Signature Maverick Move - 41st & 60th @ Worlds 2023

It's happened before. It will happen again. Doof Shaper. Here we go.

First of all, a note. This is not a gimmick. It's not simply a "ha-ha" include. It's not meant to shock in swiss and fold in the top cut. It's a thought out include. A calculated influence use. It's a choice derived from the core shell and plan of the deck. The element of surprise is just icing on the cake. This may not be the best way of using your influence and it might not result in the best decklist, but I genuinely believe it makes a lot of sense. Let me explain:

Rush decks are great in this meta. You have PD, Asa, Ob, plus a bunch of other corps that want to generally move quickly throughout the game and use ice to gearcheck / annoy you. I tried the Bravado version, but it felt somewhat clunky, as I often found myself clicking for credits to play the card and have a chance of breaking what was in front of me. When you manage to get the right timing though, it gives you quite a bit of resources to play with, which pushes you forward very nicely. In my view, doof does more: instead of simply giving you a boost, it opens windows to contest a remote early + abuse one of the best cards in the deck (Kyuban) on ice the corp can't or won't rez. After the window closes, the game has also slowed down a bit, meaning that you are now closer to your power spike: the late game R&D lock. Arissana is one of the best IDs in the entire game at doing that, but you have to make sure that you have a chance of reaching that phase.

The deck performed very well for me on friday, with two opponents conceding even before 7 points (one of which was the now back-to-back world champ, teammate and friend @Sokka on his BtL), losing only to @rongydoge's kill NEH after a super hard fought game. I think I dropped the ball a bit on saturday and sunday, making some silly mistakes due to being a bit unfocused while playing some rounds, which easily cost me two games that were definitely winnable. After friday's performance, @sebastiank trusted me enough with the list to bring it himself and achieved a great 41st place, just a 241 short of the points needed for the top cut.

The list is not super refined, like most of what I publish. I was struggling super hard to find something to play last minute because nothing I tried seemed to be working in the week leading up to the tournament. There's always room for improvement and I'll definitely come back to it soon.

Shoutouts and stuff:

First of all, I want to give huge thanks to my Arissana brother @sebastiank for the trust he put in me. I am so humbled to have such a good player take one of my lists and just roll with it without a single change (-1 Diesel, I added it last minute as 48th card). We paired against each other round 2 and decided to ID. We chatted a lot during that round and I enjoyed every single moment of it.

I am so happy I ended up playing Arissana and I have @rustryder to thank for that. I really felt like I was going crazy for a few days, but he convinced me to just stick to what I was used to and felt confortable with, rather than a last-minute switch.

@Sokka I am so happy we IDed on round 3. Lunch was lovely and I knew you had way better chances. 🐐

Huge thanks go to pretty much the entirety of Unband for pushing every single member to do better, but in their own way. I love how every member brought their own creation or spin on a popular idea, with very few exceptions.

My deepest thanks go to @rongydoge too. Before the tournament I felt lots of pressure to perform and show that I can play well. Despite losing on friday, the little chat we had right after our games lifted a heavy load off my shoulders and probably made my entire weekend. I didn't care about my Worlds placement anymore and I felt free to just play and enjoy every match.

@CobraBubbles and @wowarlok, I love you two to bits. Thank you so much for crushing it in Eternal, it was a joy to be part of that.

To the rest of the Italian community, we may have not spent as much time together as previous times, but I will be forever grateful to you all. We'll see each other soon.

Last but not least, thank you to everyone who made Worlds 2023 possible. I had a ton of fun in 2019, but this was something else. See you all soon, hopefully IRL ^^