We're So Back [3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th @ NY Showdown]

Whilst preparing for UK Nationals almost everyone in EA Sports 🏅 had given up on Azmari basically due to a single factor: the Lat matchup was abysmal. It would probably be accurate to say that the deck had a less than 5% chance in a game against someone playing Aniccam Lat well.

But with the banning of Trick Shot, and our internal testing not uncovering a more consistent corp, everyone from Sports playing in the MITM Showdown decided that with much less Lat in the field we would revive this fan favourite deck.

Results

As a team we went 25-8 for a 75.8% winrate (almost exactly 1% less than its original showing at EMEA) with the deck over the course of the weekend, getting 4 players into the top cut and 2 just fell short. Results in the cut were also good, bringing us to one of our strongest showings as a team to date.

The Deck

There was some minor variation in the lists we played (see below). Some of the changes from previous iterations of the deck are worth getting into.

Wraparound
Ping is old news. Originally included to deal with Turtle, Wrap is also very strong against Audrey and Crew, which we expected to see a lot of in this tournament. This makes the Anarch and Criminal matchups significantly easier without sacrificing much to the Shaper matchup.

Mavirus
This felt like the most important card this weekend, being able to deal with all of the viruses on display during the pivotal turns is massive and it secured a lot of wins when drawn at the right time. We wish we could play more of these but slots and influence are both very hard.

Magnet
Returning now to deal primarily with Botulus or a surprising uptick in Arissana (a misplaced prediction, as it turned out), this is just a good card on so many board states.

Variations

CobraBubbles and not_yeti
This is the version as it appears in this writeup.

Rototurret is notably bad into a lot of the decks we are otherwise teching for but it is very good into Shaper (especially Kit) and fairer reg decks. We were expecting people to just play their favourite decksin this tournament for the most part so we wanted to hedge for a broad field.

davz131 and nervousnighthjar
-1 Enigma, +1 Mestnichestvo

Mestni is significantly harder for runners to break for 2 extra credits. This is a worthwhile trade off in most situations.

Ollie
-1 Rototurret, -1 Enigma, -1 Mestnichestvo, -1 Klevetnik, +1 Magnet, +2 Piranhas

Piranhas has always been good for this deck and that hasn't changed. If you don't expect your opponents to have ways of cheating around it, it is better than Mestni.

Second Magnet shows our resident Freedom player's greater respect for Anarch.

Kikai
As Ollie's, but with: -3 Degree Mill, +3 Send A Message

Kikai has gone on record many times stating his absolute distain for Degree Mill. SAM is also good with this more expensive ice suite and arguably better in a less sharky tournament where runners are more liable to making mistakes.

Fridan
As Kikai's, with: -2 Magnet, -2 Piranhas, +1 Gatekeeper, +3 Mestnichestvo

Gatekeeper is obviously great in any corp that can get away with it. Fridan chose to play a code gate suite with more raw stopping power and less tech.

Conclusions

Thanks to all of EA Sports, ManintheMoon and all our opponents for a wonderful weekend! See you at the CBI!