49 Shades Reborn 1-2-1, 7th, Internet tournament

The NYC meta held it's first and presumably only annual iteration of the 'Internet tournament' today, in honour of our overworked and underappreciated TO, Alex 'Internet' Internet.

For those not in the know we presented Alex with a custom 40 card Shaper ID and console a little while back to thank him for all of his work organizing events for us to come to over the years and we decided to have a little tournament to test this ID out. The rules were: Each player must play 'Internet' as their runner ID and each corporation may not play a restricted card (to make sure the jank cauldrons were bubbling and that no-one played too good a deck vs this terrible and broken ID).

I decided to go one step further and, with the permission of TO Redino987 I resurrected LeonardQuirm's 2015 monstrosity that he played at one of the first tournaments I ever went to: 49 Shades of Grey.

At the beginning of each round you ask your opponent to randomly select one Corp ID from the 41 currently legal IDs and hope they don't pick Harmony Medtech: Biomedical Pioneeror Cybernetics Division: Humanity Upgraded. You then play the game as that ID. As it's under 10 influence (the only influence is 9 grail ICE) it can be played in anything.

A short summary of how it performed:

Round 1 WIN vs Redino987 (Teo) ID selected: Tennin Institute: The Secrets Within

This was kismet as both Teo and I played Tennin to a top 20 finish in SOCR8 and I think I was playing Tennin at the event LeonardQuirm dropped this idea originally. The only useful thing I ever Tennin-ed was a second token on an NGO but Grail ICE is great vs dog decks which is what most of the field was on and the game went to time and I was ahead on points.

*Round 2 DRAW vs endera (David) ID Selected: The Outfit: Family Owned and Operated

The ID was blank as Grim and Profiteering rotated and noone was on Mining Accident. We were short on time due to the other game going long. Got an SSL Endorsement out early but couldn't find any more agendas and the game tied from an R&D dig. Then we ran out of time.

*Round 3 LOSS vs OnTheNightRain (Kurt) ID Selected: Haarpsichord Studios: Entertainment Unleashed

Kurt selected Haarp, said 'Are you kidding me? I just played Haarp!' and then Dypered me.

*Round 4 LOSS vs riotprl (Pearl) ID Selected: Gagarin Deep Space: Expanding the Horizon

Pearl spent a while calculating the cost to get in to the remote that had an SSL in. Broke all the ICE and had no money. I asked her if she wanted to access? She said yes. I asked if she was sure. She said yes. I tapped my ID smugly. She looked crestfallen and then remembered she could get an extra credit from the Internet ID and stole my god damn SSL. But it was worth it for that one moment of realization that she hadn't factored Gagarin in. Noone ever expected the Gagarinquistion. Lost at the end with the winning CST in the remote on a Hail Mary 3 card R&D dig which turned up the goods after making her run the gauntlet 2 turns in a row just to pop NGO Fronts.

A fun tournament and a surprisingly decent deck considering. It's never going to win a regionals but it's a fun concept to try out. The ID really does make a big difference and with the grail suite IDs like NEXT Design: Guarding the Net or The Foundry: Refining the Process are actually pretty decent. Of course I got Tennin and Outfit but YMMV.