Education, Education, Education (54th at Worlds)

I'd been playing Azmari for most of the build-up to Worlds, so I decided to ignore #teamUK's probably-strictly-better CTM deck and stick with what I knew. And what I knew was: Build an extremely unpleasant remote, drag the Runner through it more times than their money and board state can handle, and then score two 3-pointers plus an Echo Chamber to win.

Having tweaked basically every spot apart from the agenda suite over the course of testing, and briefly flirted with a kill version, I ended up with essentially MrBuggles' TrustTheProcess deck with most of the suggested changes. I squeezed a Best Defense in there to kill The Shadow Net, which can make Azmari's remote very sad. If I'd remembered it can also be used to dispose of a Same Old Thing, I might have won my first game on day two.

Cutting the Scarcity/News Hound package is absolutely correct, IMO - they're very good cards but you don't want to be bothering with the current war and freeing up six slots feels excellent. There's installing and advancing to be getting on with. One TarMar is fine for Strike, and funny for DoF or as a response to Degree Mill shuffles; thanks to grogboxer's write-up here for that.

Bio Vault is a beautiful, wonderful card that does beautiful, terrible things, and I'd have dearly loved a third one. But then Fairchild 3.0 is a beautiful, wonderful card that does beautiful, terrible things ...

Went 5-4 overall: wins over Leela, Hayley, Adam, Quetzal, and 419 w/ GPI Net Taps; losses to Val, Wu, UK Maxx, and Mopus Omar. Of those losses, only that cursed Au Revoir Wu deck felt like a true stomping; the others were close, and I definitely made important mistakes in at least two of them. Ah well. Making day two was well above my expectations, so I'll probably get round to forgiving myself at some point.

Thanks to everybody I played and met at Worlds for being friendly, welcoming, and fun, even when my runner deck was stealing seven points in three clicks. Thanks in particular to all my co-adventurers on #teamUK for an exceptionally enjoyable week, from the testing and the theorycrafting to the Slam It and the Ghost Blitz. As the old saying has it, the greatest prize in gaming is the phallic, neon orange click trackers we won along the way.