Shoulda been Loup - 1-3 at Seattle CO

I love reading write-ups of decks, and this is my first attempt at one. While most posted deck with huge writeups are of successful ideas, I figured I'd try and take a stab at this terrible monstrosity that I built for the Seattle CO this week. Writing this out has also given me some ideas on what comes next for this deck (beyond doing to this deck what NEH did to me in game 4).

The Plan

I built this deck with a few key ideas in mind:

1. I wanted to do something with Patchwork after seeing that it's actually a really cool card in @maninthemoon's Hoshiko list from interconts.
2. I wanted to bring a more uncommon runner for fun. Hoshiko lists are definitely still strong, but maybe with DreamNet banned there's another anarch that could come into the spotlight.
3. I have a friend who plays a ton of PE and thus every deck that I play needs to involve Buffer Drive somehow.

Thus, the idea for a lean and mean Anarch, powered by Zer0, Patchwork, and Buffer Drive that could keep cycling Strike Fund for way too many credits was born. The fact that you can Patchwork discard Strike Fund to play Sure Gamble for net 8 credits only really hit me when I did it in game 2. This is bonkers.

The rest of the events become much stronger too. Bahia Bands and Dirty Laundry are both great when free, and drawing cards or gaining even more money off of them are just the icing on the cake.

Lago Paranoá Shelter is also a really nice card in the deck. In my experience it gives a free draw every 1 or 2 turns, since most corps nowadays are getting something into the remote. If they aren't, it's generally a good sign IMO.

The Outcome

I think pretty much every other decision in this deck that I made was a disaster waiting to happen.

Nathaniel "Gnat" Hall: One-of-a-Kind is pretty bad. I originally justified it with Patchwork bringing me down to that low hand size more often, and I couldn't have been more wrong. I think in all 4 games I hit a combined 4 triggers with his ID. I was either scared of cards like Azef Protocol, or wanting to hold a single copy of a breaker while waiting for more money/patchwork, while also constantly using Lago to bring me to 3 in hand (that free card is so juicy sometimes). It's way easier to just slot out the ID for René "Loup" Arcemont: Party Animal instead, and get some value off of trashing cards (I definitely trashed more than 4 cards in these games, and I would've gotten free draw too!).

Buffer Drive is a really interesting card, but I only really saw the effects of it in one of the four games I played. Games just go a bit too fast to really get yourself going with the current amount of draw, and you need both Buffer Drive and either Patchwork or Zer0 to really speed up, which takes time sometimes to get off the ground.

I teched in a lot of different resources thinking I could just trash them if they weren't needed, and wow were almost all of them bad. It felt like a huge mosh-pit of stuff that was kind of ok to play but never optimal, and as one-ofs it was hard to rip the one that you actually need early. Scrubber was a last-minute add that was just wrong with Paladin also in, though I did get a net 2 credit benefit the one time I played him.

Speaking of resources, running a single The Twinning was really funny when it would get trashed off the top with Lago Paranoá Shelter. That whole multiaccess play was a bit of a mess with this setup, and while Paladin Poemu and Fencer Fueno are generally good cards, I'm not sure a single copy of Twinning was a good idea for consistency here, especially one that needs other cards to get set up.

My breakers were closer to what most other anarch decks seem to be running, and that worked fine once the rig was set up and I was printing money (with Patchwork, each breaker usually came out costing 1 credit, which was really nice). That said, I think going all in on Gnat with Cradle instead of Unity (or just Buzzsaw) might have helped, with the extra influence going into a few copies of Pinhole Threading.

I put in Laamb because I like Laamb. I was also thinking it could be my answer into Brân 1.0. That didn't matter this tournament because I didn't see Bran in my games, and I only saw Laamb itself once, where I was able to install it but never use it. My plan is to stick with my decision of its inclusion and refuse to gather any more data on it.

Finally, a single Labor Rights was my idea of getting a shuffle out of the deck once I've pruned it enough, or just to save myself from unfortunate breaker incidents when I didn't have Buffer Drive out yet. I never ended up using it, but I think it's fine to have as a one-of backup. Granted, in these situations there's a good chance it ends up in the heap too, but hey at least we can use the other ability of Buffer Drive to get it back. Wait, we could just use that on the binned breakers themselves. Huh.

What's next?

I really like the core of this deck and I'm planning on improving it to make it at least slightly viable. I obviously don't have remotely the amount of games played on it to justify this huge amount of analysis, but hey, maybe one day I'll get there.

I think a big change would be to dump most of the resources for just straight card draw, like Earthrise Hotel. You'll get faster setup and a higher possibility for real use out of Buffer Drive. And regardless, they're all the same to Zer0, so at least there's that. Maybe getting a third one of those in here would help this deck out too.

Carmen and Unity I think are fine, but I have no idea if Cleaver is good enough by itself with Brân in the meta and no ice destruction in this kit (though keeping Ice Carver could help with that). Dumping Laamb could give me more influence for something like a Legwork to give me a little bit more multi-access hopes, but you know I'm never gonna do that.

(Also in writing the above bit I can't help but imagine the bin breakers being in this deck instead. Now that might actually have been really good.)

Clearing influence for a few copies of Pinhole Threading would really help with Skunk Void setups as well, especially the ones with Formicary, so maybe should swap Unity for Buzzsaw as the influence-freeing move.

And yeah, Loup is the ID for this one for sure.

Thanks to Colin, Eli, Sam, and Jason, who I played against in the CO. They gave me tons of advice and I had a blast playing against them! Also a huge shout out to the Seattle scene in general, who I have been throwing my antics at for a few months now. One day something will stick!

Finally, shout out to my friend Jon's Keeling PE, and with the banlist update RIP to his deck. Maybe now I can put Buffer Drive away and focus on my true callings of BlackHatShiko and Musical Martian decks.