Poison/Dark Type (201st @ Worlds 2023 2-4)

Gathzen 174

Thank you to NSG and all the people who were involved in the organization of Worlds. This was my first one and it was amazing!

This was my Runner deck.

Decklist

I don't really remember how I came up with this terribly toxic list but it didn't take me too long to end up to the point at which it is now. I played a lot with it on Jnet and it performed quite well. Since it was quite fun I decided to take it to the main event and hoped the surprise effect and variance of this deck would get me a few wins.

The deck is a bit finicky and relies on many things to happen in the correct order. You preferably would like to get a Mwanza Grid on HQ and R&D. This is your main source of econ, if you don't get them early you will be clicking for credits a lot. However, if the Runner manages to steal an early agenda, the Mwanzas get a bit more risky. Especially if they get a Bellona that you are not able to punish. If they don't manage to get an early agenda steal you can try and push a Bellona on top of an AMAZE or behind a Hydra. It's even better if you have an Oppo in hand as the Bellona steal will activate its full effect.

You want to be keeping as many Behold! and Snare! in hand and not ICEing up HQ. The best situation is a remote with Funhouse into Hydra with maybe an AMAZE. This will allow you to push any agenda into the remote as it is a lot more complicated for the Runner to run there and keep HQ open for the Runner to access your hand traps. Later in the game, getting a Data Loop on HQ and/or R&D is great as it synergises well with Snare!.

You really want to have 10 credits at all time while you have an unrezzed Hydra and rez it mostly when you know you can get a good enough face check. The cost reduction of R+ for all your tag shenanigans is really what allows this deck to do what it wants to do.

Results

The deck didn't perform that well I feel. There was way too many hands that are not good to start with. The deck has a too much variance and relies too much on good ordering of draws. Plus the fact that people at Worlds play a lot safer than what you would see on Jnet. I went 2-4.

  • Round 1 Vs Arissana: Didn't have a great start but I was able to score a Bellona and a Tomorrow's Headline before getting destroyed by a Conduit dig. I didn't have enough credits to rez the ICE on R&D and I rezzed a Hydra when the Runner was already setup which was really bad for me.
  • Round 2 Vs Esâ: I had a bit more control in this game and I forced the Runner to start being a bit more aggressive and they ran into a Snare! while on low hand-size.
  • Round 3 Vs Hoshiko: I was in control again for the whole game and was leading 6 to 1 however, I noticed that I had played an Oppo that I was not allowed to play and the Runner had already taken 2 clicks, which one of them was a draw, meaning that it was a game loss for me. I would have most likely won that game if I didn't make that mistake, or notice it.
  • Round 4 Vs Hoshiko: For this game, I didn't get great draws and the Runner played very well and respected all my stuff. They had way too much money for me to really tax them out. There was not much I would do so I conceded. -Round 5 Vs Mercury: Very luck with my R&D and the Runner didn't find anything in there. They ran HQ and saw Oppo, End of the Line, and Bellona. They didn't steal and were quite scared of punishment. Thanks to that I was able to score 2 Bellona off an AMAZE. It took me some time to find some more agendas but I was able to win with an Oracle Thinktank score.
  • Round 6: I decided to ID as I needed only 2 wins for the next prize and was too tired to play much more.
  • Round 7 Vs Hoshiko: This was the first round of the second day and I wished I would have been able to ID this round as well as I wanted to get 1 win and drop to go to play Startup but my opponent didn't want to. Because of that, I was a bit tilted and played terribly. I shouldn't have kept my starting hand and I probably made many mistakes.

I dropped on round 8 with 18 points and an overall score of 6-8.

Possible changes

I don't think there are many changes that could be made to this deck to make it perform much better. The amount of changes would probably make it into a new deck. The gameplan is too reliant on the Runner making mistakes to give you forward momentum and to put them back.

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