Gru's Dream (1st place Reading Regional)

David "Coolman" Culemann was kind enough to introduce me to this monstrosity in the weeks before Euros and as a known degenerate 7 point Shutdown player, I fell in love. My innovation was to take out one Hasty for two TarMar - your combo is a bit slower, but you are way more consistent against a variety of matchups. I was on Sealed Vault at Euros but I realised Crisium does the same job and is more versatile to boot, so that was an easy swap. 1 Reclamation and 1 Archived is just enough recursion to allow you to fight current wars, combo out in interesting ways and play VLC an absurd number of times.

Basic combo is Hasty for Mirrormorph and two SanSans to score a Field Test with rezzed moon, install enough cards to draw the rest of your deck and use Jackson piles to AD out the other 5 points. It's pretty straightforward, but it gets a lot more fun when you start building Ultraviolet Clearance into the combo and draw through absurd numbers of cards before you even start scoring...

Biotic replaces Mirrormorph in the combo in a lot of instances and is much more versatile, particularly against Strike - 2 is the right number, but I'm hard pressed to cut anything else.

Two Cyberdex is a must - they are installables which also help against Medium - the only card that you have to fear from Reg Whizz.

This deck only lost one game at the Reading Regional (58 players), though it also lost a friendly game after an ID too. It's strong, but it has its weaknesses (cough strike cough).

Round 1 - Store Champs bye.

Not knowing if I'd make it to another regional, I cashed in the bye and got to do some quick testing against Joey McMillan (imrahil) who had just cracked open Blood and Water for that all important Alice Merchant ID. Turns out Haemorrhage has issues against double CVS.

2-0

Round 2 - Guy Patching on Hayley

Personal Workshop... Yog... Hyperdrives... What is this madness? Clearly some kind of Dyper, so the only solution is to GO FASTER SONIC. An Ultraviolet in my Hasty pile helped accelerate through the deck and get me to the win one turn before Guy was ready to go off.

4-0

Round 3 - Ben Ni (beyoken) on Whizzard

While setting up Ben tells me that he only really has one line against CI, and he's going to take accesses where he can and hope for the best. I stare him down for about 8 seconds before telling him to shut up and I ice HQ. Click 1 he Siphons me, but Paper Wall saves my bacon. After that it's a back and forth, me finding one piece of the Anti-Siphon puzzle before he finds his counter and so on until... Strike. Uh oh. I had been chucking out my TarMars like candy wrappers and now I was in a deep hole. No Biotics to hand, nothing to do but build a remote with Mother Goddess and score out my EffCom the old fashioned way! While I sit with 5 agendas in hand. After that he makes Siphons rain until I'm forced to use my EffCom to click for 6 credits, and I'm never able to recover from there. The hate is strong with this one...

5-1

Round 4 - ID with Peter Cox (on Andromeda)

We played it out anyway. Not much to say about this one, he put down Medium Turn 1 and alternated Siphon pressure and Medium to score out pretty quick. Didn't even need to Strike. Glad I took the ID!

6-2

Round 5 - Ed Proctor on Whizz

Cutlery/Faust aint too hot against Mogo and Excal, so I was able to deny accesses for long enough to find the combo and score out. I'm pretty sure this was the game when I finally got to achieve my own personal dream of using two Ultraviolets in two Hasty piles during the combo turn to draw through 16 cards of my deck. Pft, who even needs Power Shutdown...

Round 6 - ID with Mark Mottram (cacoethesvictor)

A welcome break, I got to watch my partner play Sync while we mulled over our chances for Day 2...

Top 8 Game 2 - Ciaran Maxey on Andromeda

Coming straight out of the Moons loss I was disheartened to see Maxey on Andy (but not disheartened to play Maxey who is just the nicest guy). In an interesting reversal from my pseudo-games against Peter Cox yesterday, where Moons went well for me and Andy went badly, the reverse was true here. Everything fell into place, I got the Biotics and TarMar's to fight off the Strikes, just enough ice to keep centrals secure for long enough that I didn't bleed too many points, and comboed after about 8 turns.

Top 4 - Tagore Nakornchai (tomdidiot) on Kate

Time to face down Tagore's mystery Kate deck. Let's hope he doesn't have Clot and SacCon... Apparently he did, but all he saw was R&D interface, which allowed him to nab a couple of agendas, but I burnt through my deck at lightning pace and comboed out around turn 6 before an SMC ever hit the table.

Top 3 - Chris Dyer (nemamiah) on Whizzard

Not an ideal matchup for the world champ - reg whizz has always had a tough time against the speed of CI. It boils down to: can he find Strike and Medium? Yes, but not before I have played all 3 VLCs, put mythic ice on both centrals and drawn plenty of currents. I blind Hasty to try and hit the combo early, which whiffs, but I do get to power draw with Ultraviolet and that sets me up for a nice easy combo next turn.

Finals Game 2 - Mark Mottram on Whizzard

Mark barely tries to conceal the fact he's on Siphon. But my hand is a dream - two clearances! - but no ice. Oh well, nothing like a risky start for the final game of the day. I choose not to mulligan, and of course he siphons me click 1. He goes for single accesses on HQ which is about half agendas, but RNG smiles on me and he misses. A couple of turns in he sees Excal on R&D; next turn I finally play my UVC, drawing into two Paper Walls. One of those goes on HQ, and next turn he Siphons me click 4 (no breaker) expecting the Excal. That miss on his part swung the game to about even, but he was nabbing points off random access and quickly got up to 6. I realised I had all agendas bar one in hand, and I mandatory drew into Mother Goddess with no other ice rezzed. Click one draw pulled Crisium and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel: HQ was safe. Keyhole would have to get very lucky (it didn't) to win him the game.. A bit of calculation and card counting later and I realised I had the combo despite being down two Jacksons, but it was a squeaker using almost all of my credits and having to play Biotic 4 times. Huge commiserations to Mark who made all the right plays but lost to luck. He is definitively 2017's UK Bridesmaid.