Netherworld Games . Madison WI . 1/16/16 Also, played to victory in the stimhack stream vs Dan D'Argenio Tuesday 1/19/16

Why So Glum Leia?

Before we get into it, I've got to admit, I've got to rant a bit, the MWL put me through the 7 stages of grief. It was only a month or so ago that I'd finally published a really good deck list, the parent of this one that I'd begun to suspect was tier 1 at right as the MWL came down. And the MWL hit many cards in the original list. 5 agenda points in agendas. 3 right out from the SanSan. And 3 more from the ice, for a whopping 11 points of damage to the influence in a deck that was already, I thought, very tight on 15.

But, like any man who's Deal Has Bean ALTERED, you cope. You wake up in a dank cave surrounded by what you think are enemies blind. And then you get the fuck on with it. You blow up ANOTHER death star because fuck Darth Vader we're going to do it.

Coping

I wrote this whole article on how I built the first deck. It was a redraft of a wonderful deck from Stimhack League Champion TheBigBoy. I pretty much just said: Good Cards only. I cut the ewoks, I cut JarJar Binks, I cut Episode I. This is what you do to make a good deck. You cut away the flak. In this case it was a struggle to figure out what was good and how we were going to keep it.

Let's talk about the core of the deck: the agenda suite. No matter what you have to say, Yellow cards are the best corp cards because of Astro. If any other deck out of faction could pay 1 inf to have Astro, they would. So, we're paying 3 for astro. It's a game winning agenda, even today. Ouch, Down to 12. We were already paying 1 for GFI. You'll find a couple published versions of this deck where I suggest that 3 GFI is correct. Those posts are wrong. The original agenda suite is still correct. You still want to have the flexibility to go FA/NA/Glacier. And that means 1 GFI/3 Beale, not 3 GFI 2 Beale. Cutting a beale hurts your SanSans. And NAPD is sometimes better at self protecting a win than GFI. So, fuck it, we're keeping that which makes us best. 6 influence gone.

The next question was economy and scoring. Our ID provides us a lot of economy through out any game. ETF or better levels of economy. We can't lose that. There's no point in playing this deck if we lose that. So, I switch the balance of the currents in this deck and go 3 - 2 on Targetted Marketing and Paywall respectively. This honestly gives us a better match up vs DLR than we had before and it helps in some other cases too when you know the deck is narrowly focused on a few cards to get the win.

We only have 5 influence left. If we're playing Astro that means we want at least some SanSan City Grid. I thought, incorrectly while I was stumbling blind through the halls of Jaba's Palace that SSCG only needed to be a 2 of and that this would allow at least 1 nice ice import. A lot of testing proved this incorrect. There are no ice out of faction that are worth importing that cost 1 influence. 0. Nada. Play 3 SanSan ya Dingus: card wins games. And that left us with 2 influence which must be spent on Ash. The truth is that if anything hurt this deck it was the lack of 2x Ash in the deck. This is my least favorite cut. Maybe some enterprising individual could find the cut. Maybe -1 NAPD/-1 SSCG for the 2nd Ash. It'd likely be relevant. But I can't bring myself to do it. That's why we're on 1x interns. We might be able to get Ash back (if we even see it) with interns; but, interns can also get us back relevant ice; SanSan City Grid; an agenda in the noise match up (won me a game); or, even a J-How that's hit the bin that we just need so very much.

What's Left of our Carbonite

How are we going to freeze those Impertinent Stormrunners? We're going to freeze them as they froze us. Revenge. Architect morphs into Archangel. Arch for Arch feels appropriate. It's the same investment, hurts a bit more if you neglect D4, which you shouldn't. My biggest complaint is that the ice suite is just a tad bit more susceptible to D4. Architect would occasionally fire bring back your Ash. Other nonsensical plays. But, Archangel is pretty good vs Faust, same tax, actually. And taxes that codegate breaker.

Bastion is a card I never really enjoyed playing, but its never existed in a world where Eli costs 1-2 influence minimum and if we do our math, we see that Lady still pays the same amount to get in (so no loss there) and corroder pays 1 less. Frankly, its a subpar option when considering The Good Old Days. But this is a new day and the tax is "enough". Wrap remains for the AI decks to guffaw over and its not worth touching the sentries.

And that's the deck. It's missing some of what made it a deck I love, but playtesting reveals its still capable of winning games.

Tournament Results

Deck went 4/5 on the day. I did not have to play as many corp games, though I would have been comfortable to do so. Since I won my 1st 2 games in double elim it turned out I only played my corp deck once up there.

One loss was to a blackmail spam deck that managed to have both economy and blackmail early. So, SanSan didn't stick and my adventures in NA land didn't work to hot. If we've lost anything its that the remote game is a little weaker. :/ I wish there was something to be done about it, and maybe this cycle will give us yellow and/or neutral stuff to make up for the losses. But at the very least I can look forward to sniping blackmail/recursion out of hand.

Wins against: Classic Noise, Overmind Quetzal, Faust Leela, and a Kate // And on stream vs MinhMaxX.