Gooseberry MaxX - 2nd at Worlds

Nemamiah 3914

This is the list that a good chunk of the UK players ended up on, though the thinking behind it was occasionally dubious.

At the point that we flew out to Worlds we felt that Chip Shop Hayley might be the best runner, though I find the 'Install a bunch of cards and then lock the remote Shaper's archetype so boring to play that I would only consider it for Worlds if we couldn't find a viable alternative.

We'd thought that MaxX would also prove to be a strong deck, but we couldn't find a list that we liked at all in the run up to the event. As of the Wednesday morning we were going to play Val, and I threw the first iteration of this together in the Hampton lobby with Seamus looking over my shoulder so we'd have something to test against.

The limited evidence we had, in particular from Nordics and German Nats, suggested that Val was the correct deck to play. We wanted to include Hippo to help against the rash of Mti decks that we expected, but in a few test games Val felt pretty clunky and awkward, with some slow draws and tough econ. The MaxX deck, on the other hand, felt smooth and strong so we switched on to it after a long afternoon of testing at the brewery, which was further ratified by good results at King of Servers (and a bad day for Val at the same event, which also convinced Wilfy to switch to the same runner).

The basic premise of the deck was that a lot of games that we were winning were due to early access to Aumakua and Turning Wheel, so we should play a deck that had three of each and was good at finding them. We cut the second Levy because you never want to play it and it's a slot for cowards, which also let us include Rebirth which is great with Turning Wheel and also slows your draw down a little bit (so you won't run out of cards). We had one of each cutlery which, together with the extra economy from Patchwork, helps the glacier matchup. When we went through The Process for the final time a couple of hours before deck lists were due we decided that CtM was likely to be the best Corp, so we cut Forked for the third Hacktivist and resisted the foolish urge to remove a Stimhack.

The list ended up feeling really good; though it may just have been better to play Val anyway. The two biggest risks with the deck are that you get matched up with a rogue Skorp deck or that you get a game loss for accidentally triggering MaxX after you've rebirthed in to Omar.

Always be trashing two, drawing one.

6 comments
12 Sep 2018 emilyspine

I thought the name was Tricycle MaxX as it has three wheels!

Congratulations Chris, you have made us all proud as you always do.

12 Sep 2018 grogboxer

"Brimful of Turtles on the 42"

12 Sep 2018 lpoulter

This list is a pile of last minute pivots. Unfortunately you should look elsewhere for a good runner, i suggest Comarades Val.

13 Sep 2018 JamesWinters

Thoughts on Mining Accident? Cut Patchwork, Spooned SoT?

14 Sep 2018 Haberdash
15 Sep 2018 Nemamiah

We did talk about Mining Accidents, but you really want to stack bad publicity and Maxx makes that difficult, because you don't start with one and drawing multiples of a card is less likely. If you find you're missing them I'd probably switch to Val before I put them in here.

I've Had Worse got cut very early. It's very underwhelming as a draw card unless you're getting the free trigger with some sort of consistency. You only play it in Val because you need to max out on draw in that deck, and I firmly believe it's not required here. Having said that, by all means play it if you want to; the two cutlery are probably the flex slots.