Slow Down Esâ

The Calamity 53

I have a bit of experience playing Esa. Coming into this tournament I wasn't sure what to play, so decided to go back to what I was familiar with.

I found this deck to use as a starting template. The write up is good, and includes the phrase

"Even Buffer Drive was considered, though it felt like it mainly banked value that you could have now for value that you can get later. But this deck does not want later. It wants now and it wants it all."

After playing a couple of games I came to disagree with this, I was burning through the deck too quickly and needed to slow things down and have a bit of late game potential. I managed to slot the buffer drives in and found the room for 2x Liberated Account for better sustained economy. I stopped short of Lago Paranoá Shelter because i felt that this would slow things down even more, and I still felt that this deck makes good on the initial promise of a quick and aggressive deck.

You probably already know all about why Steelskin Scarring and Strike Fund are good, with all the self damage and discard. So i will skip this.

I do want to talk about Tsakhia "Bankhar" Gantulga. I found that most ice I hit was 2 subs, with Buffer Drive installed you only loose 1 card from your deck to get through. this can be leveraged aggressively to land Chastushka, Finality and Legwork. Legwork is an especially good include, it has good synergy with Sabotage which naturally thins hands.

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