goddess. He ran R&D multiple times, trashing all my Moons. Then he finally got his Dai V, but although the Moons were gone and Reclamation Order was so far on the bottom of my deck that i had to draw through all of it, he could not stop the combo.

Game 4 - Frantic Quetzal (Dönerking) - Loss: My opponent offered me an ID, but since I was in eleventh place with 12 points and had a pretty bad Opponent Score, I declined and played. I didn't really look forward to face a Siphon-Spam Quetzal, but after icing up HQ, I gladly saw him trashing a Magnum Opus with Inject. I protected HQ with a Mother Goddess and had an emergency Sealed Vault behind another Goddess in case of Vamp. Although he quickly got down Maw and started trashing stuff from my hand, it was too little to stop me. With 18 or so cards left in my deck, I started the combo. I played my Biotic Labors, installed the Successful Field Test and relocated the right cards. Then I went through my hand once. Twice. Thrice. No Accelerated Diagnostics. I am still unsure how I missed that one, but lacking the AD cost me the combo there. Naturally, I found the first one as the next card after the pile. But even after this blunder, I was still in the game. He managed to stick a Strike. I tried to counter it with a blind AD, but missed the roughly 50% chance, so I had to install lots of things (sneaking a Vitruvius in the process) and discard most of my combo pieces. I almost got to the last turn, with one card left in R&D, he had a 30% chance of Mawing an Agenda, which he hit and won the game. But the bad luck was well deserved for such a beginner mistake during the combo.

This report must sound like I am the worst CI player ever. And I am definitely not JakeHelms (or anything remotely close to it), but I nevertheless have my 50 games of Penguins on Jinteki.net - and after the first maybe five games to get used to the deck, I did not make such big mistakes there. I can't really explain why I made such glaring misplays in two out of three games. Maybe it was, because playing the deck in paper is different to playing it online. Maybe it was, because I wanted to make the cut, put unnecessary pressure on myself and was hectic and nervous because of that. Whatever it was, I hope the next Regional will go better. The deck is undoubtedly extremely strong and not at fault for the subpar performance.

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