Dual-Reaving - 2-2 at Ntscape Navigator SC (48/70)

If you were even vaguely aware of the Standard meta before the release of Gateway then you'll probably recognise the template for this deck pretty quickly. It's everyone's favourite shirtless click-compressor, or more specifically, NWE's Worlds Geist, which I started learning to play during Salvaged Memories, and since I've had almost no time to play Standard since Gateway's release, I figured I'd just crowbar it into the nearest equivalent ID.

So rather than talking through the deck in its entirety, I'll just talk about the differences between that deck and this.

Reaver - Two of them in fact! It's a high-price to pay in influence but the lack of consistency when I only had one was awful. If you're committed to playing the Geist shell I think you need either a second copy, or a tutor for it that costs almost as much in influence anyway. During the player meeting yesterday Baa Ram Wu suggested Rosetta 2.0, which is a card I had literally never heard of before, but whilst it's in-faction, you'd need a lot of changes to the deck to accommodate 2/3 copies of it and some spare programs to RFG with it. Speaking of programs...

Marjanah - I haven't looked at all the decks from the event yet but I'm reasonably confident I can lay claim to highest-placing Marj player. I know what you're thinking, Paperclip is 3 inf, a slam dunk choice in criminal and surely better than a Reaver over the course of a game, right? In any other blue deck I'd completely agree, but if you've ever played Geist, ask yourself these questions:

1. How often do you actually break ice with breakers anyway?
2. How often do you run more than once in a turn, essentially negating its biggest downside?
3. How much do the extra few credits saved from clippy actually matter when you're rolling in Tech Trader money by the late game?
4. How many barriers do you actually see in the meta these days anyway?

I think it's probably the first card people would try to replace here but honestly, it's fine, leave it. It costs 0, you rarely use it, and when you do you've probably already made a successful run somewhere.

Gbahali - The croc was an old Geist staple but got edged out more recently. With Grappling Hook also rotated, I brought it back mainly as an answer to Anansi but also because it can sneak me past a lot of other ice in a pinch.

The Class Act - When I first tried to port the Geist into Az, I put three of these in because it's such a good card. Then I cut one for the extra deck space. Then I cut the other two because I needed Overclocks to help with feeling so poor in the early game. Then I desperately missed the filtering. So then I had a moment of crisis the night before the tournament and they went back in as cards 46 and 47, and they were so worth it. Trash your cams and your cars on the corps turn for extra triggers and the value is fantastic. This should definitely be a 45 card deck though, but we'll figure that problem out another day.

Results - Overall I went 2-2 on the day. One loss to a BoN GT deck where I honestly thought the matchup was in my favour but it wasn't to be, and once against Spombo-but-not-really-spombo Sports, which was always a tough time for crim. The two wins were BTL GT, where spy cams gave me all the points I needed, and Rush PD, where I was able to get enough of my engine up that I could keep the remote fairly well locked. I'm very happy with how the deck played, I would have loved to have played the final round for a better placing but I had bed time duty for a toddler to attend to!

Cheers to Akira and her team for organising a fun tournament! Jeers to Ed for calling me an Az player on stream when my heart will always be janky shaper green. Pirate decks are just blue shaper anyway. :)