Coattails Titan (3rd Place, 2018 New Zealand Nationals, 7-0)

Ghost Meat 938

This deck went undefeated in Swiss and the cut, scoring out five times, and getting two flatlines with Boom. Opponents were Val, Hayley, Geist, Val, and Geist in Swiss, then Geist and Val in the cut. In extensive testing leading up to the event, I was trying a lot of Palana, Azmari, Skorpios, and CTM, but finding runners way too strong and dealing with ICE quite easily, Geist and Hayley especially, with all the new Shaper animals that essentially Sifr all your ICE, not concerned in the least with their strength. My friend Chris Hay has been playing a Titan deck lately and recommended I try the ID to combat the proliferation of piracy, so I made this a couple days prior and played a bunch of games with it online to see how it felt. The answer was, "pretty, pretty good."

A lot of the card choices here are similar to other recent Titan lists (with the same agenda and ICE suite as the recent list by @Inactivist), as the deck has some very essential includes, but I wanted to have some versatility with operations, being able to pull the right ones at key times, so it's kind of got a Hydra-esque feel, but for operations instead of assets (particularly for HHN, Ark Lockdown, Fast Track if you're set up to score in a remote, and the one Boom!).

You're probably familiar with some fun ways to score GFI here, my favorite of which was in round one of the cut vs Geist: (start turn with 6 credits and 5 points) Biotic, install GFI, install and rez Reconstruction Contract, Atlas counter for Dedication Ceremony, Dedicate Reconstruction and move three counters to GFI, then Audacity for two more counters and the score out.

The reason I call this Coattails (in addition to the familiar "coats" suffix we've all come to love in this game), is because my Runner did quite poorly, going 2-5, and just rode into the cut and 3rd overall on the success of this Titan deck.

This was a great tournament event, and everyone there was fantastic to play and hang out with. Special thanks to the Dunedin and Victoria metas for their inputs and support throughout the lead-up to this tournament, particularly to Peter Harris for stream-of-consciousness level, instant-speed feedback on card choices and ideas, and Chris Hay for encouraging me to take Titan a few days before the tournament (which, incidentally, Peter had also suggested as a strong choice quite a while before that, but I was tunnel visioned on Skorpios at the time).

28 comments
9 Apr 2018 blindidiotgod

Finding the Consulting Visit on the first turn tilted me hard - had to suddenly hit the breaks and play around HHNs and who knows what else you're packing. We'd been trying to figure out how to fork Titan into a kill package, I think you've nailed it.

9 Apr 2018 Inactivist

Rjorb and I spent a fair bit of time on the plane over debating how utterly mad it would be to sneak a kill package into Titan. Ultimately we were cowards, and braver hearts prevailed. Great to see this do well, and congrats!

9 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

Thanks so much @blindidiotgod and @Inactivist! Lovely meeting and playing you guys!

10 Apr 2018 Tolaasin

Why New Construction rather than Oaktown (with so few ice/assets)?

10 Apr 2018 Inactivist

New Construction lets you advance and install a Reconstruction Contract in the same action, meaning you can Dedicate the Reconstruction and score the New Construction as though it were a 3/2. It happens fairly often if you lose an Atlas.

10 Apr 2018 b3ar

You can Fast Advance New Construction. For example 1: Install New Construction. 2: Advance, Installing Reconstruction Contract with the ability. 3: Play Dedication Ceremony on Reconstruction Contract.

10 Apr 2018 Tolaasin

Ah yes, that's a cool trick. Hadn't seen that!

10 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

Yeah, thanks for explaining that, @Inactivist and @b3ar! It's an awesome feeling to get that combo off, @Tolaasin. I didn't get to do it on the day, but was about to next turn in one match, but they stole it from HQ, haha (I think it was @blindidiotgod who yoink'd it).

11 Apr 2018 grogboxer

great job Dave!!

11 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

Thanks, @grogboxer!

11 Apr 2018 otterstrike

This deck has given me more 5-minute wins than any other. So many fools blindsided. I don't know if it's evil or genius or both.

I'm wondering about the two Fast Tracks - I feel like I'd rather have one and a scarcity? Maybe I'm just too timid with scoring, but I feel like I rarely have a really good window to pull off any Fast Track shenanigans.

12 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

@otterstrike Haha, great! Yes, it can be very fast to wrap things up, which is great for tournaments. Yeah, I thought about running a 2-of current, mainly to clear E-Strikes, which can deny you your Atlas counters, which is bad. I think it only happened once during the tournament though, so not too big a problem. I think the problem with Scarcity here is you often leave centrals unprotected, and then they can just top-deck an agenda to clear it, and you've wasted time and money. Some recent Titan lists have 3x Paywall Implementation, but I opted for bigger operation econ with a couple of IPOs, which was nice for burst. Fast Track could be a one-of maybe, but yeah, being super aggressive with scoring is the game plan here. Glad you're enjoying it, Dan. Hope you're making it out to some Tuesday nights at IBGC these days!

12 Apr 2018 braindmg

18-3 on Jinteki so far. Great deck and fun to play!

12 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

@braindmg Wow; that's unreal. My record with it online in the two days before the tournament was 12-3, so I figured that made it a better bet than all the other corps I'd been testing. And yeah, I agree that it's actually really fun to play. There are a lot of scoring options with all of the combo pieces, so it makes for an interesting puzzle. Thanks for the feedback!

12 Apr 2018 braindmg

@Ghost Meat 23-3 now :P A mix of agenda and Boom wins. Can't think of anything to improve it.

13 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

@braindmg Sounds like I've created a monster! XD

15 Apr 2018 braindmg

@Ghost Meat46-8 Had some really annoying losses. One loss due to drawing my first agenda after 25 cards. One because of a 4-card deep data mining that hit 3 agendas :( Still having fun so I'll update when I've played 100 games.

19 Apr 2018 braindmg

80-20 Very satisfying stats for my mild OCD.

20 Apr 2018 Ghost Meat

@braindmg Haha, including one win against yours truly. Well done. :)

7 May 2018 braindmg

So a thing happened and I kinda played another 100 games with it. Still 80% winrate.

7 May 2018 Ghost Meat

@braindmg hahaha, wow. I've since updated this to have 3x Rashida Jaheems and a third Illegal Arms Factory, cutting the two IPOs, a Fast Track, and the Executive Boot Camp. Faster than ever. I sometimes think a second Boom would be good too, maybe dropping down to two Illegal Factories.

7 May 2018 braindmg

I dropped Priority Construction for a second Boom a long time ago. Helps a lot. And it makes me glad to play biotic and 2xboom against "tag me" decks. I also changed the ice now to 3 Ice Wall, 3 Mausolus, 3 Spiderweb

7 May 2018 Ghost Meat

@braindmg Very cool! Nice changes. :)

7 May 2018 Simone Suka

what's the priority construction for?

7 May 2018 Ghost Meat

@Simone Suka There are some games where the cards come out weird and you have to build a remote to score in (in one game at this tournament I scored out a Hostile and two GFIs), so it helps get a super Mausolus or Hortum on the board, when paired with an Archer, can make for a taxing remote. I've since cut it though, as there are some good new cards for this deck.

31 May 2018 burzum51

Played this deck a couple times, and i find the lack of ice disturbing (only 7) can be rez without conditions.

7 Jun 2018 Ghost Meat

Yeah, that's fair @burzum51. I've found that in many games, I've never even had to install a single piece of ICE though, as the Atlas train just does its thing. You take some hits to R&D, but the odds are in your favour.