The Warlok's Crystal Ball - 29th @ EMEA 2024

My runner writeup is much more interesting, please take a look at that first! 😊

I love continental season, it's my favorite part of the competitive calendar: with several big events all scheduled so close to each others you can see the meta develop week after week. Predicting what the meta will look like at the next event using the same data as everyone else is key to succeed, hence the need for my magical artifact 🔮

After APAC HB looked to be in a great position as the corps finally moved towards a more cohesive style, in contrast to the more open field that we saw at ACC.

With this knowledge in mind, I tried basically every possible HB option there was, including a week straight of smurfing Santa's Thule list on jnet, with much of my opponents disapproval, but nothing seamed to click or offer me the level of confidence that I wanted for such a long event ahead of me.

With less than a week from EMEA I pivoted on this Precision Design build made by the King, who I could not thank enough: he has a gift I envy so much, he's the most prolific deck builder I've ever seen and most of his build are absolute gems.

The deck is very much a stock PD, with the inclusion of Tatu-Bola. Tatu is great at keeping the credits up, gear-checking early and then mutate into a Bran or an M.I.C later in the game to make the remote more taxing and fearsome.
The list lacks Border Control as a way to stop the runner, which is significant against exactly 1 card: Light the Fire!.
Luckily for me no one outside of fellow TAI Breaker xiaat knew this, so I never got LtFed after game 1.

I went 4-2 with the deck, losing the aforementioned game against World Tree Ari piloted by xiaat and a game vs Toron's Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist, where I installed my second piece of ice the turned before my opponent closed the game 7-5.