Rego PD (1st, New Years Showdown)

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Regolith

This is the deck I brought to the New Years Showdown, where I was fortunate enough to take first place against a bunch of talented players.

This PD took some light, maybe even unnoticeable inspiration from a deck that won something or other all the way back in 2023.

Kidding aside, this PD deck went through a few changes on my end (more/less Vovo, more/less Greasing, more/less Bran and Ansel and Hagen, etc.) until it ended up on a version that was just one off from the list Rotom took to and won UK Nats with a couple of months back. All of which I think is pretty funny. The one difference between the two decks is that Rotom’s deck was on an Ansel, which I eventually swapped out for the stopping power of a third Bran. I think this was the right decision. (On Ysengrin’s stream, I said that my PD deck was card-for-card Rotom’s, which was incorrect.)

There’s not much else to say that Rotom didn’t already cover in his previous writeup, but I did want to make special mention of Regolith.

Ideally, PD wants to win by about turn 7-9, but that seems to be less of a possibility in the current meta, especially with Loup and Sable and Zahya running around. It’s certainly not impossible, but it’s gotten a lot harder. So, part of the new PD strategy, then, is to oscillate between turtling up and scoring when you can. In the tough matchups that are going into turn 12-15 and beyond, you still want to play the “Is it an agenda?” game until you’re fairly certain you can jam and win.

This requires you to have money, and Regolith is all money. It allows you to build up your defenses and/or recover after going low on credits, while also still giving you an opportunity to set up your remote by jamming defensive upgrades for positive tempo with Tranq Grid. There’s an argument to be made that Vovo can accomplish this, but you often have to telegraph Vovo, which makes the savings conditional. I don’t want to save money; I want the money I need to rez ICE at full cost.

This deck went 4-0 in Swiss and 3-0 in the cut, which apparently means it was a decent choice for the tournament.

Thanks so much to maninthemoon for organizing an excellent event, as well as aksu for streaming, and all of those who helped judge, coordinate, and provided prize support for the event. We appreciate you!

published by AlwaysBeRunning.net