Neon Tide Express (2nd @ Toronto GNK)

HoloMcHoloMan

Captain to the Holodeck!

For day 2 of NANPC Toronto, on the off chance that people wanted to play more Standard after the cut, I sleeved up something without too much card overlap with my tournament corp. I wanted a change and was happy to run something brand new. As it turned out, the organizers spun up a small, short GNK and I took this deck to 2nd place.

TAIBs have been experimenting with rush Ob, working Holo Man into a list based on jaicanan't (aka The King's AMT winning deck). I played that a bunch and know the lines well enough that I felt I could pilot this version without practice. Holo Man gives one more FA tool to a deck already full of them and I wanted to see how it plays.

Matchup report (2-1)

• Round 1: win vs Ari. I don't remember anything about this game and was too punchy from my NANPC cut loss to take notes. Whoops.

• Round 2: loss to Alarm Clock Mulch Loup. I struggled to find the rush pieces -- which is not good for a rush deck -- then an Extract got Imp'd at a key point, leaving me poor and struggling while they sniped agenda after agenda.

• Round 3: win vs ice destruction Hoshiko. This was game 2 after a long glacier Azmari game. An Azef score hit a Charm and a Cleaver, buying time to keep the remote strong. I won 4-3 at time.

Reflections on the card choices

Holo Man -- I don't recall if I used it. Maybe once? But it can tutor from Mavirus to FA a 3 pointer or score a previously-installed 5 pointer. But it's expensive, so...

Too Big To Fail -- This gives another way to bounce back from using Holo Man. I think I needed it for early econ in one game, spun it back, and used it again. This deck goes too fast to worry about giving the runner a bit of bad pub.

Basalt Spire -- Scored or stolen, this agenda will recur FA pieces like Audacity or Slash and Burn.

Tucana -- This suffers a bit without the Hostiles found in jaicanan't, but it's still a great tempo piece where each score defends the next at a discount.

Manegarm -- Another great Mavirus tutor target to surprise defend a remote. Given the Tucanas, maybe this influence could have been spent on a Tributary instead.

Appreciation

❤️👔🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 -- it's much more fun doing this together!

Thank you again to the NANPC Toronto organizers and meta members for a fun time!