MaxXimum Mopus Mash (1st Reading Regional)

A variation on TheBigBoy's Magnum MaxX after several months of iterating over several tournaments. My style of play is probably somewhat different to what the original list requires, which leans heavily on its event tools to wreck the corp's board/credit state. I like accesses where possible, and I like to deal with threats permanently rather than temporarily. Hence I ditched most of the cutlery to add in Slums and Archives Interface which gives you a lot of flexibility, particularly in the asset spam matchup. RFGing Friends and ELPs against moon from the bin is a unique joy.

Maw is an interesting include over Grimoire, and it speaks to my preference for accesses. I like it because it gives you another out against all sorts of decks, and it paid huge dividends on the day.

I kind of miss the 3 Hacktivist I had in here at Euros, but they are dead against certain matchups. Really, the only thing this deck lacks is a good answer to Fairchild 3 (assuming Friends can recur it). I welcome your thoughts on how to improve that particular annoyance...

This deck dropped one game over the course of the Reading Regional (58 players, currently the largest 2017 regional and likely to remain so). Game reports below...

Round 1 - Store Champs bye.

Not knowing if I'd make it to another regional, I cashed in the bye and got to do some quick testing against Joey McMillan (imrahil) who had just cracked open Blood and Water for that all important Alice Merchant ID. I also got to witness an epic battle between Joey and Guy Patching's Aginfusion deck, which was lucky for me because...

2-0

Round 2 - Guy Patching on AgInfusion

Well that was lucky. Knowing he was on Obokata Protocol certainly helped me temper my desire to get early accesses and play safe. Unfortunately, playing safe allowed him to Mushin out a Labyrinthine Servers... and it all clicked into place. At some point he was going to Mushin out a Junebug, and then boop me over to it after using the LS token for a quick kill. Panicking, I slammed down Archived Interfaces and started removing Mushins, Junebugs, whatever I could to stop the inevitable. Maw saved the day by knocking enough key pieces in his hand to allow me to score out, but only after I had burned my Levy and drawn through my whole deck for the second time. The last agenda score? Obokata of course, with 4 cards remaining in my hand...

4-0

Round 3 - Ben Ni (beyoken) on EtF

ETF... goddamit. It'll take at least two turns before I figure out what kind of ETF this is. Oh wait, he left R&D open and there's a Caprice on top. Phew, this is probably easy mode then. Vamp and Rumor Mill all helped play a part in keeping down the SuperFriends and rush up to 4 points. Two risky ABT fires on his part helped lock up the game for me - the last one put 2 points into Archives which I chanced with a Mad Dash.

5-1

Round 4 - ID with Peter Cox (on EtF)

I checked out Peter's IDs after Round 3 and saw he was on ETF and Andy, so that's one bad matchup and one eh??! matchup. So I offered the ID and he accepted. We played it out anyway, runner side first. I got super lucky with my MaxX draws hitting every Scrubbers and Slums like they were magnetised, allowing me to control his asset spam and make it so the Friends in his hand were very sad indeed. A risky Keyhole/Mad Dash play when he dipped below 6 credits (I really hate FC3) was enough to win this completely inconsequential game.

6-2

Round 5 - Ed Proctor on Palana

Again, checking out Ed's IDs I opted to play - both matchups looked excellent for me. He made a real matchup of the MaxX vs Palana, rushing out a Nisei well before I had any breakers. A double vamp play to get around the Nisei Counter helped me to steal a Future Perfect, and Keyhole grabbed another. Meanwhile he never advanced out two Braintrusts in his remote and I began to panic - did this deck have Clone Retirement? If it did, I was so screwed. But chances are he was on 3 Nisei, 3 Braintrust and 3 Future Perfect, so I stuck to the Keyhole plan having a jolly old time breaking Owl and Excalibur with Eater. I keyholed his last Jackson, a random Biotic (?!?) and a Crisium (phew!) but didn't see any more agendas. I found out why when he Celebrity Gifted to show 6 points of agendas, making it so there was only one agenda left in the deck. So instead of Keyholing R&D I just ran it normally last click to force Maw trashes, and when he iced archives I knew I had the win.

8-2

Round 6 - ID with Mark Mottram (cacoethesvictor)

Our position in the cut pretty much assured, Mark and I IDed to save the bloodshed for Day 2.

9-3

Top 8 Game 1 - Alex Hilson (laminatedsmore) on EtF

Finally I got to face the dreaded Moons in a real match. And unlike my earlier Sticky Slums, MaxX decided today was the day I would draw all of my conspiracy breakers and mill all the slums instead. I didn't assemble anything resembling a board state until he already had two DBSs running and it was only a matter of time before the Biotics made it rain points for him.

Into the losers bracket...

Top 6 - Alex Borrill (mrehjiwurth) on EtF

Uh oh. A jank player after my own heart, running some kind of ETF? Well, better get Magnum down and take 8 until I figure out what the hell is going on. Oh, he's just ditched a bunch of cards into archives off Jackson draws and I've got Rumor Mill in hand... what could go wrong? 4 points later, I'm staring down the barrel of a loaded Punitive. But he's one credit short of the follow up Punitive, so I live to run another turn or two. That was a close one. I get keyhole out and go nuts until I find a GFI, and Mad Dash seals up the game while Rumor Mill is still live.

Finals Game 1 - Mark Mottram on Sol

And here we go. Now if only we had played on Day 1 so I knew what kind of Sol he was on. But I'm pretty sure I knew - and I just need to play against it like it's Sync. Step 1: find Opus. Step 2: find Plascrete. Step 3: take 8 until bored. Step 1 was easy, Step 2 less so. Luckily I found it with the help of Deja Vu the turn after he scored his second Breaking News. As I decked he went for the 24/7 Boom play to knock out my Plascrete, but I choose to take just 2 counters and lose the hand, and next turn I used SoT to recur the Levy and clear tags. Now I was in a commanding position, and playing around the TarMar (which was on either Vamp or Paperclip, depending on the situation) helped to keep me out of Midseasons range. Keyhole Mad Dash sealed up the game.