Campo de' Fiori [1st Place Spanish Nationals, Undefeated]

My 69 card runner.

It's been quite a journey. I landed in Venice two weeks ago, coming through Padova, Genova, Marseille and Barcelona to arrive in Valencia in time for the Nationals. This meant trying to predict what the meta would look like 3 weeks in advance. Given past Spanish metas, I expected 'Sports, Shaper and Tagme'. Hey, two out of three ain't bad.

I figured people would expect me to bring PE, a deck I have a lot of respect for in the current meta. Hence, I chose to bring one of my HB builds instead.

In the weeks leading up to the tournament, Core Damage decks saw an uptick, no doubt in part as a response to Esa's meta prevalence. Fortunately people were still caught a bit off guard by my Sports. :)

The central idea was to make the most out of cards that care about agendas in the runner's score area. The best of these I think are Stock Buy-Back, Giordano Memorial Field, and Fast Break. HB also has the best negative points card in the form of Nightmare Archives. GFI exists to shore up the risk of the runner finding a critical mass of points too quickly.

Why no Biotic Labor / Audacity? Parhelion has done something very interesting to the meta in that you can now package your fast advance in your agendas, meaning that slots formerly dedicated to FA operations can be used for other things. Restore, a longtime pet card of mine, is ubiquitously useful as a toolbox card in this deck.

On the day, the deck went 4-0,winning against Esa, Kit, Mawmakua Hoshiko and Lat. I genuinely feel I had no business winning my finals game against @Percomis on Tapwrm Lat. The game was incredibly close, with me down to 1 card in deck (the last Ontological) and having to use all 3 Giordanos to prevent critical accesses, clicking for a cred and scoring my Elivagar Bifurcation from the remote to close it out at what was likely the last possible moment. Wp Peter

How do you beat this deck?

Despite it's performance, I believe it's time to shelve the deck. @SebastianK found an excellent line in minimising your interactions, building your rig, and using your wincon to close out the game. That is, FORGET EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT PLAYING AGAINST SPORTS (take 1 core damage) and take it slow, like, real slow. This deck barely has a proactive gameplan.

Thanks for reading. :)

/Jinsei