London's Bridge (3rd at Pittsburgh CO)

My metamate London worked on this list a lot, but feeling that his NEH build was stronger, opted for that instead. He still wanted to see this get played so I volunteered after a handful of games of Jnet practice (though I had played plenty of Prana/Keeling PE before rotation).

Overall this deck felt pretty great. A Teia’s ID ability can net you both lightning fast setup speed and 10-15+ credits over the game depending on how long it goes.

Scoring out is obviously rare. The point is to put Keeling in one remote, ideally protected by garunteed net damage and warroids, and Prana in the other server. Keeling solves Prana’s “why run this?” problem, and Prana both speeds up Keeling’s clock and funds the deck’s other nonsense. This deck preys on runners who got cheap with their pinhole slots, and still has a good matchup against others.

Piloting notes:

1. Mulligan hard for ICE. Almost never keep a 0/1 ICE hand, even with draw.

2. Nastier ICE and warroids go on the Keeling server, especially Anemone.

3. Install and rez Keeling early, even with minimal protection and regardless of whether you installed Prana.

4. HQ is often fine to leave largely unguarded, R&D probably only needs a single piece of ICE.

5. Be somewhat stingy with what you take from bacterial steals. This deck thrives off the runner taking a lot of turns, and stacking your deck to provide safety is often more valuable than filling your hand with good cards that you’ll eventually be drawing anyway.

6. You can dodge DooFs in crim matches by putting Hokusai on HQ with Prana in the remote. Rez both and you’ll end the doof with 2 great rezzes and 3 creds, which is enough to rez most ICE, even paying you if it’s Anemone or Tatu.

Lost my first game against London on Arisanna who obviously had a pretty good grasp of the deck’s weaknesses. That said the game was very close and had he not preemptively Hushed the third anemone on the Keeling server Prana would have won quickly. I also didn’t draw enough ICE to overwrite a set of horrid Kyubans. I wish this deck could squeeze in one more, but I’m not sure what piece and what cut as this list is very tight on slots with Vovo being the only real flex.

Lost second game against Esa. That was quite a beating as this deck hates getting sabotaged. I ended up making the mistake of installing Hokusai on R&D and Anemone on remote for protection, and got hit by a big Finality as a result. Should have installed the other way, but another very close game. I also should have been less greedy after an early bacterial steal.

Won third game against Arisanna, double warriod ended up being too hard to deal with, especially with a constant stream of Keelings. Opponent also drew pretty poorly, with not nearly enough programs to make their Arissana engine work, especially after losing much of their board to 2 (quite necessary) double warroid-protected Keeling trashes. Ended up scoring a single 5/3 after time had been called to avoid the tie.

Won fourth game with a proper kill against Esa. Runner ran through an attini with Prana up, hit a Hokusai, and one other incidental net damage put Prana at 5 while trashing Keeling. Runner got a little too hasty and ran HQ with a single Snare in it, pushing Prana to 6 for an easy kill. Had the Esa player held back a little bit after trashing the keeling and setup the game would have been quite tough as they had sabotaged very aggressively (~15 cards I think?) and had gotten all my Keelings. I still had 1 remaining Simulation Reset remaining but who knows when I would have drawn it.

Overall a very fun list to pilot (it doesn’t require too much thought and largely plays itself) and pretty miserable to play against. Watching the runner’s face as they realize they have to fight through not one but two warroids to trash your Keeling is priceless. I had a great time at the tournament and huge thanks to John for putting the tournament on and the new game shop Mimic’s Market for letting us be the first major event at the the store.